“At least let me know who she is, and why you picked me,” I inquired.
When he lifted his head to gaze at me, his eyes looked calm. If anything, they looked too calm, nearly to the point that they were devoid of emotion. “’She’ was Anthony’s cousin, Naomi Featherstone. I never intended on hurting you specifically, Sienna, but there is a hole where my heart used to be. The devil lives in there now, and I can’t get him out.”
“So, I’ve now become your sacrificial lamb?” I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, gazing at him in disbelief.
“Not really. It’s just that Anthony happens to be in love with you.” He shrugged. “He and I are best friends. If I lose something, it’s only fair for him to lose something as well. We need to share that sense of empathy; otherwise, he’ll never know what it feels like to lose the love of his life.”
Stacey had mentioned that Charlie used to have a daughter when he was younger. Unfortunately, she passed away due to an accident, and he never wanted any more children after that.
I was also aware that Anthony had a cousin that Jared used to date.
But I wasn’t present during any of that, and I had no idea as to what had happened in the past.
I didn’t know what he felt towards Anthony, but he must have gotten rid of his humanity a long time ago if he had come all this way and taken this many extreme measures.
His stare towards me was pitiful and compassionate, mixed with several other complicated emotions that I couldn’t place. He lamented, “You really remind me of her sometimes. When you handed me those clothes at the villa at Oceanid Bay, I nearly mistook you for her. You’re both just so, so kind. And afterward, I wanted to help you leave Anthony so that you would be free of him. Why didn’t you leave him?”
I chewed on my lower lip, unsure how to respond.
Jared let out an emotionless bark of laughter. “Maybe if you’d left him back then, your life would be drastically different from what it is now. I would never have hurt you, I wouldn’t have met Macy, and you wouldn’t be feuding with your parents…”
He abruptly stopped himself, a cruel smile on his lips as his stare turned sharp. “Do you see now? Do you see why Anthony deserves to die? He hurts everyone he loves, everyone who’s close to him. He bounds people to him and loudly proclaims that he’s doing it out of ‘love’. No matter how broken you feel, he will always comfort you with sweet nothings about how he’ll always protect you, how he’ll always treat you right. And then, it reaches a point where you can never bear to hurt him, even if you hate him to death.
“We’re actually the same, you and me. You’re his lover, and I’m his best friend. He hurt you, but he also loves you. Because of that, you’re not willing to hurt him, and you even force yourself to suppress all your feelings of upset and frustration in order to stay with him. I do that too; he indirectly caused me to lose the woman I loved most and caused me pain like nothing I’d ever felt before. But then, he proceeded to save me from the depths of hell. I absolutely loathe him, and yet I don’t want to hurt a single hair on his head. Such a conundrum, isn’t it?”
Humans are defined by our wide array of emotions. These emotions are never separate, but always intertwined and tangled and connected with each other.
I felt my heart clench inside my chest, but I had no clue if it was out of sympathy or pity. “You want to kill me so that he would be able to feel your pain?”
He nodded, smiling. “That’s right.”
“If I die, you and he will become mortal enemies.”
“I know. That is the best possible outcome. If we become enemies, then neither of us needs to hold back the pain we feel anymore. We will no longer need to hide away our wounds and scars.”
It sounded easy when spoken out loud, but surely it was much more complicated than just a simple declaration of love and hate.
“Do you promise that Summer will continue to grow up safely and healthily?” I asked.
Nodding, his expression softened somewhat. “Of course. She’s my daughter. I will take good care of her and give her all my love.”
I believed him.
So, I nodded.
I wonder if that taxi driver has called the police by now. Probably not. I was too reckless to come here without informing John. If I died right now, no one would ever be able to find out what happened to me.
I don’t want to be discovered as a rotting corpse!
Jared seemed amused as he watched me stare intently at the bottle of sulfuric acid. “I did give you the choice to die the same way Naomi did. You should be grateful.”
“You think giving me options on how to kill myself is a privilege?” I snapped.
“Yeah, it gives the whole thing a sense of ritualism. Now do it.”
I wasn’t afraid of dying. However, I loathed having to die this way, and my movements were slow and hesitant.
Unfortunately, Jared’s patience was already at its limit, the man exasperatedly getting to his feet and walking over to the table.
He picked up the bottle of sulfuric acid, slowly swivelling his head to face me. An eyebrow raised, he asked in an annoyed tone, “Want me to do it for you?”
My face scrunched up out of fear, instinctively taking a step back and increasing the distance between us. “Jared, listen. There’s still a way out for you if you stop now.”
His lips pulled back in an ugly sneer. “Scared, Sienna?”
No sh*t, Sherlock. Anyone would be.
He took slow, lazy steps towards me, and I unconsciously kept backing away from him. “Jared, you can’t bring back people from the dead, but you can still treasure the living while they’re still alive,” I tried to convince him.
He merely jeered at me, refusing to listen to anything I said as he twisted open the bottle cap.
Waving the bottle in the air menacingly, he went on to say, “You look so much like Naomi right now. She was this scared and vulnerable when she died, too. I remember thinking: she must have wanted to continue living, but she couldn’t find a good reason to do so anymore. Why couldn’t I have been her reason? Why couldn’t she have continued living for me?”
I felt my back hit a wall. I’m cornered.
Delighted by my new predicament, a wide grin spread across his face as he splashed the contents of the bottle in my direction.
I reflexively reached up and tried to cover my face with my hands, but only managed to block some of the liquid.
In the blink of an eye, I was aggressively pulled into someone’s embrace at the exact moment that I heard the blood-curdling sound of something dissolving, as well as caught a whiff of the rancid odor of rotting flesh.
A man’s voice hissed into my ear in pain as a group of people suddenly barged into the building.
When I’d finally snapped awake from my daze, I realized that it was Anthony. He’d used his own body to shield me from the sulfuric acid.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could somewhat see that all the blood was drained from Jared’s face as he stared at Anthony, dumbfounded while Anthony’s men wrestled him to the ground.
I tried to open my mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Anthony instantly fell to his knees in front of me. There was a constant ringing in my brain as I stood there blankly, watching someone else carry Anthony away.
At the hospital, I silently watched the doctors and nurses as they moved around me. It was only then that my brain finally registered that my face hurt slightly, and I realized that the sulfuric acid must have burnt some parts of my skin off.
“The burn area isn’t large. Your right eye is hurt, but the cornea isn’t damaged, so you don’t have to worry about blindness,” a doctor told me as he bandaged up my wounds.
I contemplated his words for a while. I now knew that my face and right eye hadn’t managed to escape Jared’s fury unscathed.
But why didn’t I feel any pain at all in the beginning? Maybe it all happened too fast that my brain wasn’t able to register it.
The doctor left as a nurse came in to help with my IV injection. After pressing lightly all over my hand and not finding any prominent veins, she glanced up at me. “Please hold your hand in a fist.”
I did as I was told. She carefully inspected the back of my hand and then picked up the needle, setting it upon a certain spot on my skin.
I turned away, refusing to watch her actually push the needle into my flesh. My pain tolerance had always been horrible.
“All done,” the nurse helpfully supplied after she was done.
Only then did I sigh in relief, all the muscles in my body relaxing. The spot on the back of my left hand where the IV needle had pierced hurt slightly, and it looked swollen.
I couldn’t help but ask, “Did you accidentally pick the wrong vein? It looks like the wound is starting to bleed.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
Leave a Reply