The Little Dove #3 ✔️

61. Don't Do This, Kenji.

"He tortured her. I don't care if she did or not, we're talking about a murderer here and I'm certain Charlize is one of them. Ace Johnson tried doing the same to you. I heard stories, read articles, the man drugged you and the acted as though you were still missing when he left you in that cabin." He tells me.

I clench my jaw, "I know that, but it wasn't me who killed him, it was Detective-" He cuts me off.

"Forthright, yes-I know that. I also know that your boyfriend is a lying bastard and you're still with him anyway." He says to me, harshly.

I close my eyes, squeeze them shut as if nothing could pull through-nothing could sneak in, my lips curled into between my teeth as I sucked in a sharp gasp, "I still remember how it felt to have string rope run around my wrists in never-ending lopes. Afraid to even breathe when a person made to uphold the law stood in front of me with a steel barrel aimed at my head and a cyclical smirk on his lips. Do you know what that is like?" I whisper, leaning forward as his entire face falls, it crumbles to the soil floor beneath us as he's left quiet.

I swallow, licking my chapped lips, "I knew he was crooked, from the moment I met him, but I was more scared of a creepy Professor that insisted I tell him my whole life story as if it were that easy. He wanted my emotions on a silver platter, to study, to analyse, to adore. Telling someone had the potential to make him back off-yes, but it wouldn't help me prove he was guilty and in my mind, a man like that, like Finley Forthright-he was already guilty the second he knew my full name, the first time we had met. He was cunning, manipulative and well-polished. I wasn't fooled, until I really was when I found out he was a cop-a detective, he had those girls files on him because it was for his job." I whisper, the tear in my eyes crystallise and turn cold, always staying at the tips of my eyelashes, never running away, never leaving when I wanted so badly to rip them out of my eyes and call it a day.

I wanted this to end, so badly, but I knew it couldn't because the story wasn't over, the loop wasn't unravelled. The time was just still ticking, like a recording in my head, the bad parts on replay, to memorise and learn from each mistake and each time I saw my mistake-I died a little more every second.

I swallow again, saliva beating in my gums, I remove it-like drinking water, only the substance was thicker- more sticky, "I could never find the way to truly trust anyone around me. Lorraine wouldn't believe me when I told her something felt wrong about that Academy. That the secrets there were slowly choking me, suffocating me, but I was too stubborn to see it and I was too scared to turn to Edmund for help, his friends-I couldn't trust them and for good reason. You've read my reports, my findings, my documents. It's why you don't like Edmund and I can completely understand because of what he has done to me, but it doesn't begin to touch the surface of what happened to him, the way he grew up." I gesture my hand behind us, towards the barbecue.

I squeeze my eyes shut, dropping my heavy head in my hands, "I was betrayed, time over again. Corinne, Bella, Stella and freaking Charlize, their stories-all of it got to me and I'll admit, I thought they were connected because they were all blonde, with similar ambitions and business-built families, well-off and strived for excellence. I thought I was dealing with a psychopath, a serial killer and so much more." I groan out, pressing my hand to my forehead as a resonating headaches beats like a hurricane down my neck and strains against my muscles like hamstrings being stretched and pulled apart-ripped apart.

I bite my lip, jiggling my left knee, "When it wasn't...Forthright, when I saw Johnson standing above me with the gun pointed to my head, I was drugged up, afraid, but most of all, I was devastated because I was wrong. It wasn't Forthright, not directly anyway and I wanted so badly to prove that he made me watch what happened to those girls, that it was him who made me analyse their deaths as if he was recruiting me, or taunting me." I say to him.