Apollo

| 2010 - Corrupt |

San Diego, California, Ellis Family, 2010

41 Years Old

Apollo Amato was a conartist. He was a liar, a thief, and a meticulously curated monster. He moved in life like a chess piece, analyzing every possibility of his opponent and moving in whatever way would bring him victory. 

He was good at playing, he loved games and he loved to win. Apollo thought he was alone in his world. The empty hallways and quiet bedrooms reminded him of his lost family and how little he had left. 

He never experienced his children growing up and moving out of the home. He never experienced an organic empty nest. He didn't know what it felt like to have adult children in the world who didn't call home or visit. 

The Ellis family had been lucky enough to have that experience. They got to raise Lorelei until she left with her husband to start a family. The Ellis parents never met their grandchildren, but the calls were common and Lori sent pictures. 

But when the pictures and phone calls stopped, her gut turned. The updates were nonexistent. A mother's intuition is like no other, specially curated and crafted by millennia of mothers before her. That type of soul connection is set aside for a mother and her young, and when Mrs. Ellis suspected something to be wrong years ago, she took action.

She couldn't contact Apollo. He wasn't on any of the limited social media platforms, nor was he in any phonebook. His address was a mystery. The Ellises had little to go off of, but intuition was stronger than they knew. 

In 2010, after years of no contact with their only daughter, the Ellis family contacted lawyers and the police. It cost more than they had made in their lives to find Apollo but no price was too much. They needed to know she was safe. All they wanted was for their daughter to have a good life. If she was happy, they would let her run free. 

The day that cops pounded on the doors of the Amato mansion with a warrant to search his property for the missing woman and children, Apollo remembered that Lorelei was once someone else's. She was once someone's baby, someone's daughter. He knew how much he loved his children. 

He knew he would do the same thing. He would stop at nothing to find his girls, how could he blame them? He wouldn't lie, he decided. But he wouldn't allow himself to get into any kind of trouble for the things his wife had done.

The police searched every inch of the compound while Apollo remained in custody in the home. When two men returned to the living room with mournful expressions on their faces, Apollo knew they found them. They found the graves, one larger than the others, two matching with butterfly wings. Buried beneath a blanket of beautiful red roses, three bodies lie still for eternity, sisterly hands intertwined and the heart of a broken mother finally at rest.

He didn't deny their deaths. He didn't deny the final resting place he had chosen for them. He did deny that any of it was his fault, not because he believed it, but because he wouldn't allow himself to be arrested. He wouldn't leave them. He would stay with them on the cursed compound and watch over them like he promised. 

Word got back to the Ellis family. Earth-shattering cries could be heard from their quaint home and if grief could cause an earthquake, that would have been the second one caused by the death of Lorelei Amato.

A hearing was held in California, the blazing summertime heat beating down on each person attending. Apollo showed up in a crisp suit, with his hair neatly combed and a face dried of tears. He spoke clearly, recounting every second of the night he found his children dead at the hand of his wife. Apollo even admitted that he was the one to end Lori's life. 

He told not even one lie, but when the Ellis family thought he would be convicted of his crimes and locked away like the monster he was, they were beaten down even further. Lorelei Ellis, unbreathing and rotting beneath the earth, would become one more unheard victim. Of what, or who, no one could decide. 

Apollo had something the Ellis family never would. He had power and money, and despite the admittance of his wrongdoing, he would never be charged. Apollo paid sinful amounts of money to rebury the death of his family. Apollo even tried to pay off the Ellis parents, but his insulting act only caused them more harm. 

They wanted nothing more than for him to trade places with their daughter and granddaughters. They wanted him in cuffs, they wanted him beaten for taking away their baby. Apollo would never see a jail cell, or a beating, or even so much as a slap on the wrist. 

Apollo did end up paying off the legal fees and backed-up bills that the Ellis family tried to hide, and whether it be out of guilt or something else, he wouldn't admit that he felt the need to help them.

Lorelei's memory would forever be stained by the gruesome stories and pictures that were shown in that courtroom. Her mother would forever blame Apollo. Her father would spend the rest of his life batting away the nightmares and holding his wife closer at night. Together, they would ask if she was always destined for Apollo.

They wondered who she would have been if she never met him. She was only a child when he corrupted her, and now, for as long as they both shall live, her memory would forever corrupt them.  Nothing would bring them joy like her first giggle or her first steps.

Together, the pair remained vocal about the malpractice Apollo had bought. Lori's memory lived on in California as a little girl corrupted into a life of misery and misfortune, ending in death and heartache.

To Apollo, his Lorelei remained the most loved and cherished woman he ever met. As he trimmed her rose bushes and strung up decorations to match the season, the radio next to him replayed her true-crime episode, and when they referred to him as the Devil, Apollo accepted that his angel had fallen from heaven with him and for him.

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