"I hope you are comfortable, Mrs. Wrethmeir." Asks the female officer, settling herself in the chair across Janice. The latter nods in agreement, registering the officer's tired smile and dull eyes as she flips through her files. There is an air of authority around her. The specs of grey in her hair and the permanent wrinkles carved out due to her smile spoke of her age and her experience.
"Shall we start?" She asks, crossing her hands on the table, meeting Janice's gaze.
"Yes." "I am officer Jude Abiodun, and I'll be recording your statement." She informs, to which Janice replies with a nod.
"So tell me, what was your last conversation with William about?"
"It was-" she says, remembering what had happened that day, "It was bizarre. He was drunk, stinking of alcohol. Pungent. He first asked me about where I had been the night before."
"And where were you?"
"I stayed in my apartment in a condominium in the main-city. The Skywerse, it's what that condominium is called."
"Why did you stay there?"
"It's close to both my university and office, and I had some business to run."
"Hmm. Tell me, what else did he say.. or ask you?"
"A moment he seemed desperate and angry, the other he was crying. He said that he did everything that seemed right. But what exactly was he talking about, that I'm unaware of? I went near him, thinking he was frustrated when he pointed the gun at me. Rest is all blank. I remember little of what followed."
The officer hums, nodding her head as she scribbles down on her paper.
"How was you marriage?"
"Sorry?" she asks, astound.
"How was or is your marriage with William, Mrs. Wrethemier?- I asked. You know that he's schizophrenic, right? You're a psychologist." There was a mocking lacing her undertone.
"Yes, I'm aware of that. I caught the symptoms a few years ago-"
"And yet, we get to know about this now! When he's been under custody, expected to appear in trails for being charged for the murder of his father and supposedly planned murder of you and your kids where-"
"I know." Snaps Janice, cutting Jude.
"I am well aware of what he's done. About his schizophrenia, my father-in-law already knew about it when I brought the topic before him. I expected him to chide me for making such assumptions, given that I wasn't having a licensed practice as a psychologist back then. But he told me to keep mum about it. That some things must remain inside the four walls of a house for the better good. William used to take anti-depressants, for I advised. I tried to enhance his mental health as much as I could, but the thing about our marriage. I think you can imagine how it might have been given that he tried to kill me and my kids. Rest-" she says, getting up from her seat,
"You can speak to my lawyer. Plus, I'd like to execute my rights and demand a divorce before the trials proceed." With that, she leaves the interrogation room. On her way out, she catches a glimpse of Jeongguk, who gets up from his seat just as quickly as she emerges out of the one-way-mirror-room.
"I don't think I'd like to do these interviews anymore." She tells him once he's close enough. He nods, leading her outside. They use the back door, for the paparazzi flooded the front ones. They approach the car in silence.
"I need to speak to you." He says, making her turn around to face him. He looks over her shoulder at the driver, who held the car door open for her and then at the security guards patrolling the area. She looks at him with anticipation, her brows raised as her senses perk up, waiting for what he had to say.
"I'll visit you in the evening." He states, meeting her gaze. She nods in return before getting into the car.
It is not until the sun has bid the sky, leaving the once bright and cozy canvas under the labyrinth of faint moonlight, and the clock has hit seven when Jeon Jeongguk manages to pay his patient visit. He still wore that Givenchy blazer with a slightly crumpled cream shirt underneath, as if it were now his favorite coat. The possibility of that being true was sufficient to bring a smile to her face despite the boiling tension of the trails, but the sight of his hand draped in that sling was enough to push that smile away.
Of all things, she wanted to rebuke him for choosing professional clothes over the comfortable ones under such condition. He strides towards where she sat with a frown on her face, in the living room with a book in her hands.
"How do you feel?" He asks. His words calculated and tone impeded.
"Fine, I assume."
He hums in response, nodding his head as he looks anywhere but at her. He studies the living room as if it's been the first time. She spent the entire afternoon assuming everything he might have to say and preparing herself several speeches that she might address him with.
To come to think of it, that she got away with everything, or got what she needed with no one acknowledging the zest of it, surprised her. More over, what she prepared herself exactly for was her confession. But having him now before her made her lose the grip of her thoughts as she fought her own inner battle. The burden of everything was too much to bear and her calm was withering away.
"What is it?" She asks, and he takes a deep breath, looking at her. His stiff shoulders and restricted poise gave away the hesitance building up inside him.
"The order that William had placed for Strychnine is still due for delivery for a few more days."
It was a statement. A simple fact and not some rhetorical question or a fluke seeking for the entire truth.
He knew. She thinks. No matter how many times she had gone all over it again and again, she sits still in anticipation. Condemnation clogs her mind, as she knew that what might unfold in the coming minutes-held no worth to be understood or get accepted by the law. There was no possibility of that for miles.
"That is something even I got to know about not much time ago." She says.
Jeongguk runs his hand through his hair, disheveling them even more. An exasperated sigh leaves his lips.
"No one will pay any heed to a word that William says. Not anymore. But I cannot help but ponder over what he kept saying, even after being sedated."
"And what did he say?" She asks, fighting the urge to physically shiver under his scrutiny, even though every part of her skin was eerily sensitive. As if it only needed a faint whisper right below her ear and she'd tremble down with a terrorized shriek.
"That it is you." A muscle jumped in his jaw. It was there again. The restraint and dilemma.
"His wife, who is behind all of this." He says with a twisted face, blood rising up his neck as his breathing gets heavier.
"And what did you conclude... about what William said?" She asks timidly, in a voice she herself couldn't decipher. It was weak, camouflaged, and desperate. As if it was his conclusion that mattered to her and not the law.
"That--"
He says looking back to her in the eyes, "-you tell me. Everything."
His words were stressed, determined. He wasn't giving her any options. It was a demand that she obliged to fulfill.
She gives in, running a hand at the back of her neck, trying to subside the shudder. She feels the sweat forming in her palms as she faces the most painfully awaited appraisal.
"Very much." She says, her breath hitching. She chugs down the glass of water before spilling all the beans.
"I signed the wedding papers in Seoul. The same day when your parents were admitted to the hospital. Apparently, a lot of things about my life had been a lie. The woman who I thought was my mother was my aunt. My birth mother had passed away during the delivery. It was actually my aunt who raised me, that too because she was the only one knew about my parent's affair, and she used me to get my father pay for her standing debts, bills and everything else she and I might need for a living.
"That's when my father took me in, for he basically was paying for everything, so might as well prepare his pawn his way when he was already investing in it. I don't know how much of this is true, for it was my father who told me this before he made me sign those papers. My aunt, she was already dead fighting blood cancer for years then. Another thing which I apparently didn't know. I was simply told that she was ill. For years."
"Neither did I have much time to comprehend whatever they told me that day, nor could I bring myself to fight back. I knew I'd ask them something and I'll be answered with another bloody lie or some brutal threat. Every family I had known all my life was a lie. The only thing that made sense was my father's hatred towards me, for I was the reason my mother had left him. As if he ever gave her the dignity of it." A sarcastic chortle escapes her throat, as the image of her father threatening her flashes before her eyes.
"He said, everyone I've ever gotten close to suffer. He wanted to get rid of me, and so asked for the wedding papers from the Wrethmeirs beforehand. William had already signed them. All I had to do was pack my little belongings and fly away. But Birmingham was another nightmare I had to face. Once I got here, every waking hour of the day, every breathing moment of the night, I was subjected to a girl's worst nightmare."
Jeongguk wasn't surprised, but listening her word it out made him look away in pain. It broke him to see her speak about it with absolutely no emotions. Her face, when she spoke, was devoid of any emotion. Blank. Even when she spoke of her mother, her dead aunt or William's atrocities, there didn't flicker even an ounce of hurt or pain through her eyes. Self-humiliation and guilt had made a home in his heart along with her words, which he'd have to live with all his life. Like she did.
"I hated everything. Wanted to burn everything around me into ashes. But what would have that brought me? All that mattered to me then was to free myself out of that hell. I was weak, so I decided to drink the phenyl in order to end my life. In order to end all that pain I had to go through."
To his horror, she chuckles at her own-comment, reminiscing the memory of herself kneeling before the bottle of phenyl in the storeroom, her face swollen with horrendous bruises adorning her body like a second skin. There was an excruciating pain in her lower abdomen, and she even struggled to breathe. She remembered it all too well.
"Back then I didn't know if it was the smell of detergents in the storage room or my aching body that made me faint, but I couldn't drink the phenyl like I thought I would. Next day I woke up in my room, which was changed into a hospital room equipped with all the machineries and six nurses to attend to me. One of them told me I was pregnant. I thought she was joking, or that I was dreaming. But when she showed me the sonography photographs, I couldn't believe my eyes. I didn't want to be a mother, not to William's kids. I had only imagined a family with someone else, someone I had left behind."
"There was a time when I even re-considered dying. Because William's father wanted the kids more than anything else, and William wanted what his father did. So why not killing their source of joy? But I couldn't. Ending just my life was different. Knowing I had another life growing inside me, I just couldn't bring myself to harm it. I really wasn't ready to be a mother at eighteen. But life doesn't throw lemons at you, thinking you might be ready. It just does, and you have to prepare yourself in the process of making lemonade. And that's what I did."
"I used my pregnancy to bend William to my will. Though it lived short, for nine months, it changed something in him. Soon I discovered I was carrying twins, and I was thrilled after a long time. They gave me a reason to live. I ... I even decided their names even when I was just twenty weeks pregnant. And I can never thank Beth enough for being with me all these years. It was partly because of her I found in myself the pride of raising kids. My father visited me during my third trimester, which was another surprising change."
"Things went just fine, except the times when William's schizophrenia took over him. I didn't understand it back then. I just thought that he hated me and thus ravaged my body in anger, forgetting that I carried his children. It broke me, made me question my entire existence once again, but I had made peace with my fate. At least for the time being."
"I still remember when I went into labor. Luckily, William and Nathaniel were overseas. I was glad they wouldn't be around during the delivery, for I didn't want them to be near my kids when they were so small. It is said that children take after those who stay around them when they're just infants. William couldn't get back to Birmingham until next month and I couldn't be happier."
There was a hint of happiness coating her words now. Her voice catching a zeal as she spoke of her kids. Pushing away the pain, a warm feeling pooled in his heart at the sight of her eyes sparkling. But her words brought him back rather abruptly, for the tone of her voice changed.
"The first thing that came to my mind when I took Jewel in my arms was you." She says, meeting his gaze.
He could feel his heartbeat grow faster. He wished he could be there with her when she carried his kids. It hurt him to know that she assumed those kids to be Williams, but he couldn't blame her. All these days since he'd known about his kids, he couldn't comprehend what to feel.
But now, having heard her, he finally knew. A feeling unexplainable. A feeling which you don't have to name. It just blooms within you as a gust of extreme happiness, making your mouth grow dry, tickling you in the bright, as it simply dawns on you with both nervousness and immense joy.
"She had your nose, your lips and your cute smile. Both of them had. It was just my eyes which they inherited. Rest everything screamed Jeongguk. The Jeons. That was the day when I cried like a madwoman. Hugging my kids as if my life depended on them, because it did. I was so extremely happy that I wanted to find a way. Just any damn way to tell you I have a part of you. That we have a family. But that's not how my fate was written and reality dawned back."
"William returned a little early, and I was so scared that he might find out the kids were not his, so I hid their birth certificates. I hid their blood reports because their blood type is A whereas both William and I are O. But luckily, he noticed nothing that early. So I took my dear time in adjusting to the new life."
"With twins to look after, it kept me busy and extremely happy. They were the cutest things I have ever seen. These little balls of sunshine, every single moment spent with them, is a luxury. But every single day since then, I have been living under the fear of my little secret getting exposed. After the twins were born, I convinced William to let me pursue a career and took Psychology after the kids were old enough."
"When the kids turned one, I realized they had straight-raven hair, so I chopped my hair. Got them colored and straight so the striking difference wouldn't arouse suspicion. But things went downhill once again, when William grew aloof. He didn't pay attention to the kids, their voices irked him. He always yelled at them for being loud or for simply being there before him."
"He might have found out they weren't his. But I'm not sure of that even today. But what I was sure of was- his schizophrenia was back. Though it actually never left him, but it was more intense this time. The reasons were many, but mostly workload and the fact that my father kept delaying naming the Park shares under my name, officially."
"That was why William married me. He'd have my share of The Park enterprises as the guardian once they were legally mine. All he needed was to kill me. But I never got the shares. Maybe father had deciphered William's true intentions at some point. And one day, when it all became a little too much for him, he decided to kill us. William never considered us a family, or maybe he did, for a short time, but something changed. Like it usually does with schizophrenics."
"The reason behind all this is actually Nathaniel. He treated his first wife, William's birth mother, the same way William treated me. His mother used to cry in front of little William at nights. The torment she faced was perhaps bigger, for she shot herself during a fight with Nathan, right in front of their twelve-year-old son."
"Nathan then raised William in his accords, making sure he forgot about his mother. And he eventually did except that how she had shot herself right before his eyes. I got to know this one night, when I sort of tried to hypnotize him. I didn't basically do that. I'm stating it as 'hypnotizing' just so you understand." She tried to explain.
Jeongguk had by now grown eerily cold. His throat ached for some water, a lot, but his body refused to move an inch and grab a glass. He nods at her, urging her to continue as he somehow stretches his arm forward, grasping a glass of water.
"It is a long process, where you don't practically practice hypnotizing but simply gain the opponent's trust and act as their confidante, so when you try to talk them out of vulnerable matters, they do so. I did that. I tried to build that trust for more than a year and would talk to him about the day. I'd share my experiences of work and some made up stories about my past and he'd do the same. It became a routine where he'd come home and tell me about his day directly or indirectly, but sometimes he wouldn't. It all depended on his mood."
"I thought I had his trust, and that he wouldn't harm me and my kids anymore. But things are not always the way they appear to you. We got into that accident and the way he nonchalantly disregarded the idea of searching the criminal, I knew I was dealing with a devil. One that had an unstable brain. It is then I decided that if I wanna live, keeping Jaden safe, I'll have to eradicate the possibility of dangers. I couldn't run away, not with Jewel's murderer free. That is when I decided I'd kill him, just the way he killed my daughter."
"I kept pretending to be his confidante. I intentionally told Nathaniel about William's health, so that he'd think that I care for the Wrethmeirs. Men are fool. They play the tactics all the times but get played in the easiest ways. All I needed- to make William aloof from his father- was breaking it to him- how Nathan always paid a monthly allowance to Bob Levensque, William's half brother. William had this little phobia, that everything he loves, leaves him. Like his mother did. The next thing he loved was the business, and knowing about Bob, he felt that his possession of the Wrethmeir empire was threatened. The hate towards Nathan for killing his mother grew back with the knowledge of Nathan's illegitimate son."
"He'd talk to me about how he felt insecure about his inheritance. Of how Nathan might kill him and give his everything to Bob. During my pregnancy, William developed keen on reading books, fiction and drama. He used to read business books since ever, but one thing that my company changed about him was this habit of reading fictional novels. It helped him escape. And his unstable mind would find peace in the drama and weird characters of certain books. The dark characters appealed to him and the more he read, the more his mental strength declined."
"Reading basically doesn't do that. It is a therapy. But I made sure that William received no therapy. It was I who made him like the dark characters even when he didn't like them at first. 'They are bad', he'd chide me whenever I supported the villains.
'They aren't. They're doing what they find apt. Why will they be fair if all that life has been to them is being unfair?' I'd reason. And gradually he had sympathy for them. Little did he realize it was my way of molding him. I'd suggest that he read thrillers and murder mysteries, hoping he might take initiatives. To perhaps kill his own father. My plan was simple. I'd make William kill his father and then bring the evidence against William. "
"But things weren't progressing as rapidly anymore. He stopped talking to me. We barely saw each other for weeks and when I thought that he's forgotten things, that my patience and incitation for five years was now withering away, I ceased waiting for William to take action. I had once seen Nathan making one of his confidential transaction."
" So, with some efforts, I got my hands on the ID and password. I made the transaction for strychnine myself, from Nathan's office when he was away, and deleted the history. Luckily, the order arrived together with other medicines we usually ordered and Nathan received them. His sign on the receiving charts made it a lot easier for me."
"I asked Beth to intoxicate the liquor and serve it to Nathan. I made sure that William visited his father before he dies. I knew William wouldn't drink. He had grown extremely paranoid reading all those books. He had this inkling feeling where his father might kill him, just the way he was planning to kill Nathan. My plan succeeded and Nathan was dead."
" Beth had burnt the bottle in the fireplace and then had cleaned it. I hoped the forensics will notice the new logs in the fireplace, so that William will gain maximum suspicion, for he visited him the last. I had pre-planned every question that might come my way during interrogation. I exemplarily prepared myself to dodge every suspicion towards me. I made sure I left no evidence behind. But I didn't know that William too, had ordered strychnine."
"It was yesterday, when I returned from hospital, that I found a parcel. It was the said poison, and then I realized what William had meant when he said something before shooting me."
"You knew I would go for strychnine. You knew that you telling me I'll lose everything will make me take stupid decisions and you.. you even told me about Dad providing that illegitimate Bob Levensque some monthly allowance even when you had no need to. You fucking knew what will spite me and you played your cards so well, Janice!"
William's words ricochet in her ears.
"That's where I guess I slacked off."
There is a silence. A deafening one. None of them utters a single word for next ten minutes. Jeongguk leans back into the sofa, his head hung low.
He had connected the dots pretty much on his own, but had she denied it all, he would have believed her with no question. Even if it were a lie, he would have accepted it. But now, he didn't know what to depict of the Janice, that sat before him at that moment.
"But it isn't the only thing that made me confess this all." She says, regaining all his attention. He lifts his head up, leveling it with her gaze.
"I would have denied my sins all the way till my death, had the one doing the investigation not been you, Jeon Jeongguk."
There was a concerned frown on her face. An agitation in her eyes which constantly searched his. A muscle jumped in his jaw as the rest of his expression remained stoically neutral. Her eyes ran all over his face, searching for some answer, some emotion that would ease her growing horror. When nothing but his silence greets her, culpability resurfaces in her chest.
"I couldn't lie to you." She whispers, her eyes drooping low.
She knew that what she did was sickly inappropriate, but there was a little hope within her that made her believe that he'd understand. But his silence promenaded otherwise.
She wanted him to say something. Anything, even if it included sentence like, 'I'll have to arrest you for your crime'. But she wanted him to tell her what he feels. What he thinks of the information she had just given him. But his silence broke the last ounce of hope she had cultivated in her heart.
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this one's the longest chapter so far...
I hope things are clear to you in this book now... the truth is out, Janice has confessed it all. Do share your opinions about the chapter please<3 plus what do you think of Janice now? Do you think what she did was right?
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