Two months ago, Cluj-Napoca
Inside Bernard Johnson's villa...
Inside Ariana's Mind
"Yes, he killed your mother, whom was an amazing woman, and like a mother to me as well. And also, he killed my family, and ruined my entire life", Simon paced around the room, hands at his back, fists clenched, his gaze forward, calculated and hateful. "I want to destroy your father, Ariana." He looked at her, blue eyes as cold as the ocean.
"And I want you to help me. I know that's why you studied law in university and got thie detective job here. Even though you never told me." Simon approached Ariana and grabbed her chin between his hands and pulled her towards him in a passionate kiss.
That's when Ariana realized Joseph was a lie. She never loved Joseph, when she was whole. She loved Simon, it had always been Simon, she was obsessed with Simon. Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon.
No one could ever torture her as sweetly as Simon.
And the truth destroyed her.
"What do you mean help you?" Ariana asked after she finished licking his lip. "W-what do you want us to do? You want to take revenge?"
"Yes. I've been planning this since the day I escaped from Bernard's captivity." Simon pronounced her father's name with a venomous emphasis. "I have a list of everyone who helped kill your mother, and my family. Also, people who covered up the murder for so many years, while their memories were intact."
Simon handed her his little black Death Note. There were ten people written on it.
The victims of the Big Bucharest murders. All of them, the six who died, and the four who survived. All of them were somehow related to her mother's death, except the four victims who survived were deemed forgivable by Simon.
"What do you want to do with these people?" she asked Simon innocently after reading the names.
"Kill them all. Creatively, shockingly. They all will never pay for their crime if we just let them be," Simon said, his blue eyes shining with scope. He was deadly serios. Ariana wasn't sure if she wanted to kill them, even though she wasn't exactly moral.
She had never really been moral. She just didn't remember her immorality.
"We'll take our revenge, Ariana. And at the end we'll disappear. Promise me you're in this with me, if you love me," he said.
Ariana watched Ariana agree. And then, the most uncomfortable memories, who were better forgotten, came back.
The day they kidnapped Anya McGuiver that winter evening, from a nook at the train station. Ariana stood, fidgety, and looked in case anyone saw them, while Simon got the woman unconscious and tied her up then put her in their car.
Ariana had felt so uncomfortable, until she learned the woman used to be a scientist who worked alongside her father, Bernard Johnson, and was his mistress behind Alstromeria's back and encouraged him to kill her after she learned about his secret experiments on people and the mind-erasing power.
Ariana just couldn't believe he could have cheated on her gorgeous mother with such a witch, ugly looking woman as Anya McGuiver. That's why she didn't even mind watching Simon torture and interrogate her.
In the end, Ariana had been the one to drag Anya towards the river as she saw screaming and begging for her life, then drowned her with her own hands.
Letting the body flow down the river to where Big Bucharest's mayor fished was Simon's idea.
Ariana's memories came back in an alleatory order,
non-chronological order at first. They came as a war in her mind, fighting for priority to be seen.
Then, she focused on the night Sammy was kidnapped. Ariana had been there with Simon for the BTS concert, at the London arena.
But that was all a cover. They went there to kidnap Samantha, since home she was under the continuous surveillance of her parents.
They watched Samantha in the crowd and waited until they saw her walk towards the restroom. And then they followed.
Ariana arrived there first, before Sammy, and used the bathroom so she could monitor the girl. She spoke to Sammy for a bit, telling her that she was a detective in order to eliminate all suspicion, but knowing they would kidnap the girl and determine her fate afterwards. By then, she really didn't have any regrets.
And then, after the girl exited the bathroom, Simon hit her on the back and got her uncoscious, while Ariana got her phone. They used an emergency exit, where there was no CCTV along the way, and Ariana had to handle Sammy's limp silhouette a few times as Simon erased some people's recent memory. And then he flew the place, with Sammy in his car while Ariana returned to the concert. The guards and people who had been back there didn't even remember her as she passed again by them, and she had to show her ID and concert hand band.
And then she remembered the night they kidnapped Haron Ride, in the basement of the Small Cafe.
That night she started going around with a black wig, in case of being spotted. She had to be the opposite of her detective self because otherwise she could blow her cover.
She was well-off after all as miss Ariana Johnson, a keen detective on Michael's team. No one would suspect her of being the criminal, ever.
They hit Haron Ride on the back of his head and kidnapped him that night, and transported him to their apartment on the top of a skyscraper. They already had all of the victims there, except for Mr. Tomlinson and Eugene Barbell whom, Simon had told her that he kept as prisoner in his London studio and would kill him soon.
Ariana looked at the victims lined up against the wall, all tied up and unable to speak. She didn't speak to them and let Simon handle them. The killing was hers to do, though.
Ariana clearly remembered now how she paced through the room where the victims were with a kitchen knife in her hand, then passed to the room where Simon was interrogating Haron Ride. She looked at Haron. They'd bandaged his head wound, even though they were to kill him soon. She connected her eyes to Simon's.
"What do we do with him? What's his story?" Ariana asked as she fumbled with the knife and bit her lower lip. Simon smiled at her, seeing her complete assassin look.
"Mmmh, we kill him, miss detective," Simon licked his lip as he gave the verdict. Ariana's eyes were bland and feelingless at him mocking her fake job.
"The plan was that we only let the mother live, and I've already disposed of his father and brother in the arson years ago."
Ariana's eyes widened. "You were the one responsible for that?"
"Yes," Simon smiled, proudly.
Ariana couldn't help looking endearing at Haron's sleeping figure. Simon had drugged him before killing him.
"Do we really have to kill kids? What did his father do so bad?"
Simon stood up suddenly and grabbed, unexpectedly and violently, the knife from Ariana's hand. He looked at Ariana with angry eyes.
Was she disobeying him?
"You promised me you'll kill him yourself. Because you love me, baby." Simon grabbed Ariana's chin a bit too violently and she was scared. "His father, the secretary, had ordered your scum father to dry my father of blood, in order to have enough DNA for those chips, and you Dare tell me to have mercy on his scum of a son and let him have his chill rocker life?"
Simon gripped Ariana's neck and she tried to jerk his hand away, but he didn't stop until he felt her run out of air.
"Do you hate me because I'm his daughter - Benard's daughter?" Ariana looked at him as she massaged her neck and tried to regain her breath. "Do you not love me anymore, Simon?"
"It's been hard seeing you get so lovely with that guy Joseph, in your other life-"
"That Ariana's not me!" she said through clenched teeth, then went and jerked the knife away from his hand, holding it up in the air.
"I've killed everyone for us! But this guy is yours to kill."
Simon shot Haron Ride in the head, then made Ariana butcher him and deliver him to his friend's house like Glovo.
That's how it was. Ariana drowned Anya McGuiver. She suffocated Megan Keene, her childhood bestie, and Alexander Arseniev, her middle school bully. She helped kill Haron Ride and Mr. Tomlinson. She also killed other people.
Simon had been the one who killed his half-brother Archie Carolan, Derek Brown, Menma McCoy and Webster Robinson.
She killed the ten VELLA operators single-handedly though.
All her memories came at once, and it took about a minute to become whole again and integrate them all in her head. She looked at Simon's deep, blue eyes with a blank face and a lot more courage than when she entered the door.
She was the criminal she had been looking for all of these years. And when she was whole, she had always known it.
"I'm the killer, I've killed all of those people", Ariana exclaimed with such a tone as if it was a mirage. "Joseph... I never loved Joseph."
"No," Simon murmured, his arms crossed.
"I loved you and only you all this time, Simon. I did all this for you more than me and I know now, it's too late..." She fell on the floor, on all fours. Welled tears swarmed her face and she broke down completely. "We-we just have to kill my father and it'll all be over..."
"Yes baby." Simon went and ruffled her hair comfortingly as she grabbed his leg and cried, and cried.
"And at the end, I'll take the whole blame. And you will run, run far away from here before they can torture you all of your life for your power, please." She looked up at him and pleaded. He wiped her tears.
...