Celebrating 500,000 reads and 5,000 followers with a double updates! Also, I broke all my new year resolutions in the span of two weeks. Record breaking. We stan an unreliable queen.
You might want to skim read chapter 25, 26 and 27 to familiarise yourself with the characters before you start reading ;)
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It's when a serial killer makes a mistake that you get to live another day.
— Anthony T. Hincks
TWENTY EIGHT
AND SO IT WAS SETTLED. I was the unfortunate star of the show. The final masterpiece at an art museum. The king pin. It sated me partially to finally understand that I had been right all along. I knew there was too much focus on me for it to be wholly focused on Banshee. What I didn't understand though, was who? Who wanted to do this to me?
My mind had been looping in delicate spirals in a pathetic attempt to grasp at the straws of Banshees words. His eyes were excited, and his lips remained pulled apart. Obviously, he was aware of how well he had weaved his fingers into my brain and shocked me. "If fear had a face, it would look like you." He chuckled. "You're terrified because you knew this all the while, and you're terrified because you are guilty."
"I have diplomatic immunity."
Banshee sighed, quite heavily. "Christ. You're unbelievably naive."
"What are you saying?"
He tilted his head up to stare at the fluorescent lights. It dawned on me then that I was beginning to understand him. His face usually stunned me but now, he was becoming familiar. I couldn't tell if that was a good thing or bad thing.
He pushed back his hair behind his ears. I had never seen his ears before. "I'm saying that there's nothing you can do now to escape the consequences of whatever shit you did."
His sentence did nothing but heighten my anxiety. "Then why are you helping me?"
Banshee scoffed. "Trust me Aria, I'm not helping you. Let's call it curiosity. I'm fascinated that someone of your caliber could take lives."
I couldn't say anything in return.
"There are a number of things about you that have puzzles me. Now, I have the chance to ask." His eyes fleeted across my face. "Are you ready?"
"No."
"I know you aren't." Before I had a chance to reply, Banshee steered me in his direction. "Tell me how many."
My arms wrapped tight around my torso. "How many what?"
"How many people have you murdered?"
I had to cup my hands over my mouth to hold back my first instinct to gag. The truth really was the most bitter thing in the world. The hardest pill to swallow. It was like swallowing a two-edged sword. Almost impossible. "Murder is a vile word."
Banshee shrugged, wholly invested in every reaction I made. "I'm telling it as it is."
I closed my eyes.
I tried to distance myself from every emotion I had attached to that gruelling day. It was ultimately difficult because I had recently come to know that every thing that happened that night was my fault, and I had selfishly repressed the thought.
His voice pierced through. "How many—"
"Three."
If it wasn't for me, they'd all be alive.
There was a painful screech as Banshees chair scraped against the concrete flooring.
"So you've got skeletons in your closet." He whistled as he leaned back against his chair and watched me in a slow game of who could break contact first. "And to think you once called me a disgusting murderer."
My voice was suddenly vicious. "Don't compare me to you."
"Keep thinking like that and it'll get you nowhere." He chuckled at my venom. "The sooner you begin to accept that we're much alike than you think, the clearer everything will be for you."
My eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"
"Exactly what it is." He murmured, shrugging. "You"— he pointed at me— "Me" — he stabbed a finger at his chest — "One and the same."
"You murdered more than thirty people because you craved a brain orgasm."
"Careful," He warned. "—or it'll look like you're justifying taking three lives against thirty. Are three lives less valid that thirty?"
"That's not what—"
"Then don't deny it when I say we're alike." He watched me wince at him and chuckled.
I wanted to cuss but that would mean he would realise how upset he was making me. I looked up at the dotted ceiling instead.
He chuckled. "This is like an AA meeting then. Murderers Anonymous."
"Funny." I feigned impassivity. "It's my turn."
"Shoot."
I decided to excite him first. I wanted to him to let his guard down before he lied to me again. It was harder to believe his words ever since he had confessed to being a liar.
I looked into his eyes and asked, "Given the chance, how would you kill me?"
It worked like magic.
He froze, and poked at some deeper level inside of me with his confused eyes. He genuinely looked perplexed at my question but mostly, he looked intrigued. "Why?"
"Call it curiosity."
He crossed and uncrossed his arms, straining at his shackles. "Telling you would take away the motivation if there were ever any. Besides, I don't want to kill you, Aria."
"Then why are you cuffed?"
He looked down at the cuffs for a brief moment and then again at me. Then Nicholas leaned down as though he were whispering a secret to me. "It's all theatrics."
I frowned.
"I'm serious." He chuckled softly. "You're not the only one being manipulated, Aria."
I zoned in on his implication. "So this is all for show?" I glanced up at the cameras surrounding us. "These aren't actually here to protect me?"
"Oh, they are." He reassured. "I can be dangerous."
That, I knew. I hated when his eyes carried spark and so, I forced him away from the light. "Your turn."
His eyes locked mine inside of his with a key I hadn't noticed before. "Who did you kill?"
My first instinct was to deny everything. But I looked through his adamant eyes and knew that he knew. I glanced at the cameras quickly because I didn't want to admit to anything. Diplomatic immunity or not, whatever I said was going to be a confession.
I wasn't about to sing for them like a proverbial canary.
Banshee followed my gaze. He tapped once on the glass to catch my attention and when I turned back to him, I was shocked to see an honest man. Nicholas.
His voice was serious, and he looked eager to get me back on track. "I swear to you, Aria, on the corpse of my mother," Banshee said with surety. "—they aren't the ones listening."
It took me a moment to sober. "Then who is?"
"I am. Talk to me. I'm the one listening." He whispered. "Tell me the truth."
"I—" I choked on my words. I knew in my head who I had killed but saying it out loud was heart breaking and trying. I was coming to terms with the fact that I was a monster and that I had secrets. That I had done things that I deserved to be punished for. That I had ran from them.
I tried to hold back the sob that accompanied my words. "I hadn't meant to."
When Banshee spoke next, he was soft and it perturbed me. But it is also made it seem as though he wanted to help me.
Frank had told me Banshee was manipulative, but nothing seemed manipulative about this moment. His voice was like the wind. "You hadn't meant to what?"
My voice was wretched, and my eyes welled with spilling tears. Once the faucet was on, it didn't fucking stop. "I hadn't meant to hurt them."
"But you did."
I nodded. "I did. I hurt them. All at once."
There.
There was a certain type of silence that followed my sentence. I had confessed it with my lips. Indirectly so, but it was still a confession. I knew immediately that I had crossed an imaginary line, and I was now in the danger zone.
I watched Banshee patiently as clarity overtook him. He looked surprised for a nanosecond and then he looked sated. I knew, in that moment, that his next few words would either make me or break me.
His face was straight, a man on a mission. He asked, "Aria, who do you think is manipulating you?"
A complete change in the fucking subject was not what I had expected his reply to be. It blew me away. Banshee was so brazenly bizarre. I fell against the metal back of the chair as if he had knocked the breath out of me.
"Aria?" Banshee repeated the question.
"I really wish I could tell you but I don't know." Everything was incomprehensible to me. Prodigy, my ass. I was completely and irrevocably stupid. "I have no one to blame but myself for the mess I'm in."
"So there's not a single person you suspect?"
His question was not only prodding, but knowing too. My eyes turned to slits. "Is there someone I should suspect?"
"Look, I'm trying to help you think. Don't turn the tables on me." His tone was wary, and a little bit too weary. I registered it almost immediately. "Do you honestly not know someone you think would want something from you for what you did?"
It dawned on me then that he had expertly placed this question. It wasn't a change in the subject. He was indirectly telling me that whoever was doing this wanted me to incriminate myself for this murders.
For what? Justice? Sadism? Revenge? I didn't know.
But what I knew was that I had done just that. I had incriminated myself.
But Banshee said no one was listening.
No one but him, at least.
I racked my brain in a desperate attempt to remember everyone I had wronged but I couldn't come up with one. Not because I was innocent, no, it was simply because the only person I knew was Diana. Diana couldn't do that to me. She loved me. One can't abuse the ones whom they love. It was incomprehensible to do so.
I suspected Frank, and I didn't know Mirabel but she was on the list. Then again, everyone could be working together against me. Even Banshee. My eyes settled on his, trying to decipher truth.
"I honestly don't know, Nicholas..."
Banshee shook his head slowly and in a short painful moment, he looked like he pitied me. His brows were furrowed and he wore a worried grimace. So, so, worried that I feared for myself.
He muttered against tightened lips. "If I wasn't the man I am, I'd say that I felt bad for you. You've lived a very sad life."
Past fucking tense.
"Excuse me?"
He retained the look on his face that bothered me severely. I hated that he, the man on death penalty, the murderer, the psychopath, sat at the other end of the table and looked at me with worry in his eyes. "When I first met you, your tragedy was so clear that I could read it off of your demeanour alone."
I held my breath.
"—But I hadn't realised that I had finally met the one person whose tragedy rivalled mine. I could even say you're worse. Because all my life, I've been loveless. I knew the whole world wanted me dead the second I was born."
"But you. Your life is so saddening, even to the point that it sickens me, because the one person you love the most is the one person trying to kill you."
And just as his words settled, the alarm signalling the end of the interview rang louder than it had ever done before.
But even G-d knew, that I couldn't even hear it.