Chapter 14: Ashes truths

DAVID’S POV

We had moved from the little house to the country side tucked away in the upstate New York, surrounded by frost bitten trees, with peeling wallpapers, dust covered furniture that carried cobweb while we had a whole strength of silence press its weight upon us. It carried the air of someone was watching. The shadows stretched across the floor boards while the storm rolls while the thunder rumbled in the distance.

And Jessica? I saw her eyes lock to mine frequently, it felt like she had a lots to say, but she would take them off once she got me staring.

I raised my legs to rest it on the table before me, the pain was excruciating and gripping that I winced in the process, Jessica stood up and went outside soon returning with a bowl of water and a little napkin to clean the bloodstains that had dried up.

She knelt before me by the bedside helping my leg to the table, I watched as the fire crackled weakly in the hearth was the only flames in her eyes. But they faded quick and something else replaced it a cold aura.

I studied as her hands tremble as she gently pressed the wet cloth to the bruise on my jaw and the slash across my ribs. It hurt but I didn’t flinch, I stayed still, only letting a hiss escape my lips.

With a hoarse yet quiet voice, I spoke.

“You really don’t have to… do this.”

“You have dragged me into your war. Let me at least clean up the blood.” she said with a steady voice accompanied by a bitter smile, my heart clenched.

There was a silence that followed, the kind that kept you mute to search your fault. After a long pause, her voice suddenly sharper than expected sliced through the air like a knife. The cloth slipping from her hands as blood seeped into the gauze.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was your brother?”

My gaze shifted. She knew. I didn’t answer and the only sounds we heard were from the fire crackles and her shallow breaths.

“why did you say it was all about legacy when there was more?”

Finally, I spoke, “Because the truth doesn't save people, Jessica. It only ruins them.”

One thing I knew, was it kept one engulfed in its web and there’s never a way out.

She stood, letting a gap away from me like she had words to counter mine with. I saw her hands grip her arms like she was holding herself up together.

“He said you had let your mother die. That she chose him. Was any of it true?”

I flinched. She heard too fast.

I stayed quiet for a while, “She didn’t choose him. She pitied him. That was her mistake.”

“Tell me everything. Now.” she insisted, I hesitated.

It was a bitter story I pledged never to remind myself of. My mother had an affair with Victor’s father and my mother thought the only way to make him feel loved was giving him all the affection while I cried all day. It was father who would take me out on events and Victor? He would pathetically follow. Despite every love he got, he still never appreciated it.

It dawned on everyone that he was never just a boy, cruelty was a part of him. And one day, she died under mysterious circumstances. I would still stand to believe Victor was responsible — though it was ruled an accident.

“I watched him destroy her from the inside. She tried to love him… and he fed on it.” I said cold. Jessica’s expression was blank, void of emotions. Maybe she realized it, I’ve been hurt and Victor plays to be too. I’ve been shaped by loss, but in twisted ways. I became a stone and Victor, a fire.

We would have continued talking when Evelyn stared awake from her sleep, her hair disheveled and once she woke up, she coldly stepped out and in minutes, she was back to the room with a pack of cigarette and one lit already in her mouth, she passed one to me.

“He’s not finished. That explosion was just a message. He’s cleaning house — removing every trace of what he built.”

She dropped a photograph on the table,it was a grainy surveillance footage of Victor boarding a private plane. He’s headed somewhere remote.

“He’ll erase himself. But even then… he’ll come for you both.” she said gruffly. That was Victor, he would always run away when things gets tough. Jessica turned to me.

“Then we stop running.”

Alone in the bathroom, I stared at myself in the mirror, my face bruised, eyes red that I could barely recognize myself. When I got out, I heard Jessica mutter to herself.

“all you wanted was some quiet life, not living away Paintings. Light. Beauty. And you got this instead. So now… finish it.”

Somehow, I felt guilty that I had wrapped her in my world of danger and treachery and life had gone too far to exclude her, we have already come too far to end it now. She noticed my presence and looked up,

“We end him. Together. No more secrets. No more hiding.”

Her determination was fierce, and as if on cue, the thunder cracks the sky opened as if a war had just been declared.

Yes, boundaries had been drawn.

Outside, the storm began, and we Inside, stood side by sid

e, both looking out the window, two bruised hearts ready to ignite.