Chapter 64

Chapter 64
Elise's POV

There were more people at the school entrance than I'd expected.

During lunch break, students trickled from the academic buildings toward the cafeteria in twos and threes. Some carried books, some wore earbuds, some pushed bicycles. Everything looked so normal. Just like any other midday—no different at all.

Except for the man standing outside the iron gate.

Benjamin Miller.

He'd lost weight. Not the healthy kind of weight loss, but the gaunt, hollowed-out kind—as if something had scooped him empty from the inside. Sunken eye sockets, prominent cheekbones, several days' worth of stubble crawling messily across his jaw. He wore a wrinkled shirt with stains on the cuffs, and his shoes had a split along the edge.

He stood there with both arms hanging at his sides, like a pillar stripped of its support.

When he saw me emerge, his eyes lit up briefly.

Then he ran toward me.

Students around us began to stare. Some whispered. Some pulled out their phones.

I didn't stop walking.

Benjamin rushed up and blocked my path.

"Elise—"

"Move."

"Just listen to me, I—"

"I don't want to hear it. Are you moving or not?"

He didn't move. Instead, he dropped to his knees with a thud.

The dull, jarring sound of his kneecaps hitting the cement drew gasps from the crowd. More people stopped. Phone cameras swiveled in this direction.

Benjamin knelt on the ground, looking up at me. His eyes reddened, tears pooling at the rims. That face was piled with humility, remorse, desperation—and something else that made me sick to my stomach.

Performance.

It was all performance.

"Elise, I know I was wrong..." His voice trembled with a sob threading through it. "I shouldn't have taken the inheritance. Shouldn't have done those things to you... I'm an animal. I'm not human. But now you're the only one who can help us. Margaret is going insane. Anna won't come home. We're truly at the end of our rope..."

As he spoke, he kowtowed. His forehead struck the ground with hollow thuds.

Once. Twice. Three times.

"You can treat me like a dog if you want. Just help me this once. I'll do anything you ask."

The noise around us grew louder.

"Who is that?"

"Looks like her relative?"

"Oh my God, what's he doing? Kneeling and kowtowing?"

"Quick, film it and post on FB..."

I looked down at this man.

This man who occupied too many nightmare images in my memory. This man who pushed open my bedroom door in the dead of night. This man whose hand had touched the back of my neck. This man who made me wake from every nightmare, terrified of a figure standing by my bed.

He was kneeling before me now.

Crying. Begging. Lowering himself into the dust.

And I only felt it was laughable.

"Benjamin."

My voice was soft. But in this moment's cacophony, every word was clearly audible.

"Do you remember what you did to me?"

His movement to raise his head faltered slightly.

"Do you remember those nights? Do you remember where you put your hands? Do you remember what you said? 'We raised you.' 'You should repay us.' 'Don't tell anyone'—"

My voice didn't rise. But it grew colder and colder.

"Now you say you regret it. You say you were wrong. You think kneeling down and kowtowing a few times makes everything erasable?"

Benjamin's lips trembled. He couldn't speak.

"Then go to hell."

I walked around him and continued forward.

A scream came from behind me.

Not Margaret's voice. Not from the onlookers either.

It was Benjamin's.

"You ungrateful wretch!!"

I stopped and turned around.

Benjamin rose from the ground—or rather, sprang up. His face twisted completely, features crushed together, eyes bulging as if they might fall from their sockets. The tears and humility that had hung there just seconds ago vanished without a trace.

In their place was pure, undisguised madness.

"If I can't live well! You won't either!!"

He yanked a suitcase from behind him—that pink one I'd seen Anna dragging around.

The zipper had already been ripped open. His hand plunged inside, grabbed a handful—

Then flung it outward with force.

White fragments scattered in the air.

Like snow. Like feathers. Like some kind of malicious petals.

They drifted down. Landing on the ground. Landing at the feet of watching students. Landing in front of my shoes.

It was a photograph.

A photograph I'd never seen before—but one whose content I recognized instantly.

Benjamin kept scattering them.

Handful after handful. His movements grew faster and faster, more frenzied, a strange sound somewhere between crying and laughing escaping his mouth. Photographs flew everywhere like a filthy rain.

The crowd erupted.

Some crouched to pick them up. Some covered their mouths. Some screamed. More raised their phones—snapping photos, recording videos, uploading.

I stood in place, watching those photographs fall one by one.

Every single one showed me.

At different times. In different places. Some wearing pajamas, some not. Some with eyes closed, some with eyes open.

The angle of these photographs—

They were shot from above.

From the perspective of someone who should have been standing beside the bed.

From the perspective of someone who should have been there in the dead of night, pushing open my door, standing beside my bed.

Benjamin.

It had always been Benjamin.

A violent wave of nausea surged in my stomach. But I didn't move. Like a statue. Like someone already dead.

The sounds around me became distant and blurred. Those whispers, exclamations, shutter clicks, laughter—they merged into a massive torrent, washing over me, sweeping everything away.

I heard someone reading words written on the backs of the photographs.

But I didn't want to hear.

I didn't want to hear anything.

I only knew one thing.

By the end of this day.

The entire school would know.

Elise Vance. The ex-girlfriend of the Sterling family heir. That orphan fostered by the Miller family—

Had an unspeakable relationship with her uncle.