Chapter 107 The Beginning of the End
Chapter 107 The Beginning of the End
“We know who’s behind Kevin’s mother’s death, my parents’ deaths, and even yours, but we can’t do anything to her. She’s living a lavish life in prison while we carry deep scars in our hearts.”
He listened to the rush of her confession as if cataloguing every shard so he could make sense of the picture later. There was a steadiness in the way he rubbed small circles into the back of her hand, a calm he tried to summon for both of them.
“Everything will be all right,” he said, but the words felt inadequate, like bandaging a bone-deep fracture with tissue. “The law in our country doesn’t always punish monsters, sometimes it shields them. Even if she gets a life sentence, she’ll still live comfortably because her brother provides for her. The system is broken in the places that matter.”
She sighed again, exhaustion and helplessness mingling into a sound that made him clench his jaw. He hated that she bore so much of this alone, he hated that there were limits to what his power could fix.
“Don’t worry about it,” he told her, and the promise in his tone hardened into resolve. “Let me handle this. I promise, she will pay for what she’s done. No matter what I have to do.”
She looked up at him then, eyes raw but steady, and in that quiet space between them something shifted, a pact, perhaps, or simply the mutual recognition that neither of them would let the past define the shape of their future. She nodded, and though the fear lingered, there was also a small thread of hope braided into the gesture, as if hope itself could be cultivated like a fragile plant if tended with enough will.
_________
Alex sat in his office with the sunlight glow of the city spilling across his desk, eyes fixed on the same news loop he’d watched until it felt like it was engraving itself into his skull. The bulletin repeated the footage, the gates of the prison opening, a woman stepping out into sunlight with an air of entitlement. He watched it again, not to learn new facts, but to steady himself, to remind himself who they were up against.
When the notification pinged his phone that Emma had arrived at her brother's mansion, Alex moved with the machine-like efficiency he hadn’t shown in weeks. He pulled up files, converted them into PDFs, and sent them to trusted reporters with terse instructions to publish immediately. There was no theatrics, only the clean, cold placement of evidence into hands that could make it public.
He reached for the phone and called Kevin Smith. “I’ve done my part,” he said as soon as the line connected.
“I’m on my way,” came the reply, clipped and sure. “It’ll be done in just a minute.”
“I’ve activated the CCTV cameras there,” he told Kevin, because the smallest advantage mattered. Then he watched the screen as the broadcast cut to a live report about her brother, an expose unspooling across every channel. The anchors spoke with that hungry tone of reporters who’d been handed a story that would make headlines for weeks, crimes catalogued, shell companies traced, names connected to offshore accounts.
The report threaded together the darker corners of the Emma's family’s history, and with each new revelation it pointed back to the string of suspicious deaths that had haunted them, the ones that had taken Kevin’s mother, Rainee parents, Alex's grandmother and his real mom dad.
A smirk eased onto his face before he could stop it, not because he enjoyed the spectacle, but because the room that had once sheltered a monster was finally being illuminated. Journalists buzzed, evidence was splashed across screens, and the mansion’s façade was no longer a private fortress, it had become the subject of public scrutiny.
__________
Kevin, however, was doing his part in a different way. He moved through the grounds of the Emma's brother mansion in a disguise that made him unrecognizable, anonymity worn like armor. He slipped into a shadowed corner of the estate and made his way to the garage, where the cars, each polished to an immaculate glare, sat like statements of wealth and impunity. He went through them methodically, hands sure and practiced as if the smallest mechanical sabotage could unmoor a giant.
A few minutes later, a vehicle rolled out from beneath the portico. Through the tinted glass he saw her behind the wheel, the posture of someone accustomed to being served, beside her sat her brother, an image of smug composure. The sight set something in Kevin’s chest to cold fire.
He dialed the number on instinct. “I’m done,” Kevin said when Alex answered.
“Perfect. Let’s see how she reacts,” Alex replied, fingers already hovering over the controls that streamed the live feeds into the world.
Kevin hung up and melted back into the shadows with a quiet satisfaction. He waited, patient and poised, the way someone waits before a storm breaks, knowing that once the storm hit, everything would change.
______________
She slammed the phone down and stared at the screen as if the screen itself had committed the crime. The anchors’ voices were a jagged chorus that she couldn’t quite silence, the evidence scrolling beneath them like a sentence. “How did it get leaked?!” she demanded, voice raw and high. “Didn’t you say nothing could happen to us? Now what?”
“Stop screaming!” the soon be ex mayor, her brother shot back, panic shredding his composure. “It’s you who told me to do those things, now you’re blaming me for everything!”
The two of them were unraveling in real time, their terror a frantic dance on the carpeted floor of the cottage. The accusations, stacked with documents and recordings, had already cost him his authority, her brother's face had changed from defiant to hunted. They bolted for the car as if flight could buy them time, but just as they fumbled with keys and belts, the phone in her trembling hand rang again. She drove the car as fast as she can to escape before cops come to arrest bother of them.
She held it for a beat, thumb hovering, then answered with brittle hope that someone, anyone, might pull them from the ledge.
“Alex, I need your help…” she started, voice thin.
On the other end came a laugh, low and cold.
The pieces snapped into place for her in a single, awful instant. “So it was you who leaked everything?” she spat, jaw hard.
“Didn’t I tell you to take care of yourself until you got out of this mess?” he said lightly. “Oh, and by the way, the car you’re driving is headed straight for the cottage, and it has no brakes. Wait… don’t press the brake or it will,........BOOM!!.”
She swallowed, then stuttered, “W-what?!”
To be continued