57__Broken hearts

Surprisingly, the safe was filled with various things. Considering the kind of person Marc was, Amelia had expected to find maybe a few flash drives.

The flashiest items caught her eyes first, stacked against one side of the safe. Gold bars, about six of them. Amelia looked past them at the glass cases that held glistening diamonds in them.

The gold and diamonds stunned her, she hadn’t expected to find actual safe-worthy items in here.

Those diamonds alone were probably worth over ten million pounds! Why was he keeping them in here?

She saw a velvet case and reached for it, pulling it out. The moment it opened, Amelia gasped at the jewellery inside. A thick, large sapphire and diamond choker hung inside the box, two moon-shaped earrings beside it.

They were unbelievably gorgeous. Definitely a woman’s, she vaguely wondered why Marc had them.

Closing the case, she carefully returned it to the safe. There were several other velvet and leather boxes of different sizes in there and she could tell they all contained jewels.

Without bothering to check the other boxes, Amelia turned her attention to the stack of folders directly across the gold.

Her heart thudded in her chest as soon as she turned her attention to those brown and white envelopes. She would find something here, she could feel it.

Amelia pulled out the entire stack and was surprised at how heavy it was. She knelt on the floor and set the folders down, stomach knotting from how nervous she was.

Her hands had gone damp and she wiped them agitatedly against her clothes, trying to inhale a calming breath.

She sat cross-legged before them and picked up one of the folders.

A photograph fell out, sliding across the floor.

Jolting lightly, she stared at it. Quickly, she snatched up the photograph, raising it for inspection.

It was a woman and a little child. With a gasp, Amelia covered her mouth with one hand. The little boy looked curiously into the camera, his big green eyes instantly giving his identity away. She could cry, he was so cute.

Marc had changed but she could still easily tell it was him in the photograph. She looked at the woman who sat beside him, her unsmiling face turned away like she was purposefully ignoring the camera.

She sat on a chair next to little Marc and the distance between them seemed so cold that if it wasn’t for the ‘Marc and mummy’ written on the back of the photo, Amelia would’ve thought the woman was a stranger.

His mother. She was absolutely stunning, what a beauty. She looked wealthy too. There was probably a great chance that the jewellery in Marc’s safe had belonged to his mother and he’d simply kept it.

Sighing, Amelia put the photo down and emptied the rest of the envelope’s contents.

A stack of white papers fell into her lap, their edges slightly stained with yellow.

Frowning, she vaguely looked at the other photographs that had fallen out and picked up the papers.

She read the top of the first page and her eyes went wide.

Her spine snapped upright, nervous fingers gripping the papers in her hands. They were Marc’s medical records.

From the year on the first page, they dated about fifteen years back. The earliest records of his psychiatric treatment.

A shaky breath parted her lips and she glanced back at the empty doorway. He was allowing her to see this? Why?

When she’d first come here, he wouldn’t even trust her enough to explain his condition and now he was letting her read the records?

Had he started trusting her that much? She swallowed hard, lowering her head. Why was he making it so difficult for her to be heartless?

She sighed and emptied the other envelopes. There were several things in this one, including what looked like police records. How on earth he’d gotten them in his possession, she didn’t know. There were police statements and records of investigation among them.

Emptying another folder, she watched more of his medical records fall out and then she saw a photograph.

It was of a group of about thirty children, flanked by two strict-looking men.

She spotted a worn sign near the grey buildings in the background and, reading it, realized, with a start, what she was looking at.

The orphanage. Marc really had been sent to an orphanage.

But why? His mother may have passed, but he still had family. Why on earth would John Aryan have sent his son to an orphanage?! She scoffed in outrage. How cruel did one have to be?!

Studying the photo, she spotted Marc and her eyes filled with tears. He stood in the back, amongst the tallest. At this age, his unsmiling face highly resembled his mothers. He must have been so lonely. In a world where he struggled to understand others, where he felt as odd as an alien on earth, he’d been abandoned this way.

Her tears spilled over and she sniffled, uselessly wiping them.

Beside Marc stood a skinny, ruthless-looking boy. It took a moment, but she was stunned when she finally recognized Arson. Marc had changed, but Arson had truly grown into a whole different person. The boy she was looking at looked like he could set the world ablaze at any given moment, he seemed nothing like the sharp, snippy lawyer she’d gotten to know.

It took her a long while, but Amelia finally realized something.

There was no evidence against Aryan Gold in this safe. What there was…

She looked at the detailed medical records that described his every therapy session, at the police records and then at the books from the orphanage.

What there was, in this safe, was Marc Aryan’s life story.

And what she would do, was read it.

*********

It was five hours later and three o’clock in the morning when Amelia had finally finished going through everything.

She was a mess.

The room was silent except for the sound of her hitching breath. She had cried her eyes dry and now sat in miserable silence.

Never, in her twenty-four years of life, had she ever read a more devastating story.

Fresh tears spilled out of her eyes and she let them, tired of wiping her face.

She held her knees to her chest, staring blankly into space through her blurry vision. How? How had he survived it?

How had Marc not ended up broken beyond repair? How was he still okay enough to care for a small child and have a normally functioning life?

How could he stand to see his father?

Anger boiled up her throat and she groaned, shutting her eyes. She couldn’t believe it.

To think that the very beginning of the records, which she’d expected to be interesting, was also just haunting had made Amelia frightened to look at the rest. But she had and now she was traumatized.

The beginning had been the police records. She’d casually opened those files up only to be presented with a written record of a twelve-year-old Marc Aryan describing to the police how he’d watched his mother’s final moments after she’d overdosed on pills.

It had been bone-chilling to read. He described how he’d seen her body shake and how he’d seen her foam at the mouth.

The officer had asked why he hadn’t helped her and then Amelia had read…

*“I didn’t know. I didn’t know she needed help.”*

A sad sob tore out of her and she pressed a hand over her mouth. God, he’d watched his mother die. His condition had been so bad that he hadn’t even been able to recognize that his mother had been in pain. He hadn’t realized she’d been dying.

The fact that the rest of the police records showed that they’d then tried to find proof that Marc had killed his mother made Amelia sick to her stomach.

Underneath all the confusion and noise, he was only a twelve-year-old boy who had just lost his mother. How terrified he must’ve been, how alone he must’ve felt.

Her body shook with silent sobs, turning her face red as she cried. Her heart was so broken, she didn’t know what to do.

That was when his father had sent him to the orphanage. Amelia realized that Marc and Arson had met each other in there.

About three years later, his father taken him from the orphanage and had adopted Arson too.

The faded writing under the adoption date said Marc, Anthony and Lisa, with a tick beside each name. She had no idea who Lisa was, but she assumed that these were the names of the children who left the orphanage at that time. That would mean Arson’s name was Anthony.

Amelia wondered if Marc had felt hope at the time of their release from that scary-looking orphanage. She felt horrible if he did because the next phase of his life only brought more pain.

That was when his therapy had started.

She noticed that about a year of records was missing halfway through his therapy phase and that the records before that gap were vastly different to those after the gap.

It could only mean that he’d somehow saved himself from the torment of those early psychiatric treatments.

Amelia’s skin crawled with horror at the things she’d read in those records. In what world was it okay to do such things to a minor and call it treatment?

She clutched her hair, placing her elbows on her knees as she cried, staring into space. In what world was it alright to practically torture a minor to make him ‘normal’?

Rage burned in her veins. Amelia wanted to kill John Aryan and she wanted to do it now! How could he? To his own son! She’d found a signed agreement where he’d permitted that physical and psychological treatment could be used even to the point of pain.

A shuddering breath left her mouth. They’d even had the audacity to record the results of their horrendous ‘experiments’. How could those psychiatrists even call themselves doctors?

Poor Marc. Her head fell weakly back against the bed behind her, her eyes shutting as she wept. She was so sorry she’d involved him in her plans for revenge. He deserved better, he deserved the world.

Even if, for reasons she didn’t know, he’d changed to a different hospital where, judging from the records she’d read, he’d gotten some good treatment, she couldn’t get over the fact that he’d still lived those nightmares.

She wouldn’t have survived it, from witnessing his mum’s death, to the orphanage, to the diabolical illegal treatments, Amelia wouldn’t have survived any of it.

The fact that Marc was still here today made her beyond proud of him. He’d made it out alive and he’d won.

Still, the traces remained. Her heart broke when she remembered the way he’d spoke when she’d first come to his house.

*“I’m human.”*

Tears were pouring out of her eyes like out of a broken faucet, streaming down her face and all the way down her neck.

If she had known, she’d have never opened her big mouth to make all those jokes that called him alien or robotic. If she’d known, she’d have given Marc a hug and a kiss on the head every day since she’d met him.

Instead, she’d given him even more problems. With a sigh, she opened her eyes.

She had to make it right. She’d make up for her behaviour and would never again allow Marc to feel like he was less than human. Not when he was literally the bravest and most amazing person she’d ever met.

She’d do whatever he wanted. Marriage? Fine. If he believed he could use her to practice exchanging different emotions, then she would abandon everything to help him get that practice in.

Amelia would get her revenge, but she’d get it on John Aryan! Her Marc had nothing to do with it, so she wouldn’t let him get hurt for his horrible father’s sins.

She didn’t know how, but she would find a way and, for both her mother and for the young, defenceless Marc, she would make John Aryan ***pay.***