Author Note: This chapter contains suicide and self-harm if you are triggered; please do not read.
Dawn peeled through the blinds, casting a prison of shadows across Dora Jackson's face. Her eyes flicked open, heavy with the decision. She slipped from the satin sheets, her bare feet cold on the hardwood floor. There was no turning back now.
The apartment felt like a mausoleum, quiet and still. She padded to Avery's room, pushing the door with a tenderness that belied the turmoil within. Avery lay there, a picture of innocence in slumber, her lips parted slightly, breaths shallow. A single wayward lock of hair marred the perfection.
Dora reached out, fingertips ghosting over Avery's forehead, pushing the strand back. It felt like a betrayal, the soft sigh that escaped her lips. Her daughter, her creation, is now an unwitting Judas. The sharp sting of inevitability coiled around her heart. She couldn't go to jail. Not that cold, unforgiving place.
She leaned down, lips brushing Avery's cheek in a final kiss-a whisper of goodbye. Dora retreated the click of the closing door a solemn full stop to their shared past.
Back in her own room, Dora sat at the polished table, the pen in her hand a weapon of confession. Each word she wrote bled onto the paper, a testament to her cunning, her manipulation, a legacy of greed. The letter, sealed with her fate, was dispatched into the indifferent morning.
It was done. She sent the letter. It was her sentence self-imposed.
She retrieved the rope, its coarse fibers mocking her soft skin. Up on the roof, where the world stretched wide and open, she secured her end-her literal end. Back inside, the chair stood center stage, a silent audience to her final act.
"Please forgive me, William," she whispered to the ghosts of her ambition.
The loop settled around her neck, an embrace tighter than any lover's. Dora kicked the chair. The fall was brief, the snap final. The secret, that treacherous truth, would choke with her, here in the quiet of her chosen darkness. Avery would not wield it like a blade. Not this. Not ever.
Meanwhile, at the Jackson Group, William's fingers sifted through the mountain of paperwork, each file a testament to his empire's demands. A knock came at his office door, and a delivery guy entered and delivered an envelope to him. William signed for it and discharged the delivery guy. The envelope, unassuming and misplaced among the ledgers and contracts, met his disinterest with an easy glide across the mahogany desk-dismissed, forgotten.
Time gnawed at him, relentless in its passage until the sterile hands of the clock signaled respite. Alone in the hollow expanse of his office, he retrieved the letter from its exile, tearing it open with a casual flick of his wrist.
The words clawed into him, vicious and unforgiving.
"Fuck," he gasped, the scream ripping from his throat, raw and bleeding. He seized the phone, digits pounding out the number with frantic urgency.
"Hello, Dad?" Avery's voice crackled through the line, laced with sleep or indifference-perhaps both.
"Address. Now." William barked, each syllable a bullet.
"Okay, sending." Confusion tinged her words, but she complied, the beep of the message a death knell.
Avery's lips curled into a sinister grin, revealing a flash of white teeth. Her slender fingers trembled with excitement and anticipation as she hastily crammed garments into her suitcases, the fabric bunching up unevenly in her haste. In her mind's eye, she pictured the opulence that awaited her at the Jackson mansion, a luxurious prison adorned with gold accents, every corner filled with rigid demands and unspoken rules. She just couldn't wait for her father to arrive so that he could take them home.
"Fuck that," she muttered under her breath, envisioning the parties, the games, and the secrets whispered behind velvet masks. A world where control was currency, and she was bankrolling her future one moan, one cry, one lash at a time.
A menacing knock interrupted her reverie, the sound echoing with a sense of impending doom. Struggling under the weight of her bags, she yanked the door open.
"Police. Your father's here."
"Shit." The word fell flat, her blood freezing in her veins. She glimpsed William, his face etched with horror-a mirror to her own dread.
"Wha-"
"Inside. Now." The officer's command brooked no argument. Her sanctuary invaded, and she watched as her carefully curated world began to unravel, the threads pulled by an unseen hand, merciless in their revelation.
Avery's chest constricted, her voice a hoarse whisper. "Dad, what is this?"
William's gaze was like steel, but he offered no reply. Only silence.
"Where is your mother?" His voice finally broke through, the words cutting like a whip across Avery's heart.
She flicked her wrist towards Dora's room, the direction a command. Boots thudded on the carpet as officers charged the hallway.
"Police! Open up!" The order punched the air, loud against the quiet dread.
"Fuck." Avery's breath hitched, hands clenching into fists at her sides.
"Open the door, Dora Jackson," the cop bellowed again, authority laced with impatience. "You are under arrest for murder."
The silence that followed crawled under Avery's skin, scratching, and tearing. The tension strung tight-a noose waiting to snap.
"Break it down!" The order came, sharp and final.
Wood splintered, metal groaned-a cacophony of destruction. And then, a sight that clawed at Avery's insides.
"Jesus Christ!" A scream ripped from an officer's throat.
Dora dangled, lifeless, a grotesque marionette in the room's center. A letter clutched in her limp grip.
"Mom!" Avery's world spun, the room tilting, dark edges creeping in. Her knees buckled-she hit the floor.
"Shit, Avery!" William's voice, distant, choked with horror.
"Call an ambulance!" Panic swirled, voices melding into a storm of chaos.
"Can't... breathe..." Avery gasped, her vision narrowing to a pinprick. The darkness took her.
"Christ, not both of them-" The last sound Avery heard before the void claimed her was the thud of her father hitting the ground, his body surrendering to the shock.
And then, nothing but the silence of oblivion.