The note was clearly written for Soren, back when this file was first compiled.
I stare at the page until the words blur… they weren’t innocent. They weren’t random victims. They had been helping build something monstrous; something that could havehurtpeople. And they did it while I was at home complaining about exams and eating their cooking and thinking we were just a normal family.
My hands are shaking so hard the papers flutter. A hot tear slips down my cheek and lands on the email, smearing the ink. I don’t wipe it away. I just sit here on the warm patch of couch where Soren had been, surrounded by the wreckage of everything I thought I knew about my parents, and feel the ground crack open beneath me.
I sit here completely numb, staring at nothing. Tears slide silently down my cheeks, one after another, but I don’t feel them. My eyes are wide and unblinking, fixed on some point in the middle distance while my hands slowly, unconsciously tighten around the letter I’m still holding. The paper creaks… then tears with a sharp, sudden rip that cuts through the silence. The sound yanks me back into my body.
My face scrunches up, throat closing as a cracked, broken whisper forces its way out. “Liars.”
I reach down with trembling hands and pick up the photograph of my mom from the floor. For one heartbeat I just stare at her face… the woman who used to tuck me in, who made pancakes on Sundays, who told me she loved me every single night. Then I rip it in half. The tear is louder this time, jagged and violent.
“Liar,” I choke out, tears falling faster now. My whole body is shaking. My teeth are gritted so hard my jaw aches.
And then something inside me just… snaps. I grab fistfuls of paper… reports, photos, printed emails… and rip them apart with both hands, the sound of tearing filling the room like gunshots. I know Soren probably has copies. I know this won’t change anything. But I need to do it. I need to feel something break the way I’m breaking.
“Liars!” I shout, voice cracking. “You lied to me!”
I kick the coffee table over with a guttural sound that bubbles up from my chest. It crashes onto its side, theremaining papers scattering across the floor. I’m crying so hard now I can barely see, but I don’t stop. I grab a heavy crystal paperweight from the side table and hurl it at the television on the wall. The screen explodes in a shower of glass and sparks, the loud crash echoing through the quiet living room.
“You were supposed to be good people!” I scream, voice raw and ugly. “I defended you! Fortwo yearsI defended you! I thought you were innocent!”
I was so scared, every single day I was terrified he was going to kill me too… and he never did. He kept me here, kept mesafe. The truth crashes over me… Soren didn’t murder my parents out of cruelty, he stopped them. And I’ve spent two years hating him for it. Two years being a shell of a person, flinching at every shadow, waiting for the day he finally decided I wasn’t worth keeping alive.
I grab another handful of torn paper and shred it between my fingers, screaming until my throat feels like it’s bleeding.
When there’s nothing left to destroy, the rage drains out of me all at once. I collapse into the nearest armchair, curling in on myself like a wounded animal. My whole body is shaking with silent, heaving sobs. The room is trashed… glass everywhere, papers torn to confetti, the television shattered.
And I justdeflate. All the fight leaves me in one exhausted rush. I pull my knees up to my chest, wrap my arms around them, and press my wet face into my hoodiesleeves. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel anymore. I just know everything I believed for the last two years was a lie. And the man I’ve been terrified of… might be the only person who’s ever actually tried to protect me.
The door suddenly swings open. Selina bursts in, looking like she just rolled straight out of bed… hair messy, wearing nothing but a robe thrown over her pyjamas, eyes wide with worry. She stops dead in the doorway, taking in the destruction.
“What…” Her voice trails off as her gaze lands on me curled up in the armchair. “Oh, Kitty… what happened?”
She crosses the room quickly and drops to her knees in front of me, pulling my head gently down against her shoulder in a tight hug. I let her; I don’t have the strength to pull away.
A moment later Armen walks in, calmer, yawning widely and rubbing the back of his neck. He steps over a pile of shredded paper, sits on the armrest beside me, and picks up a torn corner of one of the photos. He looks at it for half a second, then drops it again with a heavy sigh.
“So… he finally told you then.”
I nod against Selina’s shoulder, unable to speak. Armen reaches over and gives my shoulder a gentle pat.
Then Soren appears in the doorway. He doesn’t look at me right away. His large frame fills the entire entrance, dark hair still slightly messy from sleep. His eyes slowly sweep across the room… the overturned coffee table, the shattered television, the confetti of torn paper and photographs scattered everywhere. I feel something shift deep in my chest as I look at him now. The fear is still there, but it’s different, softer, mixed with something heavy and painful…guilt.
Soren finally looks over at me. His face is completely unreadable… cold, closed off, jaw locked so tightly the muscle jumps. For one long, heavy second our eyes meet. I feel the full force of everything I’ve thrown at him for two years: every fearful glance, every flinch, every time I looked at him like he was the villain in my story.
I sniffle, voice small and cracked. “Sorry…”
He doesn’t say a word, just turns on his heel and walks out. The door closes behind him with a soft, decisive click that somehow sounds louder than the television shattering earlier. The silence he leaves behind is suffocating. I stare at the closed door, fresh tears burning down my cheeks. He didn’t shout, didn’t get angry, he just…left.
Armen sighs again. “Don’t worry about the mess, Kit. Boss’ll have it cleared up in no time.”
I nod weakly. “Sorry for waking you.”
Selina pulls back just enough to look at me, brushing a tear from my cheek with her thumb. “Oh… you didn’t, sweetheart. The boss woke us. Said you’d need support and that you didn’t want to be around him, so… we came.”
The guilt in my chest grows heavier, crushing. Every flinch, terrified glance, and time I shrank away from him… all of it was built on a lie. Heprotectedme. Now he’sgone somewhere to be alone, because he believes,with every right, that I still don’t want to be near him.
I press my face back into Selina’s shoulder, fresh tears soaking into her robe as the weight of it all settles over me like a blanket I can’t shake off.
