AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Hmm," she murmurs. "You won't turn a blind eye, either," she smiles.
"So this is all for me?" I chuckle at her resourcefulness.
"Everything is for you," she says, coming to the edge of the bed and reaching out to touch me. Her uninjured hand goes to my chest, fisting the material of the new shirt I'd donned on.
"Where are you going with this, Noelle?"
"Soon, you will see my side, too," she says, her voice back to her usual calm one. "Once you know the past, you will understand everything I had to do—all the sacrifices I had to make. Am I a bad person? I don't see myself as one. Am I capable of bad things? Yes. And I did what I had to do in order to survive. I did what I had to do in order to protect you."
"Protect me?" I scoff.
"You don't understand," she shakes her head, a sad smile playing at her lips. "From the beginning, all I've ever done has been to protect you. Maybe I got a little selfish along the way…" she trails off. Taking a deep breath, she leans in, placing her head over my chest right on top of my heart and listening for my heartbeats.
"Ask my brother, Raf. If you don't trust me… Ask Cisco how everything began. He'll tell you."
Her doctor interrupts before she can say anything else. Heading outside, I come face to face with Cisco—almost as if he'd been summoned by Noelle's words.
"How is she?" he asks, a grim expression on his face.
"She's fine. For now," I reply, taking a deep breath. "I need you to tell me everything you know about her, Cisco. Everything. I need to know who Noelle DeVille is."
Cisco looks at me for a moment before giving me a brisk nod.
"Then we should probably start with the beginning…"
3Noelle
AGE NINE,
"She worries me, son," Elena, his mother, sighed as she took a seat next to him.
The room was quickly filling as they waited for the piano recital to start.
Noelle, Cisco's sister, was expected to take the stage second to last. Though it was only a school event, Elena had insisted Cisco accompany her to make Noelle feel more confident. Deep down, Cisco suspected his mother wanted the opportunity to talk about his sister and suggest—not for the first time—an intervention.
"She's odd—asocial. All the kids are too scared to approach her or play with her," Elena continued, pursing her lips.
Cisco didn't reply, simply regarding Noelle as she stood far apart from the other kids, seemingly minding her own business. He didn't understand why that was frowned upon. Maybe she wasn't like the other kids, but she had her own—some harder to spot—charms.
She was a piano prodigy, having such an exquisite talent anyone who listened to her, be it laymen or experts, were touched by the sound of her music. So what if she wasn't exactly…social?
Genius rarely fit into a mold.
"Of course, you wouldn't see it," she chuckled when she noted his confused expression. "You were the same when you were her age. With your nose buried in those books of yours, always looking for answers even when there are none."
"I always find the answers," he answered curtly. "I have yet to encounter a question without an answer."
Except he had. Something that had stumped and shook him to his core. But that was not for anyone else to know. It was his secret shame—his everlasting delirium. One he never wanted to wake up from. To divulge that would be akin to revealing its mysticism to the world, and he was too greedy to do that. No,thatwas for him and him alone—for his ever-revolving thoughts and no one else's.
"The same goes for your sister," she shook her head. "There is one thing that characterizes the both of you."
Cisco frowned.
His sister was sixteen years younger than him. He didn't see how his mother could compare the two of them when there was almost a generational gap between them.
Elena turned to him.
"Obsession," she stated, unblinking. "Just like you, your sister has…obsessive tendencies."
