by Elena Monroe
The first few pages were basic information that matched my height, what I thought my weight was, eye color, age, even my natural hair color. That all seemed harmless enough, until I saw the documents for a name change. My real last name is MacQuoid, not Fritz.
There was no interlude for what came next, when I flipped the page and saw my rap sheet staring back at me.
Every.
Single.
Arrest.
To date.
My heart sped up and shook inside my chest as I flipped to the next page to see the autopsy photos of my parents with every wound I didn’t know they died with blemishing their cold pale skin on metal beds.
The desire to throw up again came like a strong tidal wave, even though I didn’t even get to eat lunch.
Powering through, I turned the photo over and saw a report that looked like a police report, but it was stamped with the Clave’s logo instead of one from a police department. The questions seemed out of line for the police too when I read the name Jason Rothschild, laughing to myself when I realized his parents weren’t cruel; Grimm was a nickname.
What happened tonight in your own words, Jason?
We stole one of the walkies just to listen in, since we can’t hunt until we turn 18. Our nanny fell asleep and we heard two had escaped, so Vic wanted to help. Vic saw them first and grabbed the revolver and aimed. The woman screamed so loudly it pierced my eardrums and quieted everything else when the man fell. There was so much blood.
What would you do if punished for your actions?
Hurt who hurts me. I don’t have mercy when it's not mutual.
Swallowing hard, I didn’t see the connections until I read Vic’s words slandering my parents and parading his faults around like gold metals.
Fucking washed up hippies.
They deserved to die for not escaping successfully.
I found them, so I won.
All of his words screamed inside my head, when I finally put two and two together. Vic wasn’t just sorry for my parents dying at one of their sick gatherings, but sorry that he was involved.
He lied to me.
He made this all seem so real when all he wanted was someone else to keep his dirty secret buried.
Vic was right when he said a lot of things seem real until you shake the truth out of it.
I fell for his masks.
He preyed on my ignorance with love.
He ripped me from those protecting me.
And worst of all? I thought he filled a space that would stay empty forever without my parents, and now I know he helped put that space there.
I rushed home and hid the folder under my bed, after going through every detail inside a few times. I felt safe leaving it in my mess of a room, while I decided to grab my stuff from the office.
Dragging out the box from my closet filled with poster boards and supplies for protesting, I cut one of the pink ones into a small card, just like the one left on my bedside table when Abigail disappeared. Snatching the lighter, I burned a peace sign into the bottom corner and carefully wrote my own message. Entering Abigail’s untouched room, I snooped around for an envelope, finding a matte black one to stuff my threat inside.
So much pride was swelling in my chest.
I felt victorious.
Antsy, I grabbed my keys and my very own calling card, and I raced down to the bus stop knowing I would have to Uber myself back home, since it was already around 7 p.m.
Finally powering my phone back on, I saw all the calls and texts I had missed from Vic. They started off sweet and moved right into worry with no transition to spot. Glancing over them quickly, I ignored each one, hoping the office was cleared out already. When I finally got to Clave International Holdings, a kind of deep-seated anger bloomed in the bottom of my stomach, making me want to burn down the building and say sorry later.
Entering the building, using my badge one last time, I ran up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, hoping it would expel some of the energy clogging my veins.
It didn’t. Not even a little bit.
Yanking the fire exit door open, I ended up in the office, the pitch black office that had emptied for the night. Using my phone to see, I carefully moved around and looked for any lights or lamps or for anyone who could bust me.
I felt like a criminal when I still worked here… for the next few minutes, at least.
Outside of his office, I kicked the door open and was assaulted with his scent, his things, his memories still stuck to the pros section of my brain like a masochist.
A deep inhale, I was only making the cuts hurt worse as I dropped the envelope on his desk. I knew I wouldn’t ever see him again, when I finally texted him back.
ME: Don’t ever text me again. You weren’t supposed to feel this real and be so fake.
VIC: What are you talking about? What did Looney Tunes say?
I didn’t respond when the texts kept pouring in, demanding answers, time, anything that he could hold onto longer, but I was ready to let go.
He was solid gold until the hard times tarnished his finish. Now I felt cheap again, noticing how fake he really was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: VIC
The war was over.
I lost.
VIC
After Justice was whisked away by my stepmommy, she never came back to work, didn’t return any texts, and when I showed up at her place… it was empty.
Not empty in a way that looked like she didn’t exist, but a way that was proving a point.
I didn’t realize how codependent I had become, until I was literally dragging myself to work the next day. She wasn’t there to call me silly, to push me, to challenge me the way I wanted. Without her there, I lost all of the motivation that I had before her.
I sauntered into the office hours later, looking at my watch; it was 10 a.m. The sun was pouring through the windows, which was strange. When I normally arrived, it was still dark outside.
Her bag was no longer on the floor next to her desk. She must have come back to the office after everyone left to get it.
Falling into my chair with more force than I meant to, I spotted a small black envelope wedged between my pen holder and lamp, pointing right at me.
Fingering the sealed edge, I opened the black envelope to see an all pink card with a peace sign burned into the edge. Running my fingers over it, I felt the crisp, taut, paper. It had been truly burnt; this wasn’t a design.
The note card read: Looks real until the truth gets shaken out. Love, Peace.
My mind drove backwards in time to when I left her a similar note in exchange for Abigail.
Mine wasn’t a ticking time bomb to her demise like this one is.
Rubbing the paper, I couldn’t let it go. It was part of her and all I had left to grasp onto.
Furiously texting Stepmommy, I needed answers, reasons, justification for why she ran out of my life.
ME: What did you say to Justice yesterday?
STEPMOMMY: I gave her the power of truth. I wish someone had warned me what this life is and who it turns you into. She’s not just some stranger, but a girl’s life that we destroyed.
ME: What are you talking about? She’s Clave. She works for me. Free will.
STEPMOMMY: You should talk to your father about this.
ME: She knows her parents were killed at the Hunt.
STEPMOMMY: There’s more to that story… I recognized her. I’ve met her before. Her file was in our house, Victory. She was in over her head with you.
Throwing my phone against the glass wall of my office, I sat back breathing heavily, trying to make sense of the pain wreaking havoc inside my chest.
Unable to sit down and hone in the kind of pain twisting around every one of my heartstrings, I stood up pushing everything off of my desk.
I kept a bat in the corner of my office—a gift from a New York Yankee after closing a deal when I got him a limited edition Desert Eagle. I kept it in my office, because what else do you do wit
h sports memorabilia?
This.
Picking up the bat, I swung at the trophies taunting me, letting them all crash down.
Always a winner. Always too proud to even let her win, huh?
Flipping over my desk and picking up the bat again, I cracked the large screen on my treadmill, just for good measure.
After destroying my office, chest pounding and my eyes moist, I felt my hands steady with the violence. Violence had a way of sobering you.
I felt like I understood Bowen even more inside this moment. He wasn’t shirtless often, but I had seen scratches that a girl didn’t leave behind.
Violence cured him as much as it did me in this moment.
“Why is it that every time I decide to come to work some shit goes down?” Grimm’s smug voice sounded off behind me from the safety of the doorway.
Pointing the bat at him, I practically snarled, “This is your fault. You couldn’t just keep being the Golden Boy, huh?”
He didn’t even react; he just let me spew my hate all over him.
Finally responding, only after thinking long enough to make a controlled move that he was known for. “I was never the Golden Boy, Vic. I was pretending to be what they wanted, because I didn’t have the balls to cause any friction. You always wanted to be the center of attention.”
Pushing the bat into his chest, he didn’t move one inch.
“Someone has to keep their sanity while Bowen drinks himself into oblivion. Khaos couldn’t care less about anything… and then there’s you. You get to misbehave all you fucking want. So where does that leave me? The one holding this all up!”
Grimm lit a joint, handing it to me, and his brows popped at my honesty that had just hurled out.
“Why don’t you be who you want to be from now on?”
He made it sound easy, when I had a mask for every occasion, even this one.
All indestructible armor.
All helping me win.
Sinking to the floor among the disaster, I pinched the end of the joint, inhaling the high I would feel soon, when Grimm shouted, “I need someone to clean this shit up!” He snapped his fingers, looking at the bullpen of the other employees that none of us had much interaction with. They handled mindless work, taking on the shit we didn’t want to do, like new member paperwork, faxes, etc. until a secretary needed replacing.
I sat there, looking at the mess I created, now resembling my life so adequately.
Texting Meadow quickly, I asked her for any idea where Justice went, and she texted back immediately that she didn’t know she had left.
Throwing a lamp on the floor next to me, I felt the violence calm me again, working with the high trying to take over.
“Get up. Come on. You can’t sit here in your own shit all day.” Grimm’s hand under my bicep lifted me up, and I let him use all of his strength. I could have sat there until I died.
“What is this even about?”
Stopping, scanning my office for her own pink calling card, I ripped it from the damage.
“Justice is gone.”
Grimm kept his hand under my arm, like I’d run away. “No one is ever gone for good, until you’re in the family plot. Let’s go drink this off.”
I let Grimm hold me up for once. Letting me be the kind of fucked up that they all normally burdened me with.
I must have gotten sucked in by the pain of loving a woman who left so easily as we rode in the elevator down to the garage. When Grimm told me to get in his car, I barely remembered how I got down there.
Blacking out the loss isn’t going to help me accept that I don’t always have to win.
Grimm refused to roll down any of his windows, and I stole the lighter out of his cup holder and reblazed the end of the joint that he had handed me, hot boxing his entire car to wherever was supposed to make this feel better.
He was in for a surprise, when he finally realized nothing would make this better—short of her coming back and letting me fix it.
When he rolled up to his own house, I was surprised. I had only been in his safe space a few times, and we had definitely made friends with the distance between us over the years.
We were two very different people, who grew up to realize opposites don’t always work when you’re the Golden Boy and your best friend is death himself. We let the distance continue to grow, and our walls became higher. We found solace in different people, forcing Khaos and Bowen to be stuck in the middle, having to choose a side.
Sucking in the last of the joint, I relaxed into the seat, not sure when the last time I was this fucked up, until Justice’s smile appeared behind my closed eyes.
Fuck me.
Now I couldn’t even get fucked up without the memory of her stealing any kind of peace in a joint or alcohol.
I never got drunk or high, unless it was with people. I found it as boring as jacking off alone. I liked the pressure and expectation from a crowd better.
“You’re gonna be in…” holding the inhale and speaking around my baited breath, “...in trouble.”
Grimm was boxed in with me and the weed, but he seemed fine. He escaped the car to head inside. Sighing, I knew there was a happy person on the other side of the door, who was only going to be kind and nurse my wounds was a hard fact to swallow.
I wanted to bathe in my pain.
Let it take over, let it break my heart into so many pieces so I never think of using it again.
Let the anger, rage, and sadness explode beyond my tall walls.
Let it destroy me, and crown her the victor.
“Let’s go.” Grimm was waiting when I took in the fresh air outside, trying to sober me up already.
I was dragging my feet, kicking rocks under my dress shoes, and feeling constrained enough without remembering I was still in Clave appropriate clothing—not what I wanted to be wearing. Breezing inside, I saw Abigail from behind on the couch watching reality tv and instantly wondered what kind of woman Grimm changed her into by keeping her locked up behind the Clave.
The Clave comes first, no matter who you are.
Maybe it was all for the better that Justice got out before it changed her.
Maybe it was better for her to leave me than leaving her when it was time to marry whoever the Clave chose for me.
Maybe not everyone deserves to be happy, especially ones whose souls are as dirty as mine.
Jumping over the couch, I landed on my ass next to Abigail, scaring her, when she realized Grimm wasn’t alone. She looked at me like she knew something was wrong, with my red eyes and the stench of pot sticking to me.
“You never skip work…” It wasn’t a question and barely a statement the way her voice trailed off.
“Didn’t she tell you? She left right when I started liking being this guy—a better person, the guy who loves her, the guy not wearing a mask all the fucking time.” I felt my dried out eyes get flooded with something I never did: cry.
My dad looked at pain as something you absorb and move on. Crying was outlawed and weak, so I forced myself to like pain in all its forms.
Justice was a kind of pain no one could teach you to love. She was a special kind of pain reserved for only the most deserving.
A damned soul lured into false hope by an angel only made my sentence to Hell even worse.
Abigail wrapped her arms around me, pulling me to her chest, and I felt all the moisture I was holding in my eyes finally opening up into an ocean. Holding Abigail closer, I let her squeeze me until my breathing went back to normal.
“She’s probably just blowing off steam. What happened?” she asked, pulling away, trading squeezing me for my hand.
“She was practically living at my place. She even had a drawer. Then Stepmommy took her to lunch, and she never came back,” I told her, trying to keep my voice and breath even.
“Something had to have happened… the only place she’d go is to her Grams.”
Abigail was mentally trying to figure this all out with her features
becoming smaller: lips flattened, eyes half-mast and puckered in confusion.
“Where’s that?” I suddenly asked, hopeful.
“Costa Mesa, but you aren’t going there. It’s too fresh right now. Give her time. Let me make something for you to eat.”
She was going to be a great mom if she could talk Grimm and I off a ledge so easily. We were the most impulsive when it came to letting the violence cure us.
We’d soak in blood if it meant less aggression pumping through our veins.
“I’m on a liquid diet. I like vodka best.” As I slumped back into the couch, a pregnant Abigail got up, letting me wallow.
I was doing it professionally too, for someone who wasn’t allowed to feel bad for myself.
Slouching down further, I heard Abigail trying to whisper to Grimm, without knowing it didn’t matter how quiet you were; I would hear you. All you could say was yelling inside of my mind already.
He’s heartbroken.
Heartbroken? It’s Vic. I’m sure that shit was broken before her.
You guys are his only friends. You need to be there for him through this.
We haven’t been friends since Patmos. We’re just stuck together.
He helped you with protecting me, Grimm.
Fuck. Okay, I’ll go lay on a cross, but if this backfires, it’s on your beautiful hands.
“I’m beyond help! I’ll just take the vodka… and whatever else will numb this!” I shouted from the couch, letting them know I heard their exchange.
Grimm handed me a glass, resting it on my chest, and I downed the liquid before he could even sit down in a chair, a safe distance away, in case I imploded.
“What do you need me to do?” Grimm asked, with his lips touching his bottle of water, not indulging with me.
“Get me her Grams’s number. I don’t care how fresh it is.” I felt more myself letting the substance work as a thin layer between me and the pain—already slipping back into demands.
“Making demands already? No one keeps you down long, huh?”
“Shut the fuck up, Reaper,” I laughed out the words, snagging the bottle of vodka, and drinking it without pouring it into the glass first.
