by Willow Rose
My heart sank when hearing the brutal coldness to her voice when talking about these young girls, some of them just children. It was beyond cruel.
“It was because of the abuse; wasn’t it?” I asked, my voice cracking slightly when thinking about Olivia in this woman’s hands. “That you couldn’t have children? You were abused when you were just a young child by a priest at the Catholic church your family attended and where you sang in the choir, at St. Mary’s Cathedral, the second place you attacked. You were abused again and again, and no one would listen when you tried to tell them. Not even the nuns at the Catholic school you went to. And once it started showing, once it became evident that you were pregnant at the age of only fourteen, you were the one who was punished. It was reported to your father, and instead of punishing the priest, you were sent away to a place where they could perform an abortion, even though you were so far along that it was illegal.”
“They killed my baby,” she said, spitting. “They poked something up inside of me and murdered my child. Then they pulled out my baby. I saw him when they did it. I could have taken care of him. I wanted to, but my father wouldn’t let me.”
“And because of the procedure, you were unable to become pregnant again,” I said. “They robbed you of that.”
“There was scarring,” the doctors told me later when Brian and I went to the fertility clinic, and they examined me. Brian became furious at me for having never told him about the abortion or the fact that I couldn’t have children, and so he left. Our marriage was based on a lie, he said. I thought I was going to be alone for the rest of my life when Brian left me. I thought I’d never survive it.”
“But then you met Christopher, and you fell in love all over again,” I said, glancing at him standing by the window.
Chapter 99
THEN
Helen stared at the barren wall in front of her. She was sitting on her bed in the bedroom at the NYX house, a room that she shared with another girl. She had been there a year and a half now and had never felt so alive. Especially not back when she had been married to Brian.
“My God, I think I’m in love,” she mumbled with a giggle into the empty room.
Just the very thought of Christopher Daniels and being with him filled her with butterflies of expectation.
The sex between them was intense. It wasn’t often, only like once a month or so, but that was enough. She actually kind of liked having to wait for him to call on her to come to his room. She never knew when it would happen, and that made it all the more exciting. Everything about this man was so exhilarating; it made her blush just to think about it. She had no idea love could be this way. She had no idea life could be this way.
Helen smiled secretively. It amazed her how much better her life was now that she was at the NYX house and didn’t have to deal with her family and their disappointment in her. Her father had given her the farm to take care of after the divorce, but she didn’t have to actually be there to run it. It was just a way of keeping her busy; she knew that much. There were caretakers to handle the day-to-day stuff.
Helen stared at the stick in her hand. No one knew that she was taking the test; she had kept everything a secret. She had been disappointed so many times before in her life. But now, as she stared at the two lines, she could hardly contain herself.
Pregnant? It’s really true? I am pregnant? But… but they said it was impossible? That it could never happen?
Stick still in her hand, Helen rose to her feet, almost bubbling over with excitement.
“Christopher is going to be so thrilled when he hears this. He’s gonna be so happy. And then we can be together forever and ever. Oh, I can’t wait to tell him.”
Helen rushed out of her room, then hurried toward the stairs leading to Christopher’s chambers on the top floor of the house. Normally, she wasn’t allowed to go up there until she was called, but today was a special day. He would want to know right away.
Of course, he would.
Helen grabbed the railing and walked up the wooden stairs, butterflies fluttering in her stomach.
What shall we name the child? I know. Annie if it is a girl and Robert if it is a boy. I’ve always loved those names. Brian never liked those names, especially not Robert because it reminded him of a kid from his school who picked his nose in class and smelled bad. But screw him. I am calling my child — our child — Robert if it is a boy.
“Christopher?”
Helen reached the top of the stairs, then walked to the door. Behind it lay Christopher’s private rooms. Not many were allowed up here. She felt another tickle in her stomach as she lifted her hand to knock. But no one answered. She tried again. Still, no answer. She then grabbed the handle and opened the door carefully.
“Christopher?”
She entered his reading quarters and office. This was where he wrote his books, where he came when he needed quiet.
He wasn’t in there.
Could he be somewhere else in the house?
She was about to walk back out when she heard a noise coming from behind the next door, the one leading to the bedroom.
Ah, he’s in there.
“Christopher?” she said, then walked to the door and pushed it open.
Helen stopped. In there, on the bed, she found Christopher, surrounded by several women. All naked.
“C-Christopher?” she said, perplexed. He lifted his head from between the breasts of a woman, and their eyes met across the room.
“Helen?”
She shook her head in disbelief. “But… I thought… I thought… you made me believe that I was someone special.”
He approached her, reaching out his arms. His naked body suddenly repulsed her where it used to be so exhilarating.
“You are special, Helen. I have told you this over and over again. You are truly special. We all are.”
He stood there, smiling like it was the most natural thing in the world that he was having sex with an entire group of women like it couldn’t possibly hurt her in any way.
Helen took a step backward. As she did, Christopher spotted the stick in her hand, and his expression changed.
“No. No. No.”
She nodded. “Yes, Christopher. We’re having a child. Together.”
He lifted his finger and walked closer. “No, we’re not. I don’t have children. I never wanted children, Helen. You must have it removed. Do you hear me? I can’t have children. I simply won’t.”
Helen stared at the man she had loved so dearly until a few seconds ago. Suddenly, all she could see was her father’s face as he told her she was going to have the baby removed, and she begged him to not do this to her. All she could see and hear were her own screams as she saw the dead baby be pulled out of her body. It overwhelmed her so violently that she started to shake.
Seeing this, Christopher stepped forward again. “Helen, it’ll be okay. We’ll find a solution for this, okay? It doesn’t have to be like what happened last time. We can do it properly. There are ways. You’re still not very far along. The baby is barely a baby yet. We can see a doctor and he’ll…”
But Helen wasn’t listening anymore. Tears streamed across her cheeks, and she stepped backward, shaking her head and crying heavily.
“Helen, let’s talk about this…” he tried, but she was gone.
Helen turned around and ran out of the room, heart pounding in her chest, hearing nothing but the screams of her dead, unborn baby.
Chapter 100
“You were pregnant and wanted to keep the baby, but Christopher didn’t,” I said. “That’s when it all came back, everything you had fought to keep down, tried to forget. It stared you directly in the face once again. The abuse, the people who didn’t protect you when they should have, the forced abortion, and following infertility. Everything that had destroyed your life, you were reliving once again, and so you ran.”
Helen was crying now. She was biting her lip, staring at Christopher, who shook his head.
&
nbsp; “It wasn’t my fault, Helen,” he said. “You need to understand this. It was an accident. You fell down those stairs. You lost the baby, yes, you lost our baby, but it was an accident.”
Helen swallowed hard. Her lip was quivering. “You killed our baby, Christopher. You killed him.”
Christopher clasped his mouth, and I could tell he was fighting his tears. It was the first time I had seen genuine emotion in the man.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I never got to tell you how sorry I am. I should have known this would break you. I knew your past. You had told me everything in our therapy sessions. I should have seen this coming. But you wouldn’t talk to me. You left our group in anger, and I thought you needed your space — that it was for the best. I should have known it was you when the attacks occurred, especially when you hit the church and your old school. But I just never thought… it’s no excuse, I know. I should have seen it. You did all these things to get back at those that had hurt you over the years. Your ex, the church and the priest, the school, and now… your family.”
“By buying Sarin gas, which is also easily found on the Dark Web, on sites by chemists who earn a lot of money producing it and selling it, you made it look like the attacks in Japan back in 1995,” I said. “Their leaders had just been executed recently, and their ways could be compared to those of NYX. It would easily be perceived that their leader, Christopher, was obsessed with the Japanese leader and wanted to be like him. To make sure the public understood, you told that about Christopher over and over again in the many interviews you did afterward. You described in detail how he talked about the Japanese leader Shoko Asahara constantly and how he even dressed like him and spoke of creating a utopian society. You ganged up with other former members of NYX, who were also angry or disappointed with Christopher, and wanted to hurt him. As it turned out, he had made a lot of enemies over the years. One of those you contacted was Lori Moore, who was very angry with NYX, but she didn’t want to be a part of your plan, and she threatened to reveal it all, didn’t she? So, you got rid of her and continued your plans with the others. Because they bore the brand when helping you perform the attacks, you made sure all suspicion turned in NYX’s direction. Witnesses would see the burn marks, the brands, like Ryan Scott did in the Metrorail. You made it look like NYX was behind it, so you’d take Christopher down in the process. And then you planned an attack on your father’s hotel, in the same place he lived, so that when you killed your family, it would look like it was just a part of the terrorist attack on the hotel. No one would ever suspect you, the daughter who had been a victim of NYX. They would think it was a way to get back at you because you had spoken up against NYX. With Christopher released from prison on bail, this morning was the perfect moment to strike. While the guests were eating their breakfast in peace and quiet, not suspecting to be exposed to a deathly gas.”
Helen’s parents turned their heads to look at her, mouths gaping. Her sister, Aubrey, came closer too.
“Is this true?” her father asked. “Tell me, Helen. Is this true?”
I walked up to Helen and grabbed her purse from her hand. She held onto it, but I pulled it out of her grip. I opened it and then showed its contents to her family. Inside was a clear bag with green liquid in it.
“Sarin gas,” I said. “My guess is she was planning on appearing upset, then leaving this brunch prematurely and accidentally forgetting her purse, with the bag that had been punctured still inside of it. She’d then take the elevator down and use a back exit to get out of here. The police would arrive when it was too late and assume you had all died as a part of a terrorist attack, planned by NYX. Very clever.”
Mrs. Wellington cupped her mouth. Her eyes lingered on her daughter. “I can’t believe this. Helen? Please, tell me this isn’t true?”
Chapter 101
Jack Wellington sat down in a chair, then hid his face between his hands. His wife stared at their daughter. She stood like she was frozen, like she was still waiting for her to say that it wasn’t true.
“Don’t you even have anything to say?” her mother asked, her voice cracking.
Helen Wellington’s eyes lingered on me and the gun in my hand.
“It’s over, Helen,” I said.
I stared at the woman in front of me and didn’t even notice her sister went for her purse. Not until it was too late, and she too had pulled out a gun. As I turned to look, it was pointed at my daughter, at Olivia’s head. Aubrey’s hand was shaking.
“I am sorry,” she said. “For having to do this. But I can’t let you destroy my family. Now, please lower your gun, or I will shoot.”
“She’s bluffing, Mom,” Olivia said. “Don’t do it.”
I stared at my daughter, unable to believe her. There was no way I’d risk her life like that. Are you kidding me? I had just gotten her back.
I raised my hand with the gun in the air, then placed it on the ground and kicked it to Aubrey, who picked it up.
“Now what?” I asked. “You’re gonna let your sister get away with this?”
“Actually,” Helen said as she approached her sister and grabbed one of the guns. “My sister has been helping me all the way.”
“Aubrey!” Mrs. Wellington exclaimed. “Why? I have never… I didn’t raise you to…”
Aubrey took two steps forward. She lifted the arm that held the gun and shot her mother point-blank in the face.
Olivia screamed and turned her face away. I watched Mrs. Wellington jolt before she crumpled to the floor, her red blood gushing onto the white carpet below.
My heart pounded in my chest as Helen walked to her father and placed the gun on his forehead and pressed it against the skin until he was forced to look up at her.
“How does that feel, Daddy, huh? How does it feel that your fate is in someone else’s hands? Huh? How does it feel to have someone completely ruin your entire life, everything you’ve dreamt about and worked for? Huh? How does it feel to be betrayed by your own flesh and blood? By the very ones that are supposed to care for you?”
He just stared at her, his steel-grey eyes overflowing with menace.
“Answer me!” Helen snorted. “How does it feel to be betrayed by your own daughter?”
Jack Wellington’s eyes grew stale. He spoke with calmness.
“You weren’t even worthy of my name. Not since the day you let that priest defile you. Since then, you were nothing but a dirty whore to me. A useless dirty who…”
With a loud scream, Helen fired the gun. Jack Wellington fell backward in the chair, while Helen fired another shot at his chest, then another, still while screaming.
“I HATE YOU. I HATE YOU. I HATE YOU!”
Aubrey came up behind her sister and pulled her into a hug.
“He isn’t worth it, sis. He isn’t worth it.”
Helen sobbed and held her sister tight while my eyes met Christopher’s. Knowing these sisters’ level of anger and capability, especially toward men, I believed he would be next. Christopher knew it too. He turned around, then bolted for the elevator while the sisters were still hugging.
Chapter 102
He almost made it. Almost. Christopher was by the door, and it was open when the sisters let go of one another, then cocked both of their guns and pointed them at him.
“Stop,” Aubrey said.
Christopher paused for a second, but then realizing that they were at the other end of the living room, out of range, he continued into the elevator. He turned around and pushed the buttons, hard, frantically, while the sisters rushed toward him, soon getting close enough to shoot. I didn’t know how well they shot, but I had a feeling it was something they had trained at since childhood, by the way they held the guns with confidence. It was customary for especially rich families in Florida to train their children in shooting guns. I myself had been trained by the man who I had believed was my father back then. At least once a month, he would take me to a shooting range, and we would spend the day there together.
; Close the doors. Close the darn doors.
The doors began to move, and my heart raced while watching it. Olivia held onto me tightly while the sisters came closer and now both fired at Christopher. Three shots were fired before the elevator doors closed.
I held my breath.
Did he make it?
Seconds went by, while Aubrey pushed the button to get the elevator to come back up. I scanned the apartment, searching for an emergency exit when the elevator dinged again, and the doors opened.
I probably shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself. I stretched my neck to see, and then I saw it. I saw him. I saw Christopher lying inside the elevator, on the floor, in a pool of his own blood.
Oh, dear God.
Seeing this, Olivia turned her face away and hid in my arms. I held her tightly, trying to calm myself down.
In that second, the sisters turned to look at the two of us.
Chapter 103
They tied us up. Backs leaned against one another, Olivia and I were tied up with duct tape and placed on the floor. Then, Helen grabbed her purse and pulled out the plastic bag with the Sarin gas in it. My heart dropped as she placed it next to us.
“I am so sad not to be here to watch you die slowly because it would give me such deep joy,” she said with a tilted head. “But we need to go down and talk to the police. We’ll tell them how you came up here with the gas and then shot and killed my entire family. Then we’ll tell them how Christopher backstabbed you and tried to kill you as well, then tied you up and released the gas, trying to kill us all. But, of course, my sister and I managed to escape and shot Christopher, then ran for the emergency exit, just in time for us not to be exposed to the gas. Unfortunately, we were the only ones to survive. Now, it might take us a while to tell the story properly since we are in such a deep state of shock, so you’ll have to excuse us if it takes a little while before anyone comes up here. But you won’t mind because, after about a few minutes of breathing this gas, you’ll be so sick you’ll hardly be able to speak anyway. Some people experience symptoms within as little as thirty seconds of having been exposed to it. Others take a few minutes. You’ll probably die from respiratory paralysis pretty fast I’d assume when being this close to the contamination device. You know how they train for these types of events, how they prepare to approach a gas attack? They actually tell the first responders to resist the urge to rush to help. You wanna know why? Because if the patient is so incapacitated by the nerve agent, to the point where they are incapable of self-evacuation, it is highly likely they’ll die despite any intervention the first responders might be able to provide. Isn’t it nice? They’ll simply leave you to die. Because there is nothing they can really do to prevent it. No one will come for you, Eva Rae Thomas. No one.”
