Page 129 of The Kiss Of Death
“Your little student helped me. She had talent, you were right. Dalia wished she’d have been your daughter, but—” I threw my head back, a dark, almost manic laughter tearing through my throat. “But she doesn’t know you like I do! I don’t care about your feelings now; it’s too late. Because you know what?” I slammed my fist on the grave. “I hate you, Lucie Delombre. I’m glad you’re dead. You have no right to make thisabout you! You were interested in her because of her mother. Well, I’m interested in her for who she is!”
Mist billowed from my mouth, my breaths ragged and heavy.
“All my life, I tried to make you feel something for me, but it’s too late now! You should have just given up on me, like everyone. Honestly, how did you think I’d react knowing the truth, huh?” I roared in the middle of the deserted cemetery, feeling the blood rushing to my head. “I’m done, Mother! You think I’d forgive you for killing yourself? Nothing you experienced justified what you did! You left me!”
I struck her cold, hard grave with a force that reverberated through my bones, feeling the sting of my knuckles splitting against the stone.
“Everyone kept saying I’m just like you. Devoid of feelings. Cold. Psychopathic. The town’s freak. We’re the same, right?” I laughed, feeling every ugly bit of me decaying and breaking. “So what does that mean? For so many years, I thought I needed to end my life like you! Should I end our wretched bloodline now? Should I fucking die too?”
Silence.
It’s always the silence.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, anything but something.
“Look at that.” I observed the thick layer of moist soil accumulated over time, mingling with the dusty strands of cobwebs across the walls. “No one comes to visit you. You’ve been forgotten by all… but me. How ironic.”
I lowered myself onto the gritty, dusty floor of the ancient vault, feeling the weight of the past pressing down on me like a suffocating shroud. I stayed there for hours, watching the slow descent of the sun outside.
“I loathe you, Mother. I loathe you with every fiber in my being.”
Silence.
This fucking silence.
The fucking ghosts.
“Levi!” A voice cut through the darkness.
My head snapped back. “And now, I’m hearing Dalia’s voice,” I muttered to myself, my thoughts spiraling into chaos. “I’m so fucked up.”
“Levi!” her voice called again, closer this time.
I turned my head slowly, and there Dalia was, running toward me like a ghostly apparition emerging from my tortured mind’s abyss. She reached my side, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her presence feeling painfully real.
Rising from my crouched position, each muscle protested the strain of hours spent on that floor. Her wide green eyes were locked on me, and she stared at me like she was afraid of losing me. Like I was worthy somehow. It made me believe I could be someone’s whole damn world, just for a moment.
“You didn’t reply to my texts. I searched for you everywhere, and I—” She trailed off in a trembling voice, her eyes searching mine. “What happened?”
“The truth,” I said. “I loathed her for so long, Dalia.”
She hugged me, not leaving me the choice to push her away. “Tell me everything.”
Where should I start?
Probably the day I was born and was already fucking unwanted.
Note 2:
His birth.
The 1st November.
Levi was “born through X”—meaning my parents convinced me to give birth anonymously. I couldn’t even hold him before the midwife took him away from me to social services. My parents told me I wasn’t fit to be a mother. I’d be unable to take care of someone because something was “wrong with me”—they often thought I had a borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, or anxiety. He deserved a better chance in life than me. I remember the scene clearly in my head:
“I can take care of him,” I begged my mother, covering my ears with my hands to seek refuge from the sensory chaos. “He’s crying, I need to see him.”
“Social services will take care of him. You got knocked up by the first asshole who came along! In your condition, you can’t raise a child properly,” my mother spat before patting my head—I hated when she did this. “We’ll wait for you outside.”
