Page 18 of Alpha's Redemption

The flames are finally gone. The place is nothing but a husk of what it once was. Everly watches the last fire truck leave, but the media linger, taking any last-minute scraps they can for their headlines. Bloody vultures.

“Come on,” I tell her, trying to lead her away, but she shakes her head and walks toward the building. I need to get Valarian to school, so I’ll have to come back. Yet, I have a feeling Everly isn’t leaving anytime soon.

“They warned me,” Everly said, staring up at what’s left. The structure is sound, but the place is gutted. Yet, despite it all, the building still stands; the brickwork may be tainted black, the render crumbling, and the place hollow, but it’s still there, standing against the odds.

“This is because of the petition; because I fought for the rogues, for this city, and this is how they repay me,” she growls. “They won’t stop, will they?” she asks, glancing at me. I hang my head, knowing this will only be the beginning.

“What’s next, Valen? What would your next move be, if you were Nixon?” she asks.

“You think it was Nixon?”

“Who else?” she says.

“Everly? I.…” I glance around at the media lingering, watching curiously when she walks off toward the wreck.

* * *

Everly

I walk numbly towards the building and stop again. The place is destroyed. As I take it all in, my heart and soul burn to charcoal. I stare at the front door; I can picture that first day like it was yesterday. The night before, it poured, and I had all but given up, until I met the woman who sat on a faded, plastic chair with a smoke hanging between her lips by that very door—the way her eyes looked me up and down with no judgment.

Valen comes over to me while I stare at the spot she sat that day, when I was wet from walking, hopeless, and homeless. He rubs my arms from behind me.

“We should go,” he whispers. I point to the spot.

“That’s where I met your mother,” I tell him. “I thought she was one of the people staying here. She had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.” I chuckle. “She offered me a place to stay, a hot meal, and then a job. But she gave me so much more than that.”

“This place,” Valen says. I shake my head.

“Hope. She gave me hope. Then she gave me a family, and then a home,” I tell him, looking up at what’s left.

I point to the room directly above us. “That’s where I stayed. The next morning, I came out to her calling up to me, her truck loaded with baby stuff for Valarian. There was so much stuff,” I sniffle.

“‘It takes a village to raise a child. We are going to build our own village’. Your mother told me that, and we did,” I tell him before stepping through the front door. The glass is all shattered and crunches under my feet, the walls are black, and some of the floors are still smoldering. I walk into the back, to my office, which used to be her apartment.

“Everly! It’s not safe,” Valen calls out to me while rushing in after me. Yet, I don’t care; I have to see if it survived. The safe is supposed to be fireproof, but all I can do is hope. It holds something more precious than gold.

It has my letter.

Everything is covered in soot, the room crumbling around me as I fish my keys from my pocket and kneel next to the safe.

“Everly, we shouldn’t be in here! They haven’t cleared the entire place yet,” Valen says, but I’m not really listening. Through my tears, I place the key in and twist, pulling it out and using another key to twist the next lock and the next; the keypad for the digital screen melted, but the manual locks are fine. My heart beats faster when I hear the final lock click.

I close my eyes, gripping the handle, sucking in a shuddering breath before pulling the door open.

The safe is intact—the heat burned the outside hard and it’s warm inside, and a few things on top are curled and ruined, but as I dig to the bottom, I burst into tears when I see my envelopes. They’re brown from the smoke but intact. I clutch them to my chest and let out a breath.

“Thank you,” I whisper to no one in particular. If there was ever a sign that she’s still with us, this was it. Goddess only knows how many times I’ve pulled that damn letter from its envelope when I thought I would break, knowing it would help me carry on again.

Valen rubs my back, letting me fall apart. I can’t move as I stare at my safe—I have no idea how long I sit there. Valen goes to grab Valarian’s clothes from the apartment, yet I can’t bring myself to follow.

I’m leaning against the brown brickwork with my envelope, the one most precious to me. There are so many letters, letters of advice, letters of love. She wrote a new letter every day, each one a detailed report of what we accomplished that day—a reminder of how far we had come—a time capsule of sorts. I find every moment of this place flashing through my mind. Her voice is so clear, her memory still alive within these walls, even though it’s now only burned rubble.

Every day, she dropped one in the mailbox out front and sent it to her lawyer to hold on to. But one letter means the most to me—the one I’m clutching in my hand like it’s my lifeline, a reminder in case I forget. One thing about Valarie is that she’s unforgettable. I close my eyes, leaning my head back against the wall when her voice rings in my ears.

“You don’t need them. They aren’t wasting tears on you, so don’t waste your tears on them. They don’t deserve them,”Valarie had once told me. Her voice is on replay and I savor the sound of the memories she imprinted on me, and it only makes me angry that someone would try to take that memory from me—from the rogues. They burned my village and I willburnthis city to theground. I burn, they will burn with me.

“Hold on to that anger, because sometimes it’s the only thing that will keep you going,”Valarie had also told me. So I let it fester now, needing something to keep going.

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