---- Chapter 10 Caleb drove, his hands shaking on the steering wheel. He kept seeing her face, not as the defiant woman he'd tormented, but as the girl he'd fallen in love with. He remembered the way she coughed, the way she sometimes pressed a hand to her chest when she thought no one was looking, the pills she tried to hide. He remembered Dr. Evans's grave face. It had all been real. All of it. He reached the villa but couldn't bring himself to go inside. He stood in the cold night air for a long time, the plastic bag with her earthly possessions feeling like a lead weight in his hand. Finally, he forced his legs to move. An attendant from the morgue had followed them back with the official documents. He handed Caleb the bag of her things. Caleb's fingers fumbled with the zipper. Inside, he found the report. He unfolded it with trembling hands. "Terminal Lung Cancer. Prognosis: One to two weeks." The words blurred. The air was punched from his lungs. He stumbled back, leaning against the cold wall for support. ---- He saw the phone and a glimmer of hope sparked. A final word? An explanation? He asked the attendant to wait. His voice was a raw, croaking sound. He needed to see her. They returned to the morgue, to a still form under a white sheet. "We found her in the river," the attendant said softly. "She was wearing this." He gestured to the simple white dress, the one Caleb had given her just hours before. The "gift" that was meant to be the start of her "healing." The irony was a physical blow. He reached out a trembling hand, but couldn't bring himself to pull back the sheet. He prayed, a desperate, silent plea to a god he didn't believe in. Please, don't let it be her. But he knew. He finally forced himself to look. Her face was peaceful, serene. All the pain, all the suffering... it was gone. She looked like she was finally sleeping without nightmares. The last of his hope died. She was gone. Really, truly gone. Asob tore from his throat, a raw, animal sound of pure agony. ---- He fell to his knees beside her, his body shaking with uncontrollable grief. "I'm sorry," he wept, his tears falling onto the cold white sheet. "Ericka, I'm so sorry. Come back. Please, just come back." Fitzgerald knelt beside him, his own face a mask of horrified disbelief, his tears mixing with his brother's. But she couldn't hear them. Their atonement had arrived too late. It was a hollow, useless thing. "Did she... did she leave a note?" Caleb asked the attendant, his voice thick with tears. The attendant shook his head. "Nothing, sir. Just what was in the bag." The words were another knife to the gut. She hated him so much she hadn't even left a single word. Not for him, not for her brother, not for the parents who had betrayed her. They took her ashes home. The villa felt cavernous, empty. Every corner held a memory of her, a ghost of his cruelty. He saw her scrubbing the floors, eating scraps in the kitchen, kneeling on the gravel path. He collapsed onto the sofa, the urn clutched to his chest. He looked at his phone, scrolling through the photos. He realized with a jolt of horror that almost all the pictures of Ericka were gone. Replaced, one by one, with pictures of Hailie. ---- All that was left was one photo of Ericka in her coma, a pale, sleeping princess he had failed to protect. His phone rang. It was the cemetery. "Mr. Skinner? I'm calling about the burial plot Ms. Reid purchased..." Caleb's blood ran cold. The plot. He had forgotten. He hung up, his mind racing. He remembered that day, Hailie's feigned innocence, his own blind rage. He remembered her words. "Are you trying to make us feel guilty?" He thought of the phone in the bag. With a surge of desperate energy, he ran to his office, plugging the phone into his laptop. A single audio file. He clicked play. He heard Hailie's voice, dripping with triumphant malice. "..Caleb is so easy to manipulate. He thinks he's punishing you for your own good, but he's just my puppet..." The confession went on, a litany of every lie, every manipulation, every cruel act she had orchestrated. The truth, in its full, monstrous form, crashed down on him. He was not a righteous punisher. He was a fool. A monster. ---- A murderer. A murderous rage, black and absolute, consumed him. He stood up, his eyes burning with a new, terrifying purpose. He walked out of the house, every cell in his body screaming for vengeance.