Chapter 89

A few seconds after the gunshot:

If Makizal had wanted to, he could have disarmed Williams with a flick of his wrist. It would have been child’s play for the veteran operative. But how could he possibly harm the one he had sworn a lifetime to protect?

As he lay bleeding out on the cold, polished floor of the parking garage, his last conscious thought was not of pain, but of the bewildering, desolate look in Williams’s eyes.

His colleagues, Alpha, and the rest of the security rushed to the scene. All froze, not because of the gunfire, but because of who had fired.

Alpha had seen Makizal lose control once, when he tried to eliminate the journalist who shot Dr. Williams.

But this time it was different.

This time, Makizal wasn’t a threat to Williams’ enemies.

He was a man trying to protect someone he loved.

And he was the one who fell.

The guards didn’t know how to react. Experts in destroying evidence and neutralizing threats, they were nevertheless helpless against a respected doctor, furious for reasons completely beyond their comprehension.

Inside the hospital, Polo’s hands shook as he grabbed his phone and called Miss Kai. He barely got her name out before a voice on the other end cut in, “The police are already on their way.”

Meanwhile, the white car screeched to a halt at the villa. Williams exited, the warm, crimson stain of Makizal’s blood still visible on her stark white suit. She held the black service pistol loosely, her face ghostly, the blood from her nose now dry and flaky.

The guards outside froze, but they didn’t move. They were all afraid to speak to her and increase her anger.

They knew the rules well: you don’t speak to Williams unless she permits you.

In the villa’s bedroom, Evelyn was still lying upstairs, the door closed, peaceful. Williams paced the stairs frantically, almost running toward her. She was determined.

Williams didn’t knock.

She kicked the door open.

Evelyn jolted from her bed. When she saw the gun, the stained suit, and the terrifying vacancy in Williams’s eyes, she recoiled, scrambling backward across the silk sheets.

“Williams, what are you doing?”

“Who are you?” Williams’s voice was a dead, hollow whisper. She leveled the pistol at Evelyn’s chest.

“I don’t understand…”

“What was your name before…” Before she could finish the question, her finger clenched. A shot rang out, tearing a hole through the wall inches from Evelyn’s head.

An agent, alerted by the gunshot, ran into the doorway. Williams whipped the gun toward him.

“Get out!” she screamed, the sound raw and inhuman. The agent complied instantly, retreating to inform Alpha of the escalating danger.

“Next time, I won’t miss you. Who are you?”

“Williams, please,” Evelyn cried, fear making her voice tremble. “I wanted to tell you.”

But Williams cocked the trigger again, the metallic click final. One more slight pressure, and the bullet would fire.

“I’m Esther! Williams, Esther! I wanted to tell you, but you didn’t remember me. I am—”

Williams moved, closing the distance instantly. She dropped the gun slightly and put her free hand on Evelyn’s neck, not squeezing but pressing, marking her. The pistol was pointed directly at Evelyn’s temple.

“Williams, what’s happening to you?”

Williams’s gaze was unrecognizable, darkened by the confluence of suppressed trauma.

The closer she looked at Evelyn’s desperate, tear-streaked face, the more the flashes coalesced into a single, agonizing memory.

A sentence echoed in her inner ear, written in blue ink on cheap notebook paper twenty-one years ago:

“Dear Esther, I hope you are well. I’ve been thinking a lot, maybe too much, about what I should write. I know that you and I are not from the same social class, and I see how people look at us strangely when we talk in the hallways. But I wanted to tell you that I’m trying.

I’m trying so hard to become someone worth standing next to you. I can’t say if what we are doing is wrong. Adults would say it is. But it doesn’t feel wrong when it’s you. It feels like breathing after holding it for years. I love you, Esther Dara. And if you would let me love you, even secretly, even if no one ever knows, I will wait for the right moment to take one more step toward you. If you say yes, I will be patient for the opportune moment, when we are older, to take one more step. Please reply to me.”

That was the letter, her first act of love and her last act of honesty.

The memory ripped through her skull like a blade from the past.

“Ahhh!” Williams screamed, clutching her own head as the realization drove a spike of agonizing pressure through her mind. She saw the horrible continuation: the letter being read, the humiliation, the meeting with the principal, and the cold, terrifying face of her mother, ready to erase the “sickness” from her daughter.

“Who are you?” She lifted Evelyn’s head and slammed it against the wall behind her.

“Williams, please talk to me!”

Evelyn tried hard to fight back, but Williams was far stronger than her. Even when she pressed on her shoulder, she didn’t flinch.

“Who are you?” Williams struck her head again.

“I am Esther Dara! Please stop!”

But the third time she struck, the sound was sickeningly dull. Evelyn’s body went slack, and she slid to the floor, almost unconscious, her dark hair fanned out around her pale face.

Williams stood over her; the beautiful, heartbreaking ghost of her youth collapsed at her feet.

An agent burst in, alerted by the screaming and the gunshots. This time, there was no warning. Williams fired instantly. The agent gasped, clutching his shoulder, and retreated outside.

Williams grabbed Esther by the hair and dragged her senseless body into the middle of the living room. She tossed her onto the expensive, cream-colored rug, the blood from Williams’s nose and Makizal’s suit staining the pristine fibers.

She stood over the body, pointing the gun at her face. Then, with a chilling shift in focus, she lowered the gun, leveling it precisely at Esther’s vulnerable stomach.

That was when the first distant police sirens wailed through the cold air, growing rapidly louder. The external world had finally caught up to Williams’s madness.

And Williams stood there, trembling, consumed by a violence that no one could reach, no one could understand, no one could stop.

Not anymore.

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