Chapter 93

The hours slipped away one by one, the days trailing behind in a slow, airless procession, while on the private clinic’s side. Finally, Esther opened her eyes as if surfacing from deep water.

The ceiling swam above her, white dissolving into light, until shapes slowly gathered their weight. Voices existed before faces did, muffled and distant, like words spoken through glass. She tried to lift herself, but the world tilted violently, and a hand pressed gently against her shoulder as she attempted to bolt upright.

“Don’t rush,” a voice whispered. “Your body needs time.”

That voice.

Her lashes fluttered. As the haze retreated, the silhouettes sharpened into the faces she had spent years trying to erase from her mind. Her mother and her elder brother came first, then Kiya and Yada. Beyond the glass of the door stood Linda, her childhood best friend, huddled against the wall, her face buried in her hands.

The news of the hostage’s true identity had acted like a beacon, drawing them all back to the girl who had vanished into the persona of Evelyn Hazel to escape the ghosts of Esther Dara.

Her mother leaned closer, whispering her name to the doctor as though Esther might disappear again if spoken to loudly. “will she be fine?”

“Don’t worry, she’s waking up,” the doctor murmured, checking the monitors. “She suffered significant cranial trauma and bruising, but the fetal heartbeat is strong. The baby is safe.”

The word baby barely registered when “Niran…” The name left Esther’s lips like a broken prayer, stunning the room into a deathly silence. “Where is Niran?”

To her family, the question fell like glass shattering on tile. Faces froze, and no one answered at first.

How could she ask for the monster who had held her hostage and beaten her? The very woman whose murderous frenzy was currently the lead story on every news cycle, from the miracle surgeon who saved lives to the arrest of a fallen icon?

Outside that room, the world had already passed judgment.

The scandal was everywhere. Screens, papers, voices. A dead doctor. A journalist turned gunman. A beaten woman revealed to be a former classmate. Niran Williams arrested, institutionalized, stripped of secrecy at last. For the first time, nothing was hidden. And everyone was waiting for Esther Dara to speak.

“Evelyn, calm down,” Kiya pleaded.

“I need to see Williams!” Esther’s voice cracked, raw with a desperate, nostalgic hunger.

“Esther, stay in bed,” Yada intervened, but the name Esther only seemed to trigger a more violent reaction. Esther kicked back the thin hospital sheets. When the doctor stepped forward with a sedative, she shoved him away with strength born of pure adrenaline.

In a flash of movement that shocked them all, Esther reached out and snatched the handgun tucked into Kiya’s waist holster. She backed into the corner, the cold steel trembling in her hand as she pointed it at the people who claimed to love her.

“Sweetheart, please,” her mother shrieked, her voice a piercing needle of grief.

“Step back!” Esther screamed, her eyes wild as she looked at her mother with chilling recognition. “Where is Williams? That’s all I’m asking!”

Kiya signaled the medical staff to halt their advance; her eyes locked on Esther’s shaking finger near the trigger. “Everyone, move back. Give her air.”

The room collapsed into chaos. Voices overlapped, orders were shouted, fear thick as smoke. The doctor fled for reinforcements. Nurses gathered beyond the door.

“Kiya,” Yada whispered, staying close to her. “Be careful.”

“Esther, please,” her brother pressed, his face a mask of cowardice and regret.

“No.” Esther’s voice dropped to a sob. She turned the barrel of the gun toward her own temple. The room gasped, a collective intake of breath that sounded like a death rattle. “What are you doing here?” she spat at her mother. “You destroyed my life. You killed the only thing that was real.”

The accusation landed heavily.

Kiya and Yada exchanged a look.

Was this the fracture?

Had Esther disappeared long before Williams ever reentered her life?

“Esther, please look at me,” Yada gathered the courage to move forward, though she feared guns. While Kiya waved her police badge and gestured for the staff not to intervene, sensing the critical nature of the moment.

Esther was not ready to comply. She was determined.

“That girl was harassing you. We saved you from her, and you rewarded us by cutting ties with us,” her mother wailed.

“She never harassed me!” Esther roared, tears finally cascading down her face. “You fabricated it all. You turned a beautiful thing into something ‘perverse’ to protect your precious reputation.”

“You said nothing,” her mother cried. “You let us believe…”

“You never asked the truth,” Esther cut in. “You were never ready to hear it.”

Her voice cracked.

Flashback

The memories rushed back like a tidal wave.

She saw her parents in the headmaster’s office, exuding both power and disgust. She remembered the threats, ranging from the withdrawal of donations to the ruin of the school’s reputation, and, like a slow poison, they had managed to keep the school within the framework of their carefully orchestrated narrative in order to protect their ideologies and egos.

She remembered the dinner table that night, the sound of silver against glass as her father spoke of Williams with such visceral loathing that Esther felt her skin crawl.

She remembered how no one defended the girl from humble origins who had lifted her grades when tutors failed, and had given her the first reason to smile in a life of cold expectations.

Each time she tried to defend herself, the backlash was so violent that she learned to disappear.

Her brother had been silent, while her friends had been the architects of the fire.

The letter. It all started with the letter.

She saw Linda in the locker room again, snatching the blue notebook paper. “Oh my God, a declaration of love.”

The snickering and the whispers grew into a roar of humiliation. “What, she likes girls?”

“Give it back to me, it’s none of your business.” Esther struggles to snatch her dearest belonging.

“Wait! Did she try to kiss you while you studied together?”

She watched the girl she loved be devoured while standing safely on the shore.

From that day on, Esther Dara lived like a ghost.

She loved no one. Allowed no one in. She believed herself cursed, unworthy of love, condemned by cowardice. How could she accept happiness when the first person brave enough to love her had been broken because of it?

She had searched for Williams for years, not to reopen wounds, but to beg forgiveness. To say the words, she failed to say when they were supposed to meet again, before the ambush.

Every night turned into a nightmare of regret. Every time her name was called, she answered with disdain. Her world felt counterfeit until she no longer wanted it. She needed a new life, a new identity.

If Niran Williams had died that day, then Esther Dara had died right alongside her.

End

“Oh, Williams,” she whispered, the gun still pressed against her head. “If you knew how sorry I am. If I can’t fix this, if I can’t tell you… Then I don’t want to be here.”

Her fingers tightened.

“Esther,” Her mother collapsed to her knees, sobbing on the floor. “Please, let us talk about it.”

The sadness in the room was palpable, a heavy fog that even the doctor could not pierce. Kiya stepped forward, not to seize the weapon, but to reason with her.

“Do you want to see her?” Kiya asked softly.

Esther’s gaze flickered. “Can you? Kannika, please…”

“I will take you. But you have to give me the gun,” she learned an arm forward.

Esther looked at the weapon, then at the broken woman on the floor who had given birth to her but had never known her.

Then she tightened her grip. “Is this a tactic to get your gun?”

“You know I never fail my promises, right?”

They held each other’s gaze.

Esther remembered all the times Kiya had pushed her forward when she was too afraid to take initiative. The same gun she had dreaded seeing on her friend’s belt at the detective’s house, now clutched in her hands, ready to bring this tragic story to an end.

“Please,” kiya whispered. “Trust me.”

Slowly, she placed the weapon into Kiya’s open palm. When the nurses rushed in to restrain her, Kiya stepped forward like a shield. “Back off,” she commanded. “We’re leaving.”

“Madam, she is a patient…”

“We know,” Yada added, stepping to Esther’s side. “But she is going to see the only person who can heal her.”

Kiya threw her jacket over Esther’s shoulders, hiding the hospital gown. As they walked toward the exit, they passed Linda standing there, destroyed by guilt, the architect of a tragedy born from childish curiosity.

“I’m sorry,” Linda whispered, too late.

But Esther did not stop. She did not look back. She walked past the monsters of her past, her eyes fixed on a distant point.

“Are you sure about this?” Yada whispered to Kiya as they reached the car, dodging a swarm of journalists.

“If I don’t do this,” Kiya replied quietly, “I’ll regret it forever, just like her.”

Author’s Note

Remorse is a slow poison that gnaws at the marrow of the bone. It asphyxiates the soul until the mind loses its way, seeking the only light it ever truly knew: hope and forgiveness.