Three days later, the police called. “Mr. Gray, we’ve found a male body in the southern outskirts of the town. We believe it’s your father…”
I stared at the photo the kidnappers had sent days earlier. The man who raised me for over twenty years—limbs severed, the scene soaked in blood.
I kept staring until I started laughing. Maybe this was better. Maybe now, we were all finally free.
I slipped out of the house unnoticed. However, just as I turned the corner, a car pulled up and nearly hit me.
The window rolled down and a familiar face appeared. “I’ll give you a ride.”
It was Vega, the girl next door I’d grown up with. She didn’t say anything else and neither did I.
Eventually, she broke the ice and asked quietly, “Cyrus, do you regret choosing Luna?” She hesitated, then added, “If you ever change your mind, there’s always a place beside me.”
Five years ago, the tabloids had caught a photo of me in a scandal. The woman in the picture?
She was the same Vega Crawford.
I remember Luna kept demanding answers from me back then.
“Why did it have to be Vega?” She said it like it would’ve been fine if it were anyone else. As if it wasn’t the betrayal, just who I’d done it with.
I couldn't even say a thing. So, I ignored Vega and left her car without a word. After everything blew up back then, Vega left the country.
I couldn’t reach her no matter how hard I tried. Hundreds of unread emails sat unanswered—each one another crack in the foundation of my marriage, my life.
If my father and brother had been the chains holding me down, then Vega was the final match that burned everything to the ground.
I didn’t want any of them anymore.
The police station was packed. Everyone was busy with their own thing, face mostly darkened like the clouds before rain in the sky.
“Has the victim’s family shown up yet?”
“Seriously? The guy’s been dead for three days and no one in his family even noticed?”
A few officers were chatting nearby. I walked up and gave them my father’s name. They glanced at me sideways, their frowns sharp with quiet judgment.
I handed over the phone number from the ransom call and the photo the kidnappers had sent. I also laid it all out—my father’s gambling, the debts, everything.
The police confirmed it was a murder but said the investigation was ongoing. They told me to go home and wait for updates.