Chapter 4

4: 4

The major crimes unit cracked a big case, and for the first time ever, Aaron got drunk.

Leona took my car to go pick him up, and had a courier drop a hotel key card off to me.

By the time I got there, she was lying against Aaron's chest.

Her dress had come loose, and she turned her head to me and said, pitiful:

"Sis, just let me have this once."

"You chose Dad, and look how perfect your life turned out. Just give Aaron to me as compensation, okay?"

So righteous. So shameless.

I called the police on the spot and had her committed to a psychiatric hospital.

But she called Aaron, saying the orderlies were abusing and assaulting her, crying and begging him to save her.

"I know, my sister hates me, she wants to teach me a lesson..."

"I know I was wrong... Aaron, help me, beg her to let me live."

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I shouldn't be alive, I shouldn't have liked you, I should just die..."

The moment she saw Aaron, she came down off the rooftop.

Bared the shocking wounds on her arms, on her neck.

Aaron's brow furrowed hard, and he suddenly asked me:

"Harper, do you understand how frightening it is for you to go after a young girl like this?"

"She did something wrong, but that's no excuse for you to take revenge by any means possible!"

"Inciting someone to commit deliberate harm carries a sentence too."

I froze.

In that moment, I felt like he wasn't my fiancé, wasn't the man I loved.

And we weren't in our wedding home.

We were in an interrogation room.

He was the forensic profiler, and I was the criminal.

I didn't say anything. I just took off the ring and set it on the table.

Aaron stared at me, and a man who was always calm, his chest rose and fell.

"Refusing to answer? You want to break up? Then let's break up."

"I can't stand a speck of dirt in my eye. Wrong is wrong. Running from it doesn't solve anything."

After the sudden, brutal end of us,

my mental state was terrible, and I nearly stepped off a cliff.

When Aaron found out, he flew to me overnight and cared for me a full day and night.

In the end, he said to me:

"Stop pretending."

"Leona showed me your medical file. You're perfectly fine. Not even malnourished."

"Harper, we're not right for each other. Let's end it here."

He let go of my hand, turned, and pulled up his suitcase.

Outside the door, the girl he'd taken on as his student, Leona, was waiting, eager and expectant.

Something in my nerves twitched, jump after jump.

Leona's face swelled and spun in front of my eyes.

I could hear her laughing, mocking,

could see her pulling faces at me, smug, pinching wounds of every kind into her own skin, fake made real.

I rushed out like a madwoman and asked:

"Is Leona the only one who's right for you?!"

"Aaron, you believe her over me?"

He frowned at me, looking at me like some crazy woman.

Finally he sighed. "Harper, go rest first."

"We both need to calm down."

After that, we never saw each other again.

But he still answered my messages, patiently, tirelessly.

Every week he had someone bring flowers to my ward, jasmine and sweetbriar and roses, taking turns.

Every single one he'd picked out himself.

The day I improved enough to be discharged, I got his invitation letter.

"Let's go watch the sunrise over Mount Rainier together. Harper, I can't lie to myself and not love you."

"So let's face these problems together."

But what we ended up facing was the video of Leona being kidnapped.

In one corner of the video, the rose tattoo on the back of the kidnapper's employer's hand showed—exactly the same as mine.

I became the prime suspect.

Sitting in the iron chair, facing Aaron's cold questioning, I said nothing.

"I didn't order it."

"If you can find the evidence, go ahead and arrest me."

I had no evidence. I couldn't prove myself.

By the time I finally uncovered that horrifying truth,

I had already died on Mount Rainier, with no chance left to say it out loud.

There was a knock at the bathroom door, and the heavy voice of a technician came through.

"Mr. Abbott, you need to come see this."

He was holding up the analysis report, his hand shaking.

"The contents of the final letter—it's too... terrible!"