Chapter 41 BETH
BETH
I do.
Terror had struck Braemont.
It wore the shape of a bloodthirsty monster who turned the city into his playground, people into pieces, spilling blood wherever the impulse struck.
It had been seven days of uninterrupted horror. Headlines were screaming, and church bells had been mourning without rest.
Rowan McRae was dead.
But so was Alastair McLeod two days after.
Followed by Taylor Johnson.
Then Ewan MacGregor.
Finland Campbell.
Hampshire Buchanan.
Lachlan Stewart.
Rory MacAllister.
Duncan Sinclair.
Tavish MacLaughlin.
Ten names.
Ten endings.
I knew all of them.
Some had sat a few rows away from me during class. Some had bumped into me while I was searching for Kenzo in the football team’s locker room, some walked up to me at the community park. And some simply handed coffee to me with a soft smile, learning my order by heart, stealing my attention.
Oh, I knew all the ten names too well. Because once upon a time, I had let them touch me. Had called it two adults doing adult things. I had done more than kiss them. I had wrote their names in my diary.
Their deaths were wrong in the same way. Too deliberate, not rage, not chance.
I didn’t need proof or a confession. I knew who had done it.
He was sitting right next to me.
Zaghan had called the killings accounting.
I was the one who wrote their names. He simply crossed them out. One line through each name. Clean and final.
He said it was cleansing. He said he was erasing the hands that had ever touched me. Erasing the memories of me ever being with someone else. He said he was correcting the past, fixing the wrongs, rewriting the story.
He said no one who knew what I tasted like was allowed to live.
“I’ll be going back to Glenfallow in the morning.”
I didn’t flinch, and no movement from my body indicated that I heard or cared about the information he just shared.
My head rested on the window, empty eyes staring into nothing as the news of all the deaths, the agonising cries of parents–knowing I was responsible for this–replayed like a video on a loop in my head.
The law enforcement had latched onto the case, every headline only deepened the frustration.
It was safe to say, they had accepted that they were merely chasing a ghost. A curfew had been set.
6pm, everyone needed to be indoors. Everyone had all collectively agreed that a serial killer was on the loose.
They just couldn’t understand why he seemed to be targeting high-school teachers and students.
I hadn’t slept in days. Didn’t even remember the last time I tasted food.
Maybe I did but forgot. I hadn’t been myself.
Sometimes I felt empty, hollowed out. And sometimes I felt too much, that I began to suffocate under the weight of guilt, a relentless parasite gnawing at my soul, a cancer metastasizing in my chest.
“Did you catch what I said?” Zaghan’s gruff voice racked me back into the black SUV gliding down the familiar road that led to my house. It had been another seven hours of school. But I would be lying if I remembered anything I was taught today.
“You are coming with me,” he said with a certain, final tone. If I wanted to protest, I wasn’t sure.
“I can’t.” My voice was barely above a whisper when I finally spoke. Too drained and emotionally wrecked to shape the words into the fury clawing at me from the inside.
“I wasn’t asking,” he stated, his eyes fixed on his iPad, tone infuriatingly calm.
My fingers curled on my lap. “So what? Is this an order?” I rose a brow, something maddening stirring in my gut as I glared at his side profile.
“It’s not a request.” He still didn’t spare me a glance. “We leave in the morning.”
“No.” I shook my head, defiance crackling through me like a live wire.
“No, seriously, you don’t get to do that.
You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to put me on a leash and drag me around like some pet then expect me to obey.
You don’t get to do all these crazy things and expect me to be alright. ”
He finally lifted his gaze. “You are not on a leash.” There was a pause, then with a quiet, lethal certainty, he added, “You’re mine. Which means you belong wherever I am.”
I let out a sharp, bitter laugh. “Yours?” My voice rose, drenched in venom. I’d had enough of this man.
“You know you are literally so fucking delusional, right? Like what makes you think that just because you fuck me, you own me? Do you think that’s how relationship fucking works?
” I exhaled sharply, shaking my head. “I am not yours. Not your girlfriend. And God forbid, not your wife. So no, I’ll not be following you to your silly little castle because you’ve decided to play some ruthless king and his subservient queen, your majesty. ”
A muscle jumped in his jaw, something dark flickering in his gaze, brief but lethal. Then he inhaled sharply and shifted his attention to the soldier behind the wheel.
“Turn the car around.” The words sliced through the air like a blade.
“What?” The question spilled from my lips, raw and breathless.
“To St. Michael’s Basilica,” he ordered, and though I could already spot the roof of my house a couple of blocks away, the tyre screeched as the driver made a bold U-turn until the car skidded down the road again.
St. Michael’s Basilica was a Catholic church.
This was a nightmare. A joke gone too far, right? I glanced at him, but he had never been a man full of humor.
“What do you think you are doing?” I demanded, my voice cracking under the weight of fear.
“You said you’ll not come with me because you are not my wife,” he reminded me. “Well, as usual, I have to fix that.”
???
A sound that mirrored a mournful groan echoed as the large oak door to the old church split open, a sudden wave of nausea hitting me. Sweat pickled under the curve of my collar, a few pebbling on my forehead.
Until we arrived here, and even when he made a stop at an expensive store to purchase wedding rings, nothing felt real. But staring at the serene vastness of the church, with the strong aroma of lit incense hitting me, reality came like a raging storm, threatening to sweep me off my feet.
I lingered on the threshold, my feet too heavy to take the next step because the next step signified acceptance, and acceptance meant my life was over.
“We don’t have all day.” His voice was rough, and unkind, as it reached my ears, his cold fingers curling around my wrist, pulling me though gently, inside the church.
As his grip on my hand tightened, so did my chest as the sordid reality cloying around me began to suffocate me.
Scanning the room, all I saw was the centuries-old brick walls, and the flickering candlelight, their glow dull and saddening.
My gaze travelled to the altar ahead and when my eyes fell on the priest, nothing about his somber stillness and tired grey eyes eased my misery. Of course, he wouldn’t care. He was just a messenger of God, nothing but a passive instrument of the covenant and faith.
Shifting my gaze from him, I looked around in search of anyone, anything to save me from this. But there was nothing. The crucifix looming over me suddenly seemed to be mocking me.
You would think coming to a church was a pathway to redemption, happiness, and freedom, but here I was, in a place I had been taught to seek salvation, about to be shackled down in a sham of matrimony to a man who definitely wasn’t the son of God.
“Please,” I whispered, my voice barely audible enough for me to hear. “D-don’t do this.”
We were just a few steps away from the altar, and the weight of what was about to unfold settled on my legs like a chain, pulling me back, each step growing heavier and heavier.
“Zaghan, please.” I forcefully halted, and when he gently turned his head enough for me to catch a fraction of his face, I shook my head frantically, hoping for once, he could hold my desire over his selfish one.
To my surprise, his hand on my wrist actually dropped. And I didn’t hesitate to retract it to my side. My body trembled, my heart racing as I offered a silent boon that this wasn’t another hope he would offer me just to watch me crumble in despair when he would crush it with his bare hands.
“Fine,” he said, his voice smooth as he turned fully to face me, his hands falling inside his pockets. “Go.”
What?
My heart soared, and a cry of victory sat at the forefront of my chest. But perhaps I was a little more foolish than I thought, forgetting this was Zaghan.
With him, there was really nothing such as a choice.
Even what looked like a choice would always lead you back to him, trap you in a web you would not be able to escape from.
I heard the sudden sounds of multiple footsteps behind me, an indication that more of the audience had just walked in.
Slowly, I turned just a fraction, and saw a scene that caused an invisible glass to shatter around me. It felt like my soul left, leaving only my body without bones as I stumbled backward, lips trembling, eyes burning before a tear escaped, the warm liquid trailing down my cheek.
“K-Kenzo,” I stuttered. The people that walked in were two soldiers and Kenzo. One of them had a gun pressed against Kenzo’s temple, the poor boy trembling in his shoes as fear and terror warred for dominance in his eyes.
“W-what are you doing?” I turned to Zaghan. “What’s going on?”
“If you step out of this room, you’ll never see even my shadow again, Elizabeth,” he swore. “But of course, that’ll be at the cost of your little friend’s life.”
“What?” Horror wove into that single word.
“So, what’s it gonna be?” He took a step closer to me, his fingers grabbing my trembling chin. “This marriage that you detest so much, or the life of your…” He trailed off, his eyes shifting slowly to Kenzo, a malicious smile lifting the curve of his lips. “…soulmate, am I right?”
A vein feathered along his jaw, as his gaze returned to me, dark like a starless night.
He used Kenzo because he knew exactly where to strike. He knew as desperate as I was to be freed from this captivity, I would never let him die. But in a rare instance where I actually chose my freedom over my best friend’s life, it still didn’t matter.
Because he’d read my diary, killed all my ex lovers whose names I’d written down.
He saw all the things about Kenzo I buried in my heart long ago, the years I loved him for until I realised he could never love me like that.
It didn’t matter to Zaghan that Kenzo was not into girls and would never be interested in me romantically.
It didn’t matter because Zaghan was a jealous man, and If I had once looked at Kenzo with love, with the desire to belong to him, that automatically made Kenzo a threat.
Zaghan’s mission never changed. It had always been to erase anything that stood between him and owning me completely.
He got me. He got me so good. And in the end, he won. Because Zaghan always won.
Was there even time to bargain or think? I would never weigh my freedom with Kenzo’s life. Because what was freedom, really? If he let me go, I would return to Mother. And Mother already staked a claim on me long ago. I would never truly be free. Because my life had never really been mine.
There was no need to protest. I clutched tightly onto a fistful of my plaid skirt as if that could harness some magical wind to whisk me away from here.
Wiping the tears on my cheek with the back of my palm, I placed my hand on his.
At the altar, before the priest where we stood facing each other, I could feel his gaze on me, not a single word uttered, but his dark eyes spoke of vindictive and wicked things, the cruel and irredeemable things he would do if I dared to change my mind.
The priest was saying something, but most of his words were a blur, each sentence being drowned out by the roaring of my rapidly racing thoughts.
“Do you, Beth Fraser, take this man, Callan Raskov, as your lawfully wedded husband?”
What?
Callan?
My eyes widened as the corner of his lips lifted into a jagged crooked grin, something dark flashing across his eyes.
He was fucking prepared.
It was still Zaghan. The bastard knew what he was doing.
Callan Raskov was the legally documented and verifiable name.
Zaghan only existed as a phantom borrowing another’s body.
If the marriage certificate ever read Zaghan, that would put his ownership of me at risk.
Because I could later claim the marriage was nullified as there was no one named Zaghan, and this time, the law would stand by me.
Zaghan wouldn’t risk losing me over technicality. He wasn’t leaving any door unlocked, not emotionally, not legally, not even spiritually. Whether the priest said his name or not, he still got to claim me.
A hard squeeze of my hand racked me back to the scene playing before me. I glanced around, the priest was waiting for me expectantly and Zaghan was getting impatient.
I hadn’t answered the big question they asked me.
Thinking about that answer alone made my throat feel tight, as if an invisible noose had been wrapped around my neck, dragging me across a field of thorns.
The brick walls of the church began to close in, the pressing in my chest weighing a ton.
When my lips finally parted, silence stretched for a moment, a second, a minute.
The word that was sitting on my tongue was No.
But as my gaze flickered to him, and the darkness in his eyes twinkled, I glanced to my left, and the gun was still very pressed to Kenzo’s head.
“Yes.” Three letters became the heaviest word I had ever spoken in my life as tears rolled down my cheeks. “Yes, I do.” It tasted like ashes and my throat felt like sandpaper.
The priest’s voice droned off as my world shattered in front of me. And in that cruel unfold of reality, all I felt was the weight of the cold ring that he slipped into my finger, the metal biting into my skin like a shackle.
My eyes momentarily snapped shut, more tears trailing a cold path down my cheeks. In the darkness of my despair, I finally came to terms with the fact that I had given myself away, not to a prince charming that I had dreamt of for years, not for love, but for the cruelest of bargains.
The priest declared us as man and wife, placing his hand on our heads and blessing the sacred union.
But this union was not sacred at all. It was not a vow either. It was defeat, a surrender to darkness.