Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
DIORA
I may be done with my mission, but it doesn’t feel like I’m done. Yara Holdings’ dead body is being cremated at the Headquarters, and yet I don’t feel… done? Accomplished?
I tried to get Elliot to show his damn face. I went knocking on his apartment door again. I could’ve broken the damn door down, I even brought an ax, but… I’m fucking tired.
He wouldn’t open his door, and we are back at square one. If this is still about the damn scar, I think I’m going to lose my mind.
He has to get over that. I’m a killer. More than that, I’m bad, evil. I’m going to get hurt.
The white metal door of my little greenhouse in the woods creaks as I step inside. Surrounded by my lovely flowers and herbs, I’m almost at peace. Almost to a point where the drag of the burn in my chest doesn’t hurt. Yet the fire is still there. Lighting the fire, never letting it go out.
My workbench lights up under the lamp. Fighting the darkness that threatens to swallow it, and I just can’t fight anymore.
Elliot Jay, you’re one annoying piece of shit. Did he ruin my sense of accomplishment? Do I feel this way because he left me?
Checking my phone, not a single notification has come through since I sent that text before I left. All I wanted was him. I don’t need him to protect me. I just want him.
I pick up my shears, the heavy shiny metal in my hands, and grip them hard. A tear falls down my face, landing on the shears, and I honestly could laugh. Truly.
A sob escapes my lips as I swing my arm aimlessly, throwing the damned things across the room. Next is a glass vase, and then a pair of pliers, a cup of dirt.
I tear up the foxglove stems with my bare hands and throw them. A flurry of pinks, purples, and whites blur my vision as I keep ripping.
Same with the elephant ear plants, my daisies, my oleander.
My hands burn, and I can’t stop destroying…
destroying everything. I move across the room, ripping whatever my hands touch, and I fall in front of the one tree in here.
Angel trumpets hang off the small branches above me, and I wish they’d shower me with their poison.
I wish they would wash away the pain in my chest with a pain I’m familiar with.
One I know how to heal. My knees hit the floor as the sobs wrack through me.
All the memories of Mom, Dad, and Juliet flow as Elliot’s rejection stings through my veins. How could I be so stupid?
Why would he choose me? We both may be killers, but that doesn’t mean he’ll accept me. My… my love. My love.
I love that man.
Oh my god, I love Elliot Jay. Shit.
I turn around, away from the tree, a lash of anger scorching my senses.
My greenhouse is a mess, and yet it isn’t messy enough. My gloveless hands rip apart my remaining plants. I throw anything I can grasp and kick around the boxes too heavy for me to pick up. This fire won’t die.
It won’t die.
Covered in sweat, dirt, and tears, I plop to the ground. My knees burn at the harsh contact with concrete and I stare at my mess. My masterpiece.
Emotions are a funny thing.
They take over when you least need them to, and what’s even funnier:
Once you turn them on, you can’t turn them off.
“Diora,” Juliet calls as soon as I shut the door behind me and set my keys in the bowl next to the door.
I can’t fight the relief covering my face.
Maybe things really are how they are supposed to be.
I have my sister. My targets are dead. Maybe I can live in this world, where good and evil can mix, and I can fit right in.
Maybe I don’t want Elliot, after all. Maybe I never needed him, or Mrs. Jay, or the Society. I need my sister. I need the one person who loves me and that’s it.
“Juliet?” I ask, moving into the living room to find her.
I haven’t seen her for a while, like really seen her, now that I think about it.
I’ve been so wrapped up in everything, I haven’t noticed her hiding in her room again.
Fuck, I’m a terrible sister. She stands in the middle of the living room, tense. “What’s wrong?”
Only now do I register the tear-stained face and the swollen eyes. I see the subtle shakes in her fingers and the volume of her hair, high and slightly poofy, from her wet fingers running through it.
My eyes stray to the TV, that is still blaring. The news channel is on, and the host rambles on and on about something I can’t compute in my brain. All I know is the deep sense of dread filling my stomach.
I don’t have to guess what’s gotten her so emotional.
I don’t have to add another person to the hit list.
Unless that person I add is me.
“Why, Diora? Why?” Her voice cracks and breaks, and she’s coughing. I can’t move. I’m cemented to the floor, and all I do is stare. We stare at each other, her with disgust and me—it’s like someone cut open my body and put on a show of people staring at my insides.
Except, the show of people is just one person. The one person I love more than anything. My big sister.
“Who told you?” I ask, knowing if it was a person and not her brilliant mind, she wouldn’t tell me. Not because she thinks that someone betrayed me, but because she’s afraid of what I’ll do to them. Seeing the TV on, she probably figured it out on her own, but I—I’m not ready for her to know.
“No one had to tell me. The connection wasn’t hard to make. Why? Why must you hurt me like this, Dee?”
I swallow hard and stare at her. I need to move, but I can’t. I want to hug her, tell her everything is fine and go back to pretending. She’s spent our whole lives pretending there wasn’t something wrong with me. Why stop pretending now?
“Haven’t I given enough?” she yells, and it sounds through the apartment and slaps me across the face. “Has my pain not been enough? It had to go and feed the little monster, too?”
“Monster?” My voice comes out as a whisper. That is the final crack. The final resolve in my armor. I can move now, and I do. I head back for the front door. I stop when my keys are back in my hand and spin toward her, probably for the last time. I can’t stay here. Not when she’s calling me a–
“Yes, monster, Diora. What kind of person goes around killing people? And don’t you dare say it was for me, because we both know damn well that it wasn’t.” She looks me in my eye when she says it. She yells so hard she spits, and the tears from her eyes won’t stop pouring.
Maybe I need this. This isn’t Mom or Dad, or my therapist, or that damn politician who hurt her. This is Juliet.
Juliet is calling me a monster.
I’m a monster?
She’s ranting, mumbling, I don’t know. I can’t process her words. But a monster? A monster? I heard that word loud and clear.
“Oh, baby. My little baby, Diora. You’re a monster.” My mom’s voice rings in my ears, and I’m stuck in a time I try not to remember. It’s like I can feel the knife piercing my skin now, the scar coming back to life.
Her rant stops, and silence fills the room. My eyes shoot to hers. I should feel bad for making her this way.
She’s my sister. She’s good.
She’s always been the good one. Best behaved, well-mannered, best grades, and destined for an even better future. Juliet Moss is kind and sweet and because she is good, I don’t have to feel bad about being worse than bad, evil. I am evil, and she is good, and I think we both know that.
She is the good to my evil. But the curtain of who I truly am has been pushed back and she seems… surprised. Like she didn’t know. But she does. She had to known this whole time.
Her eyes pour hurt and sadness out of her body and onto her face. She’s feeling everything. Yet, I feel nothing.
In this moment, she’s a stranger. Just another person who doesn’t understand.
She’s like everyone else, and I feel nothing.
I’m sure my stare is blank and cold, because she shivers and her shoulders slump.
She collapses onto the floor. Her sobs wrack her body, and she holds herself, her arms wrapped around herself.
Any other time, I would console her, as she’s done for me since we were kids, but not this time. I’m a monster. I’m selfish. I’m evil.
I’m an evil she can’t live with.
I turn on my heel and head for the door. She shouldn’t have to live with a monster, and I shouldn’t be where I’m not wanted. She calls my name, but all I hear is monster.
A monster to the best, kindest person on this planet.
I should’ve controlled myself better.
I should’ve picked different targets.
I should’ve left her out of it.
Mom was right. My brain is hard-wired differently, and that’s why I should’ve stayed away from Juliet. Instead, I went off and hurt her. Badly. She can’t stop staring at me. Watching my every move, my every breath, as if I had the capabilities to kill her.
My own sister.
The one person who never pushed me away because I was different… until today.
I can’t be with good and be evil myself. I have to let one go.
This is one of those moments. One of those moments when life strikes the perfectionism that your happiness you were growing to depend on, only to remind you, you are but a mere human and that perfectionism doesn’t exist.
“Go,” Juliet mutters at what must be the ending of the rant. Her chest heaves as she points a finger.
“Go where?” My voice comes out small. Going against her is the worst feeling I've encountered.
“I don’t know,” she says. Sweat drips from her forehead as she storms past me and yanks open the door. “But I can’t stay with a monster.”
The word hits like a lashing and I gaze toward the door. I contemplate fighting her on this, verbally, but I… I’m so fucking tired.
“If that’s what you wish,” I mumble, fisting my keys and walking right back out the door.
Walking down the hall, the elevator dings and the doors open to reveal Mrs. Jay. Of damn course. Her pastel purple tweed suit set is a blur as the tears that should’ve come moments ago arrive. Her kitten heels clack as she gets closer, and I’m moments away from falling to my knees.
I look at her face. She’s smiling, with her arms open, and I can’t help but wonder if I’m hugging the devil, my true maker.
I can’t help but wonder if Mrs. Jay and I were on the same level this whole time.
Maybe I am a monster.