26. Chapter 26
Icollapsed over the porcelain bowl, retching until my stomach was empty and my throat burned. I curled my body around the base of the toilet, staring blankly at the grout lines.
The glowing screen of my phone on the bathmat told me I was already late for work.
I didn’t give a damn.
With trembling fingers, I tapped out a detached text to my supervisor, stating I’d be a few hours late.
The response was a sterile, immediate “Okay.”
Let them fire me. Let the whole world unravel for all I cared.
What did a nine-to-five matter when a monster was walking free?
The bathroom tile was a freezing, unforgiving shock against my flushed cheek.
My vision swam in nauseating, jerky loops as the residual effects from last night’s vodka fought for control of my nervous system.
A brutal, rhythmic throbbing hammered against the inside of my skull; every stray sliver of morning light cutting through the blinds felt like a physical stab to my eyes.
Dragging myself up by the edge of the sink, I stumbled into the kitchen.
My hands clattered against the medicine cabinet before I managed to twist open a bottle of painkillers.
I shook three pills into my palm and swallowed them dry, my throat convulsing.
I white-knuckled the edge of the kitchen counter, forcing my breath shallow and steady as my stomach threatened to violently reject them.
But the pills stayed down.
For ten agonizing years, I had carried the grief of my family's slaughter like a physical weight in my chest. I had accepted the horrific, bloody finality of their deaths only because the universe had offered a shred of cosmic balance: Ethan Vance was rotting in prison.
I used to comfort myself with the quiet, dark hope that prison yard justice would eventually find him—that an "accident" would ensure he left that penitentiary in a body bag.
I should have known better.
I should have remembered how deep his family's roots crawled into the fertile soil of corrupt power.
In a broken world, his release shouldn't have shocked me.
This sickening script played out all too often.
Monsters walked out of prison gates every day—especially the wealthy ones, and especially the handsome ones.
Ethan Vance was a master of both. I vividly remembered the media circus during his trial, the stomach-turning wave of public sympathy because he possessed a sharp jawline and a dimpled, conventionally attractive smile.
The internet had turned him into a viral sensation, thirsting over his muscled forearms, despite his horrific crimes.
It was fucking depraved.
And now, he was breathing fresh air while my mother, my father, and my brother were buried six feet under.
The sheer, staggering unfairness of it clawed at my throat. I wanted to scream until my lungs tore, to shatter every fragile thing left in this apartment until my knuckles bone-deep bled. For ten jaded, numb years, I had felt absolutely nothing. I had practically been a ghost.
But today, the dam had burst, and the emotional whirlwind was tearing me apart from the inside out.
The system is broken, I thought, a cold, hard cynicism settling into my bones as I blindly pulled on a pair of jeans. Justice was a commodity. Criminals could paint the town in blood and wipe their hands clean, so long as they had the right connections and enough money.
Money. The root of every goddamn sin.
My mind suddenly veered toward the Jester. If anyone understood how twisted the concept of punishment truly was, it was him, but right now, thinking about him only made the fire in my chest burn hotter.
I caught my reflection in the dark, blank screen of the television. The broken, grieving woman from ten years ago was gone.
In her place stood someone with nothing left to lose.