and it’s my choice if she lives or dies.
“I’m not the villain in this story, and I won’t let you make me one,” I say calmly, adjusting the full skirt of my navy-blue gown. “But I need to know. Why? Was it the money? Because father set aside a generous allowance for you. Or was it because you just hated me and wanted to be rid of me?”
She shakes her head and drops the bloody knife, splashing red all over the white marble floors. She rests her hands on her knees and takes a moment to collect herself before lifting her eyes to mine. “It’s because I’m supposed to be the pretty one. Because I’m supposed to be what others aspire to be. You were an annoyance to me after your father died, but after you started getting older and more beautiful, I couldn’t stand to look at you anymore. I wanted you out of my life and out of this life.” She’s breathing heavily as she waits for my reply. Her face is lined with the bitter hatred she’s had for me all of these years.
“You wanted to kill me because I grew to be what you perceived as prettier than you?” I ask, cocking my head at the woman who is growing uglier and uglier with each word that crosses her lips.
She scoffs. “No, I wanted you dead because others perceived you as prettier than me.”
“Even when faced with the truth, when faced with your possible demise, you still can’t set aside your vanity.” I take a step toward her and raise her chin to lift her eyes to mine. She swats my hand away but gazes up at me all the same.
“You didn’t take my life, stepmother, but you’ll always have my sympathy for never being able to see yourself as anything other than a pretty face. For never being able to see me as the daughter you could have had. The one who could have loved you unconditionally, no matter how you looked.”
She drops to the floor but only for a moment before leaping to her feet, once again holding the knife. “Ahhhh!” she yells as she attempts to slash my face, but she only manages a small scrape across my cheek because I’m too fast, spinning around and moving beside her with my back to the window.
Chase runs toward us, but not before she tries again, screaming from deep within her throat, knife raised high with a determined bloodshot look in her hate -filled eyes. She lunges at me, and this time I duck under her arm. She skids across the tile on her own blood and crashes into the window blade first, puncturing a hole that cracks the glass wide open with the force of her body slamming against it. Her eyes go wide when the realization of what she’s done sets in. She spins on her heel at the very end of the ledge in an attempt to regain her balance, but it’s too late. Her arms circle in the air as she falls backward into the night, six stories below to the concrete patio.
And her death.
“Are you hurt?” Chase asks, spinning me around to inspect my body for injuries as the cold night air blasts through the window like a wind tunnel.
I shake my head. “No. I feel…relieved. She wasn’t capable of love, nor change. In a way, death was her only way out of the miserable life she created for herself. In a way, her death makes me feel even more alive.”
He taps out a message on his phone then grabs my hands, raising my hands to his mouth and kissing each of my knuckles. “Now you understand how I feel. To be part of the life and death cycle, it’s…”
“Powerful,” I finish for him.
He shakes his head, and his eyes meet mine. His hand clasps over the back of my neck as he brushes his lips over mine. “I was going to say erotic.”
“That too,” I manage to whisper as my entire body leans toward him like it knows whose arms it belongs in as much as my brain does. Chase. Always Chase. “Wait, what about the police?”
He smiles. “Taken care of, princess. The Constantines owe me a favor. She’ll be gone in an hour and so will any evidence that she was ever here.”
“Wow, what’s it like to have that kind of power?” I ask, in awe of this man I love.
“They owe me a favor.” He lifts me