[ Highest Rank #101 in Mystery/Thriller ]
Time has passed. Things have changed. Isabeth, Benny, and Faith aren't quite the same. They have blood on their hands, a code they honor, and secrets they keep locked away. The Psychopath Maker knows this an...
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Spelman. That's where Isabeth spent the spring semester. Fall semester, she was pregnant and hidden away on her grandparents' maple farm in Vermont. For Spring Break she went to Haiti to volunteer at one of her parents' seven orphanages. She taught Pierre the art of tying his shoes and Marie the beauty of literature. She put her French to good use teaching world history.
Even in a stained pink Kate Spade fitted tee with sweat pouring down her face, neck, and back dolloping red beans and rice on plates in the never-ending line at the cafeteria—that was opened to the public on Saturday's—she looked flawless with her hair kept back wrapped underneath a Hermes Scarf. She didn't care about the dirt under her nails, the pestilent flies barreling around her face, or the muscle cramps in her hands from peeling bag after bag of potatoes. It was all the atonement she had to pay for the evil that she did.
"Chorus: It is the law: When the blood of slaughter wets the ground it wants more blood." Isabeth read from The Oresteia. "Slaughter cries for the Fury of those long dead to bring destruction on destruction churning in its wake."
Isabeth closed the paperback book she borrowed from Malachi's library and broke his carnal rule, folding it over in her hands. She plopped her head back on the plushy pillow and let the cool gold comforter caress her cocoa butter drunk skin. She stared up at the oat ceiling with heavy eyes and nerves strained like a pulled rubber band about to snap.
"I've spilled the blood of slaughter." She flipped over to face him.
He was the same Gavin Abramov she met on the steps of Sweeney Hall with swollen, purple knuckles because Owen Swain told him to speak English. The same guy that threatened Conrad Hollis with a golf club because he grabbed her butt at Tinsley Calhoun's Yacht Party. She swiped her onyx hair out her face and clenched his listless hand for dear life. His eyes stayed shut with the power of Gorilla Glue; his breathing was steady with every rise and fall of his chest, the monitor dinged with every heartbeat that pumped. It had been fifteen months since Gavin was his truculent self. Even in a coma, he was the same.
Unfortunately, she couldn't say the same. Isabeth Harlow Ovien wasn't the same girl that Zarah and Philip Ovien dropped off at Dawson Preparatory Academy (Dubbed The Billionaire Academy by Forbes) at the tender age of eleven. She wasn't the same jovial youth that use to sit on her grandfather, Luther C. Ovien, a textile tycoon's knee in awe as the Sugar Plum Fairy flawlessly illustrated a variation with poise and elegance. Sadly, she wasn't that carefree, whimsical teenager that walked home from The Rush devouring a lemon gobstopper daydreaming about the adventures the future kept stored away for her in a treasure chest. She was a new creature, one that had two new friends swirling inside her head with their own indistinctive voices.
"I didn't mean to. It just happened." She deeply exhaled the tension building within her. "I know people say that all the time but it's true." Her heart raced at the speed of a train. "I didn't mean to do it. I didn't know he had a family." She sat up raking her hand through her hair. "I didn't know he had children." Mist hazed her eyes blocking out Casper David Friedrich's "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog" hanging above the black leather couch.
