Rule number two. Catch them before they catch you.
Rule number three. Never go to the same place twice.
Rule number four. Learn everything about them. Leave nothing behind.
Rule number five. Never let it get personal.
She was meant to be nothing more than another body. Another pattern. A piece of the puzzle, I was building one corpseat a time. I was supposed to keep my distance. Watch from the shadows. Finish it clean.
But since last night, something went wrong.
Maybe I was turning selfish. Maybe it was just an instinct. I went up there not to stop her before she jumped so I could kill her first, but to make sure she didn’t jump at all.
Watching her brought me a kind of calm I didn’t recognize.
She lived a life I never had. Ordinary. Full. Watching her move through it felt like stepping into her skin, borrowing her breath, her moments, her warmth.
I had watched many before her. I learned their routines, their weaknesses, and how easily they could be taken.
Catching them was simple.
Catchingherwould never be.
She was always surrounded by people.A social butterfly.Some people noticed. Someone who would be missed.
Even when she spoke too much and always needed to have the last word, she never cut others down. She carried more heart than anyone I had ever watched from afar.
Somehow, she brought back a trace of hope I thought I’d killed years ago.
Maybe she made me believe that a monster like me could be tolerated by someone that pure.
Maybe that was the lie I needed.
When I was a teenager, I used to read about fate. About people who meet to learn lessons. Others who guide you toward the right path. And the rare ones who stay, teaching you how to be loved.
I don’t dream anymore.
What use are dreams to someone like me? Just distant illusions of a boy who wanted to be anyone else but himself.
I knew I was incapable of loving anyone. Everything I did was about control. About filling the hollow space where power neverexisted before. Killing made me feel untouchable. Like I was God. I decided who breathed and who didn’t.
But even God has weaknesses.
She was mine.
So there I stood, in a cemetery in central New York, watching as her father’s body was lowered into the ground. She didn’t shed a single tear.
She never noticed I was standing near a tree, a black hood pulled over my head. My attention drifted to a random headstone nearby.
Nicolas Blake. Fifty years old. Poor bastard.
I lifted my gaze back to her. She now stood at the front, while everyone around her waited, expecting words. A speech. Closure.
But she froze.
No tears fell, but her body was locked in place, her eyes fixed on the crowd until a tall woman stepped in and gently guided her away.
Last night, on the rooftop, she dropped a piece of paper with the wordsI forgive you.
