It was what this world made us.
What the Sinclair name demanded we become.
I reach into the inner pocket of my black jacket with steady hands and extract a cigarette—a habit I picked up during those early days of recovery, when the pain was so constant and so consuming that I needed something—anything—to anchor myfocus to a single, controllable point. The lighter takes two flicks to catch, the flame casting a brief, warm glow across my gloved fingers before I bring the cigarette to my lips.
I inhale.
Deep.
The smoke fills my lungs with familiar, acrid warmth, and I hold it there for a count of five before releasing it in a slow, controlled stream that the wind immediately tears apart and scatters toward the sea. The nicotine settles into my bloodstream like an old friend—not comforting, exactly, but present. Reliable. Consistent in a way that nothing else in my existence has been.
People will ask what happened to Vivian Sinclair.
They'll ask what happened to the woman pretending to be Victoria.
And the answer will be the same thing that happened to the real Victoria.
A tragic accident.
Case closed.
I look up at the sky.
The first droplet of rain lands on my cheek—a single, cold point of contact that traces a path down to my jaw like a tear I refuse to shed. The clouds have darkened since I arrived, their bellies heavy and low, pressing down on the world with the weight of everything that's about to be released.
Rain.
Of course it rains now.
Even the sky knows how to be dramatic.
More droplets follow—scattered at first, tentative, as though the storm is testing the waters before committing. They darken the stone beneath my boots, darken the shoulders of my jacket, darken the ash of my cigarette until I have to shield it with my cupped hand to keep it lit.
I close my eyes.
And for the first time in seventy-two hours—or maybe three years, or maybe my entire life—I breathe without purpose. Without agenda. Without calculating my next move or suppressing the correct emotion or performing the version of Victoria Sinclair that the situation requires.
I just breathe.
In.
Out.
The rain falls harder.
"This is the beginning of my final outcry."
The words leave my lips wrapped in smoke, offered to the storm like a prayer spoken in a language only the broken understand. They don't echo. Don't carry. Don't reverberate off the cliff walls or announce themselves to anyone or anything that might care.
They simply exist.
And then the rain takes them too.
Revenge was supposed to set me free.
Instead, it left me hollow.
A girl standing on a cliff with blood under her nails and nothing in her chest, watching the sky open up as if the heavens themselves are trying to wash away what she's done.
