I was so caught up in reading what he wrote to me that I didn’t realise Lucas got out of the room with Marshall’s lifeless body.
I turn my attention back to the journal, shoving aside the tears, and continue reading his last words.
I love you, Anmara. I should’ve told you these words more often. Your face illuminated every time I said them to you, even though they were in vain for me. The feeling of satisfaction knowing you were next to me and you were happy with my fake presence was enough.
I asked you to marry me when I was almost at the end of this tunnel. I wanted to tell them for real on our big day. But as close as I was, I didn’t even process that the human emotion was the only one missing from my experiments. I cannot figure out why I haven’t thought about the fact that the only way tobe truly human was… to have a real component of a person’s humanity.
I am so sorry that we didn’t have our happy-ever-after, and for all those times when I made you feel like I didn’t love you. I tried to use money to make it up to you as I didn’t have my feelings available. Sometimes I succeeded, but I saw that you needed more. I just couldn’t push you aside.
I wanted you for me only. Forever.
That is probably what I put too much into my drug. An obsession that killed probably too many people. And now it’s in the wrong hands because of me, because I didn’t realise how dangerous this friendship you had with her was.
I didn’t tell you until now. It looked like an innocent moment, but I think you should know.
I caught Bianca going through my documents when she was visiting us, after the moment I got angry with you.
And not any documents, but the ones with the quantities I used for my last experiments.
I knew her story. I knew that she was a chemist almost as good as I was and that she worked for Lucas. Yes, I kept the evidence of the ones from your past and present, but only to keep you safe and to make sure nobody had you except me.
But what I didn’t know was the fact that she tried to replicate my drug and that she also worked for the wrong people.
Her excuse from when I caught her was that she was searching for the engagement ring that I’ve bought for you, Anmara. To see if it was worthy of you. Considering that it was after you found the receipt, I thought her explanation was reasonable.
But now… I realise how naive and stupid I was at that moment. From all the moments in my life, that is the one I deeply regret.
I’m not sorry for all the moments we lived together. From the small ones where your eyes burned with happiness when you were buying yourself a new book with superb artistic edges to the intimate moments and the sexual ideas that you accepted, however strange they would’ve seemed to you. I saw a strong urge deep inside your eyes when I was suggesting them to you.
I know that I wasn’t the best. Not even in those moments. I couldn’t help you reach pure pleasure because I didn’t want to do that before I could truly feel what it meant to love and to be loved.
And now it’s too late, and I’m sorry.
I’m starting to lose myself. I can feel my mind slipping through my fingers to an obscure universe, so I’ll try to be brief, even though I have so much to say to you, Anmara. You have no idea…
What’s important for me to mention is that I wish you would get someone who will offer you all the love in the world. Not like I offered you, but how I feel it in this moment: human and alive.
I saw the way Lucas looks at you. I’m not blind. He’s always watching you with a protective aura, with a love as big as I always saw in your eyes for me, and that made me lose it the moment I saw him next to you. I also want him to read these words and to know that I want him to be the one who protects you with his life every second of it. To discover how much you meant to me and to take this commitment like he always did.
Until death do you part, like I couldn’t offer you. That is my wish for you, Anmara. To always be safe and close to the person you love the most in the universe.
The next words are for Anora, because I know she is always paying attention to everything that’s happeningaround you: take care of Anmara, or I will come from my ashes and haunt you until there won’t remain even a piece of you.
Yes, I found out about her, but I don’t have time to explain in detail how I did it, so I will let her digest the next words.
I don’t want to see, from wherever I may go, that this extraordinary woman who shares her body with an animal like you will have her heart shattered into a million pieces that she will have to collect alone. I don’t want to see her trying to take her own life again because of you, because you were too reckless and didn’t have one bit of clarity regarding who you can and who you can’t kill.
Protect her with your soul. Protect her body until you disappear into thin air, because I can’t say that to you until you die.
And especially for you, Anmara: I love you more than I’ve ever loved someone in my whole life, and I want to repeat these words however much I can until I’m gone. I want these to be the last words that I’ll ever say to you.
Or, in my case, that I write.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
