“I have a tattoo! My Nona would murder me if she knew.” She giggled.
“What about the other stuff?” I snickered, turning just as I was slipping on my boxers. Her dark brown eyes shot directly to my groin, and she blushed.
“Oh, she’ll never find out about that. That’s just for me and you to know.”
I pulled on the rest of my clothes and came to sit withher on the bed. She was still in nothing but the sheet she clutched to her beautiful, perfect breasts.
“Do you not want people to know about us?” I raised an eyebrow.
Her eyes widened. “No, I mean, yes, I do. Just, I don’t want them to know about the ins and outs of our...”
“Lovemaking?” I finished.
She blushed again, and it gave me life.
“Yes. That part is just for you and me.”
Good. I needed her to keep that in mind going forward. No one could know that we knew each other. I was about to murder a very important person, and my face was about to be on the news everywhere. If people knew about us, her career would be destroyed.
“Come on, we need to get out of this room. They’ll charge for another night.”
She took her shower and soon we were packed up and leaving the hotel, heading to the bus station. As our previous tickets were null in void, I had to buy new ones.
“One ticket for New York, and one for Los Angeles, California,” I told the ticket booth.
“They are doing basic training in California?” Daisy asked.
I took our tickets and pulled her hand so we could sit and wait.
“No.”
There was a long pause as my news sunk in.
“You lied about joining the army.” Her tone was like a spike to the heart.
“Yes.” I bit back all the emotions threatening to explode. I wanted to scream and cry and change my mind.Let’s be poor, homeless, in love, teenagers!But I knew I couldn’t do that to her. Instead, I sat there in silence.
“Will I ever see you again, Gatsby?” Her lower lip trembled as her eyes grew shiny.
“Yes.” I squeezed her hand. “When I see you next, I’ll be someone worth having.”
My bus came, and we kissed one last time. I stayed with my lips pressed to hers as long as we could before I had to board. I went to the back of the bus and refused to look out the window. I needed to be strong. I closed my eyes, put headphones in, and waited for them to tell me I was in L.A.
Eventually, it happened, and I got off the Greyhound and took smaller transportations to where I needed to be. Dennis’s rules ran through my mind as I moved. Don’t look at anyone, keep my head down, get in, kill his sister, then wait to be caught. The gate was open, like he said it would be. I slipped in and hurried around the back of the house, getting in with ease.
Jessica Wolfsheim, where are you?
I wandered through the house, making noise as I went. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and banged it on various pieces of furniture to get attention.
“Hello, is someone there?” A woman’s voice called from deeper in the house. I followed it, gripping the knife tighter as my hands grew clammy.This is it, Emile.It was too late to go back.
She was a monster.Dennis had told me how she sexually abused him for most of his childhood. His illness prevented him from fighting back, and he couldn’t die with the knowledge that she would inherit all of their family money with no consequences. She needed to go before him, and I agreed.
If I couldn’t kill my rapists, I could kill someone else’s.
I’d looked it up. The number of men being sexually abused by women that stayed silent was startling. I cried for him that night, not just for myself. I wanted to give Dennis his revenge, as I’d never get mine. There were too manywomen on my list. Dennis had just one. I stepped into the grand dining room and spotted the woman from the pictures he’d sent.
“Hello, Jessica.” I swallowed my nerves and straightened my spine. I was large, but I needed to appear scary and massive. Slowly, I began to walk toward her. She didn’t seem shocked to see me here. Instead, she stood and came around the table.
