The last normal moment of my life happened in a coffee shop parking lot.
Mom was running late from her meeting - nothing unusual here. Her work always kept her overtime, though she never quite explained what these late meetings entitled. I'd gotten used to waiting in the passenger seat of her Mercedes, music playing softly while I scrolled through my phone.
"Sorry, baby." She slid into the driver's seat, bringing the scent of her signature perfume and coffee. "You know how these things go." Her smile held something tight around the edges tonight, but I didn't think to question it. Just another thing to file away in the growing collection of 'mom's little mysteries.'
"You've got time to grab dinner?" I asked, noticing how her knuckles went white on the steering wheel.
"We better head straight home." She checked her mirrors three times before pulling out. "It's getting late."
I should have noticed then - how her eyes kept darting to the rearview mirror, how she took two wrong turns before getting on our usual route. But I was twenty, invincible, and completely ignorant of the shadows learning in my mother's world.
The black SUV appeared from nowhere.
"Star, get down!" Her scream came too late. The first spray of bullets shattered our windows, turning safety glass into deadly rain. I felt her hand shoving my head down, protecting me even as red bloomed across her white blouse.
Time fractured. Each second stretched into eternity, filled with thunder of gunfire and the squeal of tires. I could smell copper and cordite, and hear my mother's rasping breaths growing weaker.
"Mom?" My voice sounded strange, distant. "Mom, please-"
"Shh, baby." Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. "It's okay. You're okay."
The SUV was gone instantly as it had appeared, leaving only silence and the cooling engine of our car that had somehow drifted to a stop against a guardrail.
"Someone help!" I screamed into the empty street, hands pressing uselessly against wounds that pumped life from the woman who'd given me mine. "Please, somebody-"
"Star." Her fingers found my face, leaving crimson streaks on my cheek. "Listen to me. There are things... things I should have..." A wet cough cuts off her words.
"Save your strength. Help is coming." The lie tasted like ash on my tongue.
She smiled - that same smile that had chased away my many childhood nightmares and some of my teenage heartbreaks. "My brave girl. I'm so sorry..."
Her hand fell away from my face.
They say tragedy changes you. That grief transforms. What they don't tell you is how it happens in increments - in the silent moments after your mother's last breath, in the wail of approaching sirens that come too late, in the realisation that the last normal moment of your life is gone forever.
I died that night too, in a way. The girl who waited innocently in parking lots for her mother's meetings ceased to exist.
In her place, something else was born.
Something that would spend the next four years hunting for answers about why men in a black SUV turned a routine drive home to an execution.
Something that would learn that some questions are better left unasked.
But I didn't know that yet.
All I knew, as I cradled my mother's cooling body and listened to sirens grow closer, was that nothing would ever be the same.
And I was right.
➢ ➣ ➢
"I plead guilty." My smile stretches the skin around my eyes, eyes that has seen too much. No remorse shadows in my expression - why feel shame for serving justice? Every person I've ever hurt earned their pain.
My lawyer's chair scrapes against the floor as panic floods his face. We had a plan - 'not guilty' all the way. But I've never been good at following orders that weren't written in blood.
"You what?!" His whisper carries desperation as he smooths his expensive suit. "Your Honor, may I have a word with my client?" His hands press together like a prayer.
Save you prayers. No saints breathe this air.
The judge can't look away from me, trapped in my gaze like a prey scenting predator. I let my smirk surface, enjoying watching him squirm as realisation dawns.
"Did you know we all carry light and dark within us?" Silence greets my words. I shake my head - these people understand so little. "Everyone has both. What matters is which side we feed, which we starve. Which masks we wear and which truths we bury."
The weight of their stares presses down, trying to suffocate my truth. But I've survived worse pressures. The handcuffs binding me to the table bite cold as I stand.
"Someone in this room wears a mask so perfect, you've all missed what hides beneath." Confusion ripples through the gathered faces - all except one. The judge's composure cracks like thin ice, revealing the darkness underneath.
Finally, he knows I know.
Whispers flutter like nervous birds, but my voice cuts through them. "How does it feel?" I watch him swallow hard. "Getting away with it all these years, thinking you were safe behind that robe? Behind that name?"
My smile turns razor-sharp. "Doesn't feel great, does it, brother?"
Colour drains from his face as heads swivel between us, connecting dots they never thought to look for.
"They didn't know, did they? About our shared blood?" I savour each word like vintage wine. "Or that you murdered our entire family."
Some masks hide monsters. Some monsters wear robes.
✣ ✣ ✣
YOU ARE READING
Pyro
RomanceLet me tell you my story, the one about how I died. Don't worry, though. I came back. They say when someone shares their story, they're sharing their burden. Seeking someone to help carry the weight that bends their shoulders, hoping their troubles...
