Criminal Affinity [18+]

Chapter 39

I let you swim in my,
pool of emotions and I,
drowned in the storm in your mind.

| Vi - Blackwater |

×

Ava watches him turn and disappear into the quarters for Lolitas. She shuffles out of the room with her heart pumping and blood pulsing in her ears. Pain from her cut grounds her and clears her vision. The files. Ava searches her entire room for them, but William must have taken them with him.

Ava doesn't have many life-preserving thoughts as she barges into his study, to find the files splayed open on his desk. Anger becomes an angled, burning spear in her chest. He must have gone through her shit.

He's taking it too far. Way too fucking far.

Too short to sit in his chair, Ava balances herself on her knees on his plush leather seat. Her hands are shaking. It doesn't settle even after her breathing exercise.

Fuck it all to hell.

Ava peels open the brown documents. Her heart kicks into overdrive as her mother's picture swims into her vision. Ava tightly shuts them, grounding herself. Her nervous system is destroyed. It's around this time that she takes three weeks off to work with Marvin, their in-house counselor.

She doesn't have the luxury of him right now. Or anything else.

Ava drags long, calming breaths in before opening her eyes. She imagines calmness like a rock settling deep on the seabed in her stomach. After a few moments, her head clears and her eyes rake over the details of the file.

It's her autopsy file. Dale never let her see it, kindly informing her that it will be too much for Ava. Then she begins reading.

Words cord together in her head way too clinically. Death was likely caused by inhalation of the products of combustion.

Combustion? Her parents died in a car crash. There was no fire mentioned. If it was big enough to kill her mother, it should have killed her too.

Ava reads further. The integrity of the airways was compromised.

Cold realization hits her gut like a staff. It was not a car accident. She has staged many deaths in cars. This was—

A photo of her family home makes her mind and body still. Burned to a crisp, hardly holding up.

Dale had told her that the mansion in her mother's name was sold and that the inheritance money will reflect in her account every month along with her salary once she was eighteen. Ava never questioned it.

Why didn't she ever question it?

Because everyone told her her parents died in a car crash. Everyone.

Her mother died in a house fire. Their house.

Ava dares to read the cause of death again. She missed something.

Multiple stab wounds. Throat slashed.

Ava releases a pained breath.

Her mother didn't die. She was murdered.

Bile rises up to her throat but Ava presses on. Her shaking fingers file through the sheets. The date. The day.

It was a Tuesday, not a Friday night as she remembers. Every Friday night they went out to eat Chinese. She was told details and to her younger self, it all made sense. Driving to her mother's favorite restaurant. Flashing lights. Impact. Head trauma knocked Ava out but it killed her parents. Their bodies were buried next to each other beside the local church.

Months and months of therapy because she couldn't remember.

Or was she made not to remember? Was she made to forget? Did Marvin help her little brain forget all the gnarly details?

Dale lied. Every little thing—he lied to her. He covered up her mother's death, had it erased, and reframed it in Ava's mind. Whoever killed her could still be out there. He let this happen.

Ava shuts her eyes and thinks. She was in the house. She has to remember. She has to.

Nothing comes. An aggravated noise spills from her throat. She closes her eyes again, trying so hard.

Flickering lights, smoke, blood.

Ava trips out of her seat, falling flat on her ass. She has always hated flickering lights, always.

Flickering lights are a dangerous sign of a house fire.

Whoever killed her mom intended to reduce her to a carbonized pile of bones and ashes to cover up the homicide angle. The person thought of everything. How did Ava survive?

Why did they let her live?

Neil. He was willing to give her this information freely. But she killed him. She can't know more.

Ava flips through the pages harder. Her father's file pops up at the end. Almost a blank sheet.

Ava looks away from the sheets, staring straight ahead and her head spins.

Severed left leg found. No body recovered.

Ava shuts the file, tucking it under her arm. She takes the other one and begins moving to the door like a ghost.

Her parents were massacred. She only knew peace in her life because she thought her parents died in a domestic way. They didn't. They were cut to pieces, burnt and destroyed.

And all the fingers point at Dale.