Coeur Noir

NeverMore // #TeamSecrets

"One of us is an addict..one of us is a fraud. One of us is haunted. One of us is a monster, one a killer, one a liar. One of us is a predator, one of us a prince. One of us is a seductress. One of us is damned. All of us are killers.

Some secrets should remain dead and buried, not dug back up and placed into the corners of your mind where they fester and drive you mad.

We are the 11 and we all had a secret we desperately wanted to hide. But Julien Jean threatened to reveal what we tried to keep hidden away, so we killed him. We are all guilty but only one of us is the real murderer.

Who?

Welcome to our story.

You will find all 10 Team Secret's entries here, including a bonus entry from our beloved rosaimee . All of the stories lead up to a grand and shocking finale.

As Queen of Team Secrets, I would encourage you to visit the pages of these amazing writers and see what else they have up their sleeves. I hope you will enjoy reading these stories as we have enjoyed writing them."   

nyhterides

This was my first contribution to Decameron 2.0 Anthology with #TeamSecrets. 

If you want to read the complete story written by a great team of writers you can find it here https://goo.gl/EoU5pS

Here comes my contribution to the story. I hope that you will enjoy it. :)

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Nevermore.

Claudio Nicola De Portu
San Juan, June 23, 1920
19:30, Julien Jean Bouvier Mansion

Claudio Nicola De Portu is looking the fragments of his face on the silverware. They are shinny bright like diamonds under the candles' flame but they do not come from the same cutlery. Each one of them had engraved on it the initials JJB but a few had engraved Bouvier's coat of arms on it. He could bet in a heartbeat that this wasn't by accident. Bouvier family had more silverware than anyone else in San Juan. Their formal dinners had always been the centre of San Juan's social life. Financial deals, arranged marriages, secret affairs and deals with the politicians always started and were sealed with the finest red wine on that very table. There must have exactly 30 pieces of silverware with Bouvier's coat of arms on it. Whoever the host might be, he/she wasn't going to appear any time soon.

Jean Julien died a week ago. The host must have had full access and knowledge of the mansion to prepare that dinner. It was obvious to a man like Claudio who had spent all his life at dinners like this one, that everything placed on the table had at least one hidden meaning. This wasn't going to be another boring dinner while chatting the suffering of being despicably rich, regardless the fact that this wasn't true for most of them. They were invited on a stage and abandoned there to improvise with no script but minor details that didn't seem right. 30 pieces of silverware were the sign of treason. A traitor was dining that evening among them. Devil hides in details but all that he could see was horny devils mumbling to one another looking forward to drink their absinthe and vanish in oblivion for one more night.

He started cutting his almost raw meat with his knife. "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them" John 6:56. He looked at the red wine on the table. The expensive crystal was sparkling as it was getting darker. "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day." John 6:54. They weren't invited to honor Jean Julien's memory. They were invited to join Jean Julien in death. He took his glass and drunk a sip of wine. He wasn't afraid of death. He had been crossing hell's fires all his life so there was no doubt in him that whenever he died, he would be sent to heaven. He thought of himself flying around with a pair of huge, white wings, a halo on his head and a little harp, chanting the hymns he knew by heart and grinned.