The Games We Play | ✓

15. MURDER IS AN ART

15.
[MURDER IS AN ART]

—

REED MONARO REPORTEDLY died of suicide.

They say he hung himself in his living room. When they found him hanging beside the golden chandelier, his body had already turned cold. Every single piece of polished jewelry he owned watched him, reflecting his death upon a thousand surfaces like paparazzi photos.

His suicide letter, as lyrical and as cryptic as ever, read:

CRIMSON HANDED ARTISTS REMEMBER LIARS OWE TRUTH TO EMERALDS.

I'M SORRY. I HAD TO.

The rest of the world mourned him. They mourned the poor boy who couldn't handle his growing stardom and took his own life. They wept for the talented soul that left all too early. They planted roses on his grave.

Of course, his death hid the truth as well as his life did.

Rosemary didn't just kill him. By staging a suicide, she robbed him of his murderous art and degraded him to a fragile, pathetic, little boy. She stole his pride and identity, leaving his super star persona, that had once been just a front, the one thing that defined him. She wiped the blood clean from his hands and rendered him forgettable, unremarkable, and normal.

And perhaps that was the cruelest crime of all. The murder and theft of a prideful soul, who would forever be remembered as something he wasn't. He died just as he lived, unknown and misunderstood, his secret kept by the one who doomed him. Without his bloodied personality, Reed Monaro was nothing more than a failed star.

The world would never know the cunning liar he truly was.

When Rosemary left, she left his entire mansion untouched. Not a single piece of jewelry was misplaced. Everything looked just as it was.

It was like she was never there to begin with.

But artists always left a signature.

If you knew where to look, you'd find it in the stolen song she played at her crime scene. In the emerald earrings she planted in his pocket. In the fake suicide letter she wrote.

Despite everything, Rosemary played to win, even if it meant losing the few people who cared for her.

Killing Reed wasn't exactly planned. At least not that early. As turbulent as their relationship was, Rosemary enjoyed the time she spent with him. Their blood lust, aggression, and murderous tendencies formed a bond that few people shared. One might have even called the two of them friends. 

But what were friends if not people to play with? Which was why toying with Reed had been her most fulfilling game so far.

True winners didn't get caught. Not by the cops, not by little detectives like Carla, and certainly not by love. 

THE END. 
THANK YOU FOR READING.