Page 144 of Shattered In Darkness

Sophie’s words are wet and bitter. “Why didn’t you just leave? Why not run?”

I smile. “Maybe I thought there was something worth saving. Maybe I wanted to stop the cycle.”

She pushes my hand away. “You destroyed his legacy. Everything he worked for.”

I nod, cool. “Good. It was built on bodies.”

She turns away, can’t even look at me. I get it. I’m a ghost in my own skin, too.

Lola says, “You were brave, Brody.” Her voice barely above a whisper.

I shrug. “Not brave. Just done.”

We sit in it. The wreckage. The annihilation. My sister curling up small, trying to stitch her heart back together, Lola watching both of us with a kind of horror I recognize. It’s not over. It’ll never be over.

Sophie finally looks up, voice dead. “So what now?”

“Now you get to choose,” I say. “Who you want to be. There’s nothing left to protect. No more lies. Just us.”

She flinches at the word. Us. Like it’s a curse. Minutes pass. Lola tries to get Sophie to drink water, but she just rocks, stuck somewhere time can’t reach.

Finally, the question comes. Like a last gasp. “Did you kill him? Marcus?” I don’t answer. I just shake my head, not yes, not no. Just final. Sophie gets it. Her eyes freeze, wide and flat. “He’s not coming back,” she repeats. “Ever.”

My voice is soft, steady. “Ever. He paid for what he did to Lola, and mom.”

She sobs, and it echoes. “He killed mom… He killed mom! Oh god…”

I watch them. The last pieces of my family, all of us cracked and leaking, nothing left but pain and the promise of something different. Not better. Not yet. But different.

The sky keeps getting lighter. The news loops. My father’s name, over and over, stained forever. Sophie's shoulders shake under the blanket. Lola’s hand cradles her, soft and real.

I sit back, stare at my hands. All I’ve done. All I can’t wash away. I did what I had to. Because someone had to do it. That’s the truth, even if no one thanks me.

I watch the sun. I watch my sister break. I don’t look away.

This is the cost of freedom. Ruin, grief, the knowledge that nothing you save comes without consequence.

But it means she’s safe. It means Lola is safe, and Sophie, too, if she wants it.

I can live with being the villain, if it means the monsters stay gone. I can live with anything, as long as it’s not the old world clawing us back.

50

LOLA

Daylight is cruel. It pours through the front window, flooding the living room with so much brightness that it feels wrong, almost hostile, like the sun itself wants to expose every bruise inside me and in this house.

Sophie is curled up at one end of my couch, knees tucked to her chest, arms wrapped tight. Her eyes are swollen and red.

She stares at the TV, even though the sound is off and the screen is nothing but a muted parade of Richard’s mugshot, police tape, and scrolling headlines, over and over again.

I don’t know what to do with my hands. I keep smoothing the blanket over Sophie’s legs, tucking it tighter, until she finally flinches and says, “Please stop.” Her voice is shredded, barely there.

I nod and back away, heart twisting in my chest.

I want to cry and I want to scream, but mostly I just want to disappear. All I can hear are echoes. Richard’s voice, Marcus’s laughter, Sophie’s sobs, Brody’s heavy footsteps pacing just out of sight in the hallway.

None of us know what to say. None of us know how to be people in this new, shattered world.