The Velvet Box

Marlo

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. My knees were pressed hard against the floorboards, my bleeding fingers still trembling over the horrific photograph of Aunt Siobhan handing cash to a masked hitman and having a hand to the fire accident 

My brain was shattering into a million pieces. The woman who had brushed my hair, the woman who had held me while I cried over my dead parents, was the monster who had paid to kill them.

And the real monster of Monash University was standing right behind me.

I heard the slow, heavy scrape of his boots on the thick Persian rug. He didn't rush. He didn't grab me. He just walked closer, his massive presence sucking all the remaining oxygen out of the dark, claustrophobic study.

I finally managed to drag a breath from my burning lungs. I tried to scramble backward, to get away from the hidden hole in the floor, but my back hit something solid. Something completely immovable.

Jarrah’s legs.

He slowly crouched down right behind me. The heat radiating off his massive chest seeped through the thin fabric of my cheap hoodie. He was so close I could smell the sharp scent of cedarwood, winter air, and the dark, expensive whiskey sitting on his desk.

"Keep digging," he whispered softly, his lips barely an inch from my ear.

A fresh tear slipped down my cheek, "Please," I choked out, my voice sounding like a broken child's. "Please, just let me go."

"You don't want to go back to her, little mouse," Jarrah replied, his tone chillingly calm. "She’s waiting for you and if you go back to that apartment tonight, you won't live to see the morning. Keep digging."

My hands were shaking so violently I could barely control my own wrists. But the sheer terror in my gut forced me to obey him. I reached past the glossy photograph of Siobhan's betrayal, plunging my hand deeper into the dark, hollowed out space beneath the foundation.

My knuckles brushed against something soft. Fabric.

I wrapped my trembling fingers around it and pulled it up into the dim light of the fireplace.

It was a box. A heavy, rectangular box covered in worn, black velvet.

It matched the one I had found in his campus study perfectly. But this one was older. Thicker.

"Open it," Jarrah commanded, his bruised knuckles coming to rest on the floor on either side of my thighs, completely trapping me between his arms.

I swallowed the sick taste of bile in my throat and lifted the heavy velvet lid.

Inside were bundles of thick, aged parchment paper. They were tied together with rough black string, stacked with a meticulous, obsessive neatness that made my skin crawl, dozens of them maybe hundreds.

My curiosity, previously driven by pure panic, suddenly warped into a profound, suffocating unease. I slowly reached out and touched the top bundle. The paper was heavy, expensive.

I pulled the first letter loose from the string. The handwriting was slashed across the page in sharp, violent black ink. It was aggressive, perfectly controlled, and every single word was entirely focused on me.

She thinks she’s invisible, the first line read.

My breath hitched. I didn't want to read it. I didn't want to look into the mind of a predator. But with his heavy chest pressing against my back, I had absolutely no choice.

She wears those oversized grey clothes to hide her shape, and she looks at the ground so no one will look at her eyes. She scrubs floors for the people who ruined her life. She is entirely broken. But she’s still breathing. And as long as she is breathing, she is mine.

A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. I flipped the heavy parchment over, looking at the date stamped aggressively in the top corner. October 12th. Three years ago. October 12th was my seventeenth birthday. It was the worst night of my teenage years. Siobhan and I had gotten into a screaming match over the heating bill. I had run out of the apartment into the freezing rain, walking three miles to the rusted, abandoned pier at Port Phillip Bay.

I had been entirely alone. I had sat on the edge of the rotting wood, dangling my legs over the black ocean, screaming at the sky until my throat bled.

No one was there. No one knew I went there.

My eyes darted back to the ink on the page, the words blurring as fresh tears welled in my eyes.

I watched her stand on the edge of the pier tonight. The wind was freezing, and she was crying so hard her shoulders shook. I stood in the shadows of the boathouse, my hand on my gun. If she leaned forward even an inch, I was going to pull her back. I was going to drag her to my car, lock her in my house, and never let her see the ocean again.

 He was there. He was watching me in the dark. I kept reading, my vision blurry.

She didn't jump. But she threw something into the water. A silver locket. It was the only thing she had left of her mother. She cried for a ghost, and then she walked away. It isn't time to take her yet. So, I waited until she was gone. And then I dove into the freezing black water.

I dropped the letter. I couldn't breathe. The air in the room felt like crushed glass in my throat. I had spent three years agonizing over dropping that locket. It was lost to the sea. It was gone forever. Slowly, Jarrah shifted his weight behind me. He lifted one of his heavy, bruised hands from the floor and reached into the pocket of his dark jeans.

He brought his hand right in front of my face and slowly uncurled his long fingers.

Sitting in the center of his palm, gleaming in the faint light of the fire, was my mother’s silver locket. The chain was perfectly clean. The metal was polished.

"You didn't really think I'd let the ocean keep what belongs to you, did you?" Jarrah whispered softly, his warm breath fanning against my cheek.

Before I could even react, his hand moved. He didn't grab the locket. Instead, his rough fingers brushed against the thin silver scar on my left wrist, tracing the raised skin with a touch so gentle it was absolutely terrifying.

"The woman who raised you wants you dead, Marlo," he murmured. "I’m the only one who wants to keep you alive. Now, make your choice. Walk out that door and let Siobhan finish the job or stay here, and let me show you how we destroy her.”

My fingers slowly closed around the locket.

For the first time in ten years, I was standing between the two people who knew the truth about my past. One had raised me and the other had watched me and I suddenly realized something that terrified me more than anything else. Jarrah's eyes darkened and he leaned closer.

"Choose carefully, little mouse." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Because once you choose me" He paused. "There's no going back.”