Chapter 1: The Vow in the Rain

Ava’s Point Of View

The rain starts as a whisper. There are soft, cold drops rolling down the side of my face and they are mixed with my tears that I told myself I would not cry anymore.

The grave yard is silent--far too silent. The wind is the only one that flows and it curves the trees on the road. I stand in the damp grass with my feet in the mud and then I halt in front of the marble headstone.

ETHAN MONTGOMERY.

Beloved son. Loyal friend. Gone too soon.

My throat tightens. “Too soon,” I said. You need not have gone at all, not even now.

I fell on my knees and my jeans got wet at once. The rain is angrier, as well as it beats. The one Ethan brought me as a gift on my eighteenth birthday, that silver necklace that I happen to be holding in my hand. The charisma is gone, but the recollection remains.

Always, he said that day, you have me, no matter what.

He lied. Or maybe fate did.

It was three years ago, and the pain does not give up. It has merely shifted its form--cutting every time I breathe, now sharp. And, the name behind it all, is still aching like acid in my chest.

Liam Hart. My brother’s best friend. The man who killed him.

The world believes the story. It was just an accident, said the police, a drunk driving hit-and-run. Liam confessed. He served his prison, brief as it was, and set his foot free with his costly attorneys and his icy excuses.

But I can still recall the expression in his eyes on the day Ethan was buried. Blank. Detached. Not even a single tear.

I hold the necklace so hard that the chain pierces my palm. “You took everything from me.”

Thunder in the distance, profound and heavy.

I lay my forehead against the cold rock. “I’ll make him pay, Ethan. I swear it. I will steal all that he loves, and burn it to the ground. Then he will understand how to lose.

The final word breaks my voice. The rain wets my hair, and glues it to my cheeks. I draw the necklace out of my neck and give it into the mud.

It is good, pleasant, like parting with the final bit of him, a moment. but here cracks a thunder on the head, sharp and violent, and I start. My heart twists.

I creep along, groping the earth till I get the necklace half-buried in the earth. I grip it again, slime smearing the silver. I can’t leave it. I can’t leave him.

They say time is a healer, I say bitterly. “They lied.”

Flashes of lightning, illuminating the grave lines. It is then that I can see it--a figure standing in the cemetery. High and straight, carrying an umbrella.

I freeze.

The face of the stranger is in the shadows, yet there is something familiar about the manner in which he is standing. Broad shoulders. Straight posture. Watching.

I blink, and he’s gone.

A chill runs through me. Perhaps, it is my mind playing tricks once again. Perhaps it is grief that has finally made me insane.

Nevertheless, I just cannot get rid of the impression that someone was present. Watching me.

I stand up very slowly, shaking the dust off my knees, and begin to walk back to the gate. Rain is now more intense and it makes the world gray.

In the middle of the way, there is something blinking at my foot. I stop.

There is a white card lying down in the mud. I frown and bend to pick it up. The ink has already been smudged by the rain, but I can still read the words written, in neat, black characters.

Vanguard Industries.

Liam Hart, the CEO. My heart stops. It can’t be.

I flip the card over. No mark on the back--no word, no message--the name only gazing back at me like a ghost.

My breath comes fast. My mind spins. Did he drop it? Was that him standing there?

I spent three years imagining what I would tell him had I ever met him again. All versions are left with him shattered and pleading.

Now fate hands me a clue. His company. His name.

I squeeze the card between my fingers. You ought not to have come here, Liam. “Now I know where to find you.”

The rain misting up the world around me, however, I can nearly make out his face in my memory; so levelheaded, so collected, with those gray eyes that soften when he looks at Ethan.

At that time he was always at home. He would pick up delivery on the nights of work, make fun of my shaggie drawings, refer to me as kiddo like a frustrating elder sibling. No one, more than anyone, Ethan believed him.

I thought I could, too.

Until the evening of the accident.

No feeling on his face, until I saw him being driven away by the police with blood on his shirt.

The memory slices through me.

I squeeze the necklace once more, and the metal is chilly against my flesh.

I face the city lights on the other side of the hill. My heart stabilizes, slow and steady in rhythm. I don’t feel weak anymore. I feel ready.

This is my sign. My chance.

I’ll get close to Liam Hart. I’ll make him trust me. I will smile in his face as I shred his empire in his face in bits.

And when he is on his knees I will tell him who I really was.

The weather changes and it becomes wet outside the cemetery. The world is stinking with damp soil and withering flowers. My footsteps clatter on the deserted highway.

In the distance car headlights glitter--white and sharp. I squint through the rain. At the far end of the street there is a parked black car with a humming engine.

Someone is inside. Watching.

My heartbeat spikes.

The car does not move, but I can feel the eyes still on me. The windows are coloured, but something is moving behind the window-pane--a figure, leaning forward, a little.

A man’s shape.

I then pick up my step till I reach the corner. In my rear mirror, the car has disappeared.

A chill creeps up my spine.

I roll the business card between my palm till the edges cut my skin.

When he is already watching me, it has only one meaning, and that is, that he is frightened.

Good.

He should be.

Sometime later, that night, I am sitting at the window of my small apartment, with lights in the city through the rain. The card is placed on the table next to the cup of unexpired coffee. I look at it till I can no longer make out the letters.

Vanguard Industries. Liam Hart, CEO.

His name is softened by searching on my laptop.

Headlines fill the screen:

LIAM HART BACK to business following a tragic accident.

REDEMPTION OR RUTHLESSNESS? THE CEO WHO WON’T QUIT.

His photo is everywhere. Older now. Sharper. Too pretty of a man that has blood on his hands. His black hair is shorter, with a little gray streak in the temples. His eyes, his steel-gray eyes, are even emptier than I can recall.

I scroll until I get to some image.

He is standing before a building and is shaking hands with investors with a polite, careful smile on his face. Behind him, a banner reads:

Vanguard Rebuilds Hope -A Charity in memory of Ethan Montgomery.

My stomach twists.

A charity in Ethan’s name.

In his PR, he has the guts to use the death of my brother.

Anger is so fierce it scalds the sorrow awhile. I slam the laptop shut.

“That’s how you live with it, huh?” I mutter. “By pretending to care?”

The storm outside becomes more and more sounding, and the rain beats the window with its angry rhythm.

I take a note pad and write down one sentence in bold capital letters:

Find him. Destroy him.

An hour later, I can’t sleep. The image of the moment, when I have seen that figure in the graveyard, is constantly playing in my mind. The way the umbrella tilted. The stillness. The timing.

If it was Liam, why was he there? Guilt? Mockery? Or did he come to keep me aware of what he had done?

In any case he had gone wrong. He let me see him.

I get out of the bed and head towards the window. The rain has ceased, the streets gleam with the streetlights. Down below, there are cars swam through like little silver fish in black water.

A plan forms slowly in my mind. It’s reckless. Dangerous. But so was he.

I’ll get inside his company. I will be under a new name, a new identity. I should come near enough to know his secrets. Close enough to see him break.

And when he does--when his heaven begins to crumble--then I shall tell him the truth.

The fact that the girl that he killed is the woman who has come to kill him.

And the last time I turn the card over in my fingers I trace the embossed letters with my thumb. Liam Hart.

The man I was meant to hate.

It opens once more with the soft slow rain beating on the glass like a heartbeat.

I said in the dark, “I will see you later, Liam.

There is a lightning-stroke to enlighten the sky, and in a moment I have a glimpse of a shadow validated in the window, somebody on the opposite side of the street, half dipped in a lamppost.

A tall man, still as stone. Watching. As thunder plays, the light goes down, and he is away.

My breath catches. I retreat before the window, heart a-pounding. A new business card, the same one at the graveyard, is found on the floor below the glass.

But this time there is a new message written on it in black:

“Welcome back, Ava.”