FATAL ATTRACTION

Episode Two

The clock on the wall of the St. Jude suite clicked to 1:05 AM. Jazel was hunched over her study table, the laptop screen casting a pale blue glow over her sharpened features. She was clicking so fast her knuckles were white, her eyebrows knotted in a deep, frustrated V. She needed to get home this moment and fast.

“s**t,” she hissed, the curse dropping like a stone in the silent room. She snatched her phone, fingers flying as she dialed a number she hadn't touched in three years.

The line crackled twice before a voice picked up—thick with the kind of shock that suggested he’d seen a ghost. “M-Miss Jazel?”

“I’m at the North Gate,” she said, her voice low, “I need the sedan. Now.”

“Ma’am? Ma’am!” Samuel, the old chauffeur, sounded like he was hyperventilating. “It’s been so long… we didn’t think... I mean, is this really you?!”

“Spare the reunion speech for your relatives in heaven!” she snapped. “I need to be…”

The screen flickered once and snapped to black. Jazel stared at the dead device, her own wide-eyed reflection mocking her. “Ugh!” she frowned, staring at the phone and massaging her temples as if she could harm the phone for giving up on her at this critical moment.

She sat up still and sighed, calculating the next move right now. She needed to get back home. She couldn’t believe all she had been looking for, was right there in that house. All these freaking while! Well, right now, there was no time to waste time. She sat up again, pacing to and fro across the room where Lyra was just sleeping peacefully under her heap of blanket.

Should she wake her and ask for her phone? Or just take the phone without the need of disturbing her right now. Just then, there was a honk from outside, loud enough for her to hear through the midnight silence.

The black sedan was a sleek, predatory shape waiting at the gate. Samuel tried to hop out to greet her, his face lit with a tearful, surprised grin, but Jazel simply slid into the backseat and pulled the door shut.

“Drive,” she commanded.

“O-okay ma’am” he muttered, his voice raspy with emotion as he got back into the driver's seat. Then silence followed, thick, heavy and unwelcoming.

For a second, he just looked at her through the rearview mirror. She looked older, sharper, and quieter. If not because he was there with her right from childhood, he may have not recognized her. Where had she been? All these three years that passed? After the murder…

The city at midnight was a blur of neon and grey. Halfway to the suburbs, the car slowed. A lone traffic light at a deserted intersection turned a mocking, vivid red. Samuel braked gently as Jazel lifted her head impatiently.

Before she could make a remark, her peripheral vision caught a glimpse of a building outside the window. Her breath hitched and she looked with wide eyes. It was the ice cream shop. Now closed up and dark. Its warm lights were turned off and its presence was reduced to a silhouette against the midnight.

A memory, sharp and uninvited, pierced through her mental armor.

“Mom I want the vanilla!” little nine years Jazel said hopping excitedly as her mother pushed the glass doors opened gently with a cheerful smile.

“Vanilla with extra sprinkles, please.” Her mother’s laughter…

“Yay!! Vanilla, Vanilla!!” The way the sun felt before the world turned cold.

She gasped quietly, her hand ghosting toward the window glass. She hadn't thought about that day—or that shop—in three years. She hadn’t allowed herself to. It was one of those extremely rare moment where both mother and child was happy together.

“Are you okay ma’am? Is something wrong?” Samuel the chauffer asked with concern as he looked through the rear mirror.

Her fingers twitched slightly on her lap. Just then— the traffic light turned green. “I’m fine” she mumbled and he nodded hesitantly.

The car lurched forward, pulling her away before she could decide whether she wanted to stay in that moment or escape it.

Good. Now wasn’t the time. Whatever was left there… could remain unfinished. For now. Jazel blinked, her face snapping back into a blank, expressionless mask.

****

The mansion stood exactly as it always had… The architecture was top notch: towering limestone pillars, wrought-iron balconies that looked like lace made of coal, and sprawling greenery that felt more like a maze than a garden. Grand. Imposing. Perfect.

Lights glowed across its wide structure, every window lit with intention. Prepared and expectant. The staffs had assembled in a nice formation—a line of stiff backs and genuine smiles. The butler, having been alerted by a frantic call from Samuel, stepped forward to offer a special welcome to the long gone heiress.

However, the whole fuzz died the moment she stepped out of the car. She didn't see them. The aura she was emitting right now didn’t need to tell anyone to move the hell out of the way. She walked past the line of servants like a programmed robot—elegant, authoritative, and terrifyingly cold. Her boots clicked against the white-veined marble with the precision of a metronome. The staffs exchanged meaningful, panicked glances; the "little girl" they remembered had been replaced by something made of ivory and steel.

She stopped in the center of the grand hall, studying the space. It was exactly the same. The same polished walls and towered walls. The same place her mother had kept the flower vase, the same site where the legendary dripping tap dropped water to a bowl that never got full.

As she moved further, her gaze swept across the environment, not with nostalgia but with inspection as though she was verifying everything was exactly where it should be. Her eyes then locked on the far wall at the top end of the grand staircase.

Her breath sharpened. There, in a gilded frame, was the family portrait her mother had ordered removed a month before her death. She remembered that clearly. Yet there it was, hanging in quiet defiance. She stared at it more intensely…

She didn't just see a picture; she saw the ten minutes before the camera clicked. She remembered the sound of glass shattering and the way her father’s eyes had gone completely vacant during one of his episodes. She could almost feel the phantom heat of the jagged bottle he’d held to her mother’s throat—a secret kept hidden beneath the heavy makeup and the forced, trembling smiles they wore for the photographer.

Jazel’s fists clenched at her sides, annoyance slipping through the cracks of her otherwise controlled frame.

“Wow, look who decided to come home after all these years?”

The voice drifted from behind her, oily and familiar. Jazel recognized it instantly as Uncle Roberto—the man who had spent the last three years living like a king on her mother’s ghost. She didn’t even bother to turn around to acknowledge him.

“The last time I remembered, my mom ordered this photo to be burned… and you ordered it to remain?” she asked. Her voice was flat, empty of emotion, as if she were simply clarifying a clerical error.

“Oh Jazel dear,” Roberto said with a sarcastic smirk, stepping into the light. He swirled the wine in his glass, his eyes scanning her with a patronizing pity. “Welcome home. Honestly, I thought you were also dead and—”

Jazel finally turned. She didn't move fast, but the air in the foyer seemed to freeze as she locked her cold gaze onto his.

“Answer the question.”

Roberto’s smirk dropped instantly. His expression shifted into something intentional and dangerous. He took a predatory step closer, his hand snapping out to grip her right shoulder. He squeezed tight, trying to force her to flinch, to look down, and to remember her place.

“Are you forgetting… the living makes the rules?” he hissed, leaning into her space. “And not just the living, but the outright next in command?”

Jazel’s gaze did not falter. Not even a millimeter. Instead, she slowly directed her eyes down to his hand on her shoulder. The temperature in the hallway didn't just drop; it died. In her eyes, Roberto didn't see a niece or a child—he saw a calculated, predatory stillness. It was the gaze of a judge presiding over a death sentence.

A sharp, chill crawled up Roberto’s spine. His heart began to hammer against his ribs, and for a split second, he actually forgot how to breathe. The sheer intensity of her silence broke him. He took a staggered step backward, his polished loafers skidding on the marble floor. His glass tilted, wine sloshing over the rim and staining his expensive silk sleeve, but he was too busy trembling to notice.

Jazel stiffened and stood up straight, her posture perfectly regal. A dangerous, mocking smirk now played on her lips as she watched him struggle to regain his balance.

“You are in luck… I am not here for you, Roberto.”

She looked past his shaking form, her eyes lingering on the photo for one more heartbeat. In the dim light of the foyer, the image looked like a perfect family portrait, but to Jazel, the edges seemed to bleed.

By keeping that photo on the wall, Roberto wasn't honoring a family; he was worshipping a monster.

Without another word, she turned her back on him. She didn't head for the grand staircase where the "good" memories were supposed to live. Instead, she pivoted toward the shadowed stairs on the opposite side of the hall—the narrow, stone-stepped path that led toward the restricted wing.

Her boots clicked with a cold, rhythmic finality. She continued walking until she was out of Roberto’s sight; she wasn't here for him, and she wasn't interested in his petty power plays. She stopped before a heavy, ornate portrait—one that hadn't been disturbed in three years.

With the steady hand of someone who had practiced this in her head a thousand times, she traced the pattern of the gold portrait frame with her index finger. A second later, a small, pressurized hiss broke the silence. The portrait slid back with mechanical grace, revealing the dark cavity of the hidden vault.

Click, click, click.

The sounds of the tumbler falling felt like heartbeats. When the door swung open, there it was: The Glass Box. It sat in the darkness like a trapped star, containing the USB and that nine-inch silver jewelry she had sacrificed her peace to retrieve. She didn't admire it. She simply took it, the cold weight of the crystal grounded her.

In minutes, she was moving through the back entrance, the night air hitting her face like a slap. She paused at the car door, looking back at the towering limestone pillars of the mansion one last time. For a split second, an image of her mother’s genuine, unforced smile flashed through her mind—the way she looked before the world turned to ivory and steel. And then another second, her eyes caught a glimpse of the master’s balcony, a small smirk plastered across her face almost immediately. The scene felt like yesterday, like one of the most satisfying like one of the most satisfying moments of retribution in her life. It was like the feeling was returning back and she almost felt like doing another to one of those evil men responsible…

Jazel shook her head abruptly, snapping the "robot" mask back into place and regaining her composure. She climbed into the back seat, the chauffeur shutting the door with a heavy thud. She wouldn't be coming back here again.

As the car pulled away from the main entrance of the lodge, the pale blue glow of her watch faintly illuminated her sharpened features.

‘Phase 1: Item safe and collected,’ she said codedly and quietly.

****