Blood on the Canvas

Chapter 13: Into the Dark

Bianca didn't remember the walk to Elizabeth's house. One second she was standing in her own doorway, her mother's voice trailing after her, and the next she was pounding on a door two houses down, her whole body shaking, some wordless, desperate sound already climbing up her throat before Aaron even got the door open.

He caught her before she fully collapsed against the frame.

"Hey — hey, I've got you—"

"They're saying it was them," Bianca said, the words tearing out of her half-formed, breathless. "They're saying they *killed* her, Aaron, they're saying it like it's nothing, like it's a receipt—"

"I know. I know." His voice cracked on the second one. He didn't let go of her, and for a moment they just stood there in the doorway, clinging to each other the way they had on the hospital floor, two people held upright only by the fact that they were holding onto each other.

Inside, the house felt wrong in ways Bianca couldn't fully name — too quiet, too still, grief sitting in the air like something with physical weight. Photos of Elizabeth lined the hallway the way they always had, but every single one of them now felt like a small, unbearable ambush, a face caught mid-laugh that Bianca had to force herself to walk past without breaking down all over again. She found Elizabeth's father, Femi, in the kitchen, and the sight of him nearly buckled her knees all over again. He'd aged a decade in three days. His hands wouldn't stop moving — smoothing the same wrinkle out of the tablecloth over and over, an unconscious, useless motion, like his body needed somewhere to put all the things his mind couldn't hold.

"I did this," he said, not looking up. "Eleven years ago, one mistake, and it took her. It took my daughter." His voice broke entirely on the last word, dissolving into something raw and gutted. "I should have told you both years ago. I should have paid it off faster, found a way, done anything—"

"Dad, stop." Aaron's voice cracked between grief and fury, both fighting for the same space. "You didn't pull a trigger. You didn't do this."

"Then who did?" Femi's head snapped up, eyes wild, red-rimmed, furious in a way Bianca had never seen from him. "Because somebody out there is walking around right now having taken my little girl, and all I've got is a note telling me to be grateful the debt's forgiven — grateful — like I should thank them for—"

He didn't finish. He put both hands over his face and made a sound Bianca would hear in her sleep for months afterward, something broken all the way down, and Aaron crossed the kitchen and folded his father into his arms, both of them shaking, both of them crying without any attempt left to hide it.

Bianca stood frozen in the doorway, her own grief and fury tangling together until she couldn't separate them anymore, until the sight of Femi Ade — steady, careful Femi, who'd raised two children alone and never once let either of them see him break — falling apart completely in front of her felt like its own separate wound layered on top of the first.

"This isn't right," she said, her voice shaking with something that had teeth in it now. "None of this is right. They don't get to do this and call it settled. They don't get to just — decide that."

"So what do we do?" Femi asked, muffled against his son's shoulder, exhausted past the point of pretending he had answers of his own.

"We bury her Thursday," Bianca said, surprising even herself with how steady it came out. "We give her that. And then we find out the truth, whatever it costs."

---

Aaron walked her out to the porch an hour later, both of them wrung out, quiet in the particular way people get after grief has burned through the loudest part of itself and left only smoldering embers behind.

"I keep thinking about her drawing," Aaron said suddenly, staring at nothing. "The one she never finished. Of you laughing." His jaw tightened. "I keep thinking I'll never get to see what it would've looked like done."

Bianca couldn't answer that. She reached over and took his hand instead, the same way she used to take Elizabeth's, and for a moment they just sat there, saying nothing, letting the silence hold what neither of them had words left for.

Aaron's phone buzzed against his knee. He glanced at it out of habit more than interest, and something in his face changed the instant he read the screen — the softness from a moment ago hardening into something else entirely.

"What is it?" Bianca asked.

He turned the phone toward her without a word. It was a local news comment section, someone he didn't know weighing in under the article about the shooting: another gang casualty, city needs to just let them kill each other off honestly. Dozens of replies underneath, some agreeing, some arguing, all of it treating Elizabeth's entire existence as a debate topic, a statistic, background noise in somebody else's opinion about a neighborhood they'd probably never set foot in.

Aaron's hand curled into a fist around the phone. "She's not a — she's not content. She had a whole life. She had a favorite pen she used to steal out of your bag. She used to sing off-key in the shower thinking nobody could hear her. And some stranger gets to just—" His voice broke, fury and grief fusing into something Bianca had never seen on him before, something combustible.

"Aaron—"

"I can't just sit here." He was already standing, jaw set. "I can't sit in this house waiting for Thursday while some note tells the whole story and strangers argue online about whether she mattered. I know a guy — used to run with some people who'd know things about Zion Brazing. I'm going tonight."

"Aaron, no—" Bianca stood too, alarm flooding through her. "You don't know what you're walking into. You saw what happened to Elizabeth just being in the wrong place—"

"And I'm supposed to just sit here?" His voice cracked, raw and furious. "I'm supposed to bury my sister Thursday and just — move on, pretend some note tells the whole story? I can't do that, Bianca. I physically cannot do that."

"Then let me come with you."

"No." He was already moving toward his car, keys in hand, jaw set in a way that reminded her painfully of Elizabeth's own stubbornness. "One of us needs to stay safe. Dad needs somebody. I'll be back before midnight, I promise."

He didn't wait for her to argue further. He was in the car and pulling out of the driveway before Bianca could fully process what was happening, taillights disappearing down the street into the dark.

Bianca stood frozen on the porch for a moment, realizing with a fresh jolt of unease that Aaron hadn't told his father any of this — Femi was still inside, hollowed out at the kitchen table, with no idea his son had just driven off alone chasing leads on the very organization that had killed his daughter. She almost went back in to tell him. She stood with her hand on the doorknob for a long moment, torn, before deciding — wrongly, she'd realize later — that Femi had already carried more that day than any one person should have to hold, and that waking him to a fresh fear before Aaron had even done anything wrong yet felt crueler than waiting to see if he came home safe.

She said a quiet, careful goodbye instead, one that gave nothing away, and walked the short distance back to her own house in the dark, the porch light of the Ade home shrinking behind her with every step, the weight of the secret she was now carrying alone pressing harder on her with every one of them.

Midnight came and went.

Bianca sat up in her room, phone gripped in both hands, watching the clock tick past twelve, then one, then one-thirty, calling Aaron's number over and over and getting nothing but his voicemail every single time. She texted, too — three times, then five, then so many the messages started to blur together into one long, unanswered plea. Where are you. Please just tell me you're okay. Aaron, please.

Downstairs, she could hear her own parents finally going quiet for the night, unaware of the second, private terror unfolding upstairs. Bianca sat alone in the dark with her back against the headboard, replaying every single warning anyone had ever given about the danger she and Elizabeth had walked so carelessly close to all week, and understood, with a fresh and separate dread, that she might be about to lose someone else.

He never called back.