THEAFTERMATH
1011 Words
Aurora's POV
I didn't do it.
That was all I could say, but not one person cared to listen.
Silver cuffs were clicked over my wrists, and I was taken away amidst the sounds of sirens and the flashing of cameras going off from my childhood home. Just before my head was dipped down into the cop car, I threw my gaze to my ex-fiancé.
I wanted to see if the years together — the love I thought we once shared — meant anything to him. If the man who whispered sweet nothings to me in bed was in there somewhere.
“Ethan, you know I didn't do it, right? Please… I’m begging you, talk to the officers… I don’t know how I ended up in that room, I—”
My voice broke from the emotion. I had been livid at my adoptive father yesterday. He had disowned me when I had dedicated all my working years to the company.
I was so angry, and every bit of that anger was justified.
But I would have never killed him.
I don’t know how I ended up in his bedroom on the floorboard next to his corpse, holding the weapon. My head was completely blank on how I got there — memories flooded away by the alcohol — but I knew, I knew, that I would never do something like that.
He came forward, pushing Sofia, who was still doing her little masquerade of being injured. She was doing an even better show of crying, dabbing her eyes continuously even though the handkerchief came back completely dry each time.
When Ethan was closer and the police were warding off the journalists that had gathered around the entrance of the mansion like rats, he took a huge breath.
“I understand you were upset with Aurora, but this was never the way to go. You will have to pay for your crimes. You should have thought about the consequences before you took the life of the man that raised you.”
As if on cue, Sofia started crying so loudly that my eardrums nearly tore.
“Three years…! That’s all the time I had with him… He had missed all of my firsts, but I hoped at least he would walk me down the aisle… to see his grandchildren… his biological grandchildren,” she emphasized unnecessarily.
That was when it struck me — like a slap across the face — what they were doing. It wasn’t bad enough that the embers were already glowing; they needed to add more fuel to the fire right as the journalists stood there, noting every word, documenting each outburst from the two of them, branding me further as a monster.
Sofia wasn’t done yet.
“I can’t take this anymore!” she cried, throwing herself off the wheelchair and collapsing to the ground, causing a uniform gasp to run through the crowd.
“Sofia, please stand up,” Ethan said, reaching for her shoulder, but she pulled away. I looked at them as if I had been thrown onto a stage with a morbid kind of fascination.
“Don’t bother pulling me up!” She looked at me. “You already had him for two decades, and yet it wasn’t enough for you. Are you satisfied now? Take me too, because I have no more reason to live without my father! End my miserable existence so I can be with him even if it is in the afterlife!”
If it wasn’t for the chains holding my hands together and gradually bruising them, I would have been tempted to actually give her an applause. Ethan too.
Then he pulled out his final move — swooping her up from the ground and pressing a kiss so deep his tongue must have hit the bottom of her throat.
They continued to kiss like that in front of me, and in front of the press. When he pulled away, she buried herself into his chest, and he spoke.
“Don’t ever say that again, Sofia. You will always have me.” She shot me one last look —
her mask of innocence and pain falling aside for a second to reveal smug satisfaction.
Before I could react, I was pushed into the back of the cop car, handled more roughly than earlier.
Soon, I found myself behind thick, unforgiving cells as I waited for court. Every day, my mind and body seemed to disconnect from each other — because how was I supposed to rationalize what was happening to me?
A solid week ago, I walked with a sway in my hips, dripped in luxury, and each person I met was left charmed by me without exception. I was sitting on the very lap of opulence — and now… it all felt like a fever dream, as if it was a life I had never lived but somehow still carried the memories of.
Part of me wanted to forget the good life I had before. Maybe then it would be easier to endure what I was going through now.
All while I wondered who was responsible — who could have killed my father and pinned
it on me?
Ethan and Sofia only seemed to be taking advantage of a convenient opportunity. It made little to no sense for them to plot to kill my father when it was already clear Sofia would inherit the Yates fortune, and when she married Ethan he would have access to it as well.
I was already as good as out of the picture.
Why bother?
But if they weren’t the culprits, that left a gaping question demanding to be fed an answer — one that kept me up at night, not that I could sleep much with the nightmares of my adoptive father’s corpse creeping into my consciousness over and over again.
I wanted to know… no, I needed to know. Who was the person so desperate to ruin my life?
Or end my life?
Or end Mr. Yates’?
Who killed him?
- Writer
