Luna’s Recrimination

Chapter eight

Elena’s POV

I woke up soaked in my own sweat, panting like I had gone for a run.

I was in the sea once again. Water filled my mouth and my ears. I struggled to get my car door open to get out, but it seemed stiff. I was struggling to get out when I woke up.

I took a quick better and got ready to go about my day.

I came out to see Andre and Ryan dressed to hear out. They had wanted to leave me behind. We had planned to go to the scene of my accident today.

“Are you guys serious?”

“I thought maybe you should have some more rest. You’ve had a rough couple of days.” Dre said.

“This is my fight. You don’t get to decide for me.” He needed to get it clear that I was not Ella but Elena. This overprotectiveness was getting nerve-racking. It was the start of my plan for revenge and he was not going to leave me out of it.

I said so and I walked out to the car.

“This is the spot,” said Dre, pointing to the scene of the car accident. “This is the place I picked you up from. We’ll place this here.”

Dre had found the corpse of an unknown lady who drowned in the sea. Her body was found floating, close to the bank. We couldn’t tell how she ended up there the previous night but I did hope she wasn’t murdered.

“Where’s the dye?” Dre asked Ryan, who took out a red dye from his bag and handed it over to him.

All the while, I had my eyes fixed on Ryan. He was quite terrifying; taller than anyone that I’d ever seen. Yet, somehow, he was terrified of Dre. It got me thinking… How dangerous could Dre be that even this giant shrinks before his presence?

Dre took the dye from Ryan squatted beside the dead woman. Then, he applied the dye very carefully, moving his hands around her hair, making sure that the hair was dyed in equal proportion. It did look like he had done something like this before and somehow, that got me scared. Yet, I knew he had to do what had to be done.

“Hurry up, son. We don’t have all day,” said Stella, who stood right behind us, with her hands folded as she impatiently waited for us to be done with that phase, so she could move on with the other plans.

“I’m doing my best, mother. There have to be no mistakes whatsoever. You do know this,” Dre replied her, still doing the work at his own pace. I thought he could have been a bit faster too. He probably didn’t want to.

He was done after a few minutes and it was time for the next step. The lady’s face. He had to do something about the face. If she looked so different from me, then the work would have been in vain. He had to find a way to disfigure her face so that no one could say who it was. After all, it was an accident. Such an occurrence was possible.

Ryan was in charge of that part of the plan. He immediately knew what to do. “You may have to look away,” he said to me but I just shook my head. Deep down, I was a bit terrified. Yet, I didn’t want to look weak to any of them, especially to Stella.

Ryan jammed his fists three times into the woman’s face and she looked like she had been hit by a trailer. The man was a beast; a very scary beast. He walked back to the side, cleaning his hand with a towel and letting Dre and his mom see the work that he had done and judging by the little grin on their faces, they were satisfied.

I was never a fan of disrespecting the dead. I knew it was for a good cause but it was just wrong. Perhaps, we could have explored better ways to get this done apart from what we had done. I began to get a bit uncomfortable, but I still did my best to maintain my calm.

“She’s dead, Elena. She’s already dead. If she still sees and finds out that all that we’re doing with her body was going to help the living, I’m certain she’ll be fine with that,” said Dre. I was doing a very bad job at hiding how I felt.

“How can we tell when we can’t even ask her?” I asked myself, knowing it might not go well with the others. I smiled and simply nodded.

“To the next step,” Dre explained, facing Ryan. “It’s time to call Detective Ben. Tell him that the body of the victim has been found. He’d understand what you mean. Tell him to make sure that her husband and friend are aware. They can’t pass up the chance of knowing for sure that she’s gone and also doing the burial with an actual body.”

“Well done, son,” said Stella, as Ryan walked a few metres away from us to make the call. “I think I’m the next, right?”

He nodded.

“I’m going to give Daisy exactly what she wants,” she said, which got me a bit confused.

“I don’t understand.” I said, looking from son to mother and then back.

“It’s the best way to carry out our plans Elena,” she responded with a smile. Dre smiled too, and I wondered what was so funny about what they said. “I’m going to reach out to your husband’s creditor and pay him to make Leo’s life unbearable. The closer he gets to bankruptcy, the more he’d need to lean towards Daisy. That’s the next step in our grand plan.”

“What do we do after that?” I asked her, still puzzled by her line of thinking. How could you punish someone by helping her?

“Step by step, Elena. What I can assure you is that when we do get there, you’ll know”

Daisy’s POV

The night of the burial had finally come and everyone was quite busy. The servants and guards ran helter-skelter trying to make sure that everything was in place. I, too, was busy. I was thinking about what step to take next.

Leo had found Daisy’s dead body. Well, at least, we thought so. The body looked just like her, but her face was too damaged for us to recognize if it was her. Not that we cared so much. If she had drowned, it’d have still been alright. What mattered was that we had a body for the burial.

I had told Leo that I needed the burial to be done during the day. I was supposed to talk with someone, later that night. Claudia wouldn’t allow it though.

“The night is perfect, that way everyone would be here to witness the burial,” she had told him the previous week. He didn’t even try to argue, despite all I told him. It wasn’t such a bad idea though. At least, it was going to be tougher for people to suspect anything, especially if that body didn’t belong to Elena. What if it didn’t? What would that mean for all of us? Well, I hoped it’d never come to that.

I walked to Leo’s room and knocked, before remembering that there was simply no need for that. I opened the door and walked in, only to find him holding his head in his hands, with his head bowed. There was certainly a big problem. It probably had to do with his company. That was great news for me.

“What’s the matter, hun?” I asked. He was startled by my voice. He didn’t even know that I was in his room. The problem must have eaten deep into him. I needed to know what it was.

“It’s Mr Chris. He called me a few days ago and asked me to pay more money. He said that the rate at which I’m paying him is quite slow and he needed me to hasten up. But I…” He took out his handkerchief and wiped the tears from his eyes. I looked down to see some drops of tears on the floor below him. This wasn’t the first time he was brought to tears in the last hour for sure.

“I can’t afford to pay more than I’m already paying right now. I don’t have the money on me. This company is barely surviving and at this rate, we’re surely going to be bankrupt.”

“No, don’t say that, my love.” I walked across to his bed and sat beside him, placing my right hand on his back. “Don’t be sad. I’ll see what I can do, but be rest assured that this problem will be solved.”

“You will?”

“Yes, you just have to do as I say,” I replied, running my fingers through his hair. It always drove him nuts whenever I did that. It was his weak point. He had no defence against that.

“Daisy,” he said, shutting his eyes at the touch of my hands. “Would you marry me?”