Chapter 17: The Escape
"Not toward the light—but through the shadow."
I ran.
Not like a coward.
Like a survivor.
Blood soaked into my coat—his and mine, mixing like ink in water.
The scent of crushed flowers and iron clung to me like guilt.
I didn't look back at the villa.
I couldn't.
Because I knew if I did, I wouldn't leave.
The car I'd hidden in the woods started on the first try.
Part of me had hoped it wouldn't.
That I'd be forced to go back. Finish what I started. Watch him bleed out under a sky full of stars and sins.
But it started.
So I drove.
The rearview mirror showed nothing but trees and mist.
But I swear I felt him behind me.
Lucian.
In my lungs.
In my heartbeat.
In the twitch of my trigger finger.
He was still alive.
I knew it.
And more than that—he wanted me to escape.
This was still his design.
Still his final game.
Back in the city, I burned everything.
The case files. The photos. The notes.
Every physical trace of him.
But not my journal.
No. That I kept.
Because some things you don't destroy.
Some things, you document.
I didn't go back to the precinct.
Couldn't.
They'd ask questions.
About the surgeon. About the USB. About the blood on my sleeves and the tremor in my voice.
And I didn't have lies sharp enough to cut through their suspicion anymore.
I was unraveling.
And I didn't know if I wanted to stop.
Sleep was impossible.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw flowers blooming from the mouths of corpses.
I saw Lucian's face—smiling, broken, bleeding.
Calling me home.
I started walking at night again.
Old Town. The alleys. The bridges.
Places I used to haunt when the blood was fresh on my hands, and no one knew my name.
I wasn't looking for redemption.
Just silence.
Just something that didn't smell like roses and regret.
One night, I passed a bookstore window.
There, in the center of a new release table, was a photography book.
"Memento Mortem: The Art of Death."
The cover was a body.
Arranged in flowers.
His work.
My signature.
But under his name.
Lucian.
Still breathing.
Still talking.
Still pulling me back in.
I walked home with that book clutched to my chest.
Sat on the floor of my apartment.
Flipped through every page.
And cried.
Not because I missed him.
Not because I hated him.
But because he understood me in a way no one else ever had.
And he was still out there.
Whispering to me through his pages.