Page 52 of Pretty Poison

I nod, this time offering my hand to him like he’s done to me before. There’s something about the look in his eye that makes my throat feel swollen as if I’ve been holding back my tears.

Without hesitation, he takes it, linking his fingers through mine as he leads the way into the open gates of the graveyard.

We walk along the path for a minute or so until I spot a long line of family crypts. They’re all engraved with the respective family names, each carved in a different style. One has a floral pattern, another has etchings of quotes or mottos, but the one we stop at is black; no decoration in sight.

He takes a second to compose himself before unlocking the floor-length door with metal bars and leads the way down the steep, narrow steps inside.

Before following him, I glance at the engraved name above the doorway, a slight hitch in my breath. It’s his family’s crypt.

“Why are we here?” I ask as I carefully follow him.

“We’re married now, which makes you family. I thought I’d introduce you to the people you didn’t have the chance to meet.” His words are soft and filled with something I can’t quite place. “There are a lot of good people buried in here,” he adds, flicking a lighter to illuminate the lanterns around us. It reveals a few urns with plaques beneath them, engraved with names, dates of birth and death, and different symbols.

“Some of them died long before their time ,” he continues. “My cousin, Jules, for instance,”—he points to the first urn—“she was twenty-six and pregnant with her second child. She never got to find out the gender, but her husband had two names engraved alongside hers.”

He turns around to face two gravestones sitting at the far end of the crypt. “We usually only do urns to save space, but we never got the bodies. So, gravestones seemed fitting rather than having empty metal containers placed in their rightful places among the family.”

“Who are they?” I ask as I approach them.

“My sisters.” His words catch me by surprise as my eyes trace their names. “They were only sixteen.”

“So young,” I whisper, bunching my dress up to crouch down in front of the stones. I stop, looking back up at him. “You said that their bodies were never found?” I ask, grief for the young lives lost filling my voice.

“Yeah,” his answer is soft and sorrowful. “That’s the thing with deranged people in our world, they like to take things from you—take people from you. They do it to get under your skin. My sisters were young, had their whole lives ahead of them… They were taken too soon.”

“I–I didn’t know.”

“Because I didn’t tell you, I don’t like to relive bad memories.”

“Understandable,” I say, watching as he sits down beside me from my peripheral vision.

“Sometimes I come here to talk to them,” he admits, his words almost inaudible, like he doesn’t want me to hear. “I know it’s stupid because they can’t hear me—hell, they’re not even in here, but it helps me cope sometimes. Back when they were alive, they would listen to anything I had to say, and I thought it would be a good gesture to keep their memory alive.”

“It’s a sweet thing to do,” I reassure him, my hand finding his on his lap. “It’s a great way to keep them alive in your mind.” My mind reels, trying to find the right words to phrase what’s going on in my head.

It’s impossible to relate to what he’s feeling right now, so I have to be careful with my exact words.

“How are you so certain they’re dead?” I finally settle on, glancing up at him.

His face scrunches. “The man that took them was more cruel and twisted than we initially thought. At first, he sent videos of them, announcing that he had them and instructing us on what he wanted us to do to get them back home in one piece. We refused to let this man dictate our lives and, after months of doing things our own way, he sent us photos of them. They looked… numb, like whatever he did to them forced them to become shells ofthemselves. I knew then that when we did get them back, they wouldn’t be the same people they were before.”

He straightens his posture as he leans forward, his fingers lingering on their names. “He gave us several warnings, but we were so fucking close to finding them and we couldn’t—we wouldn’t let them win by playing along.” His jaw clenches and his eyes close before he releases a shaky exhale. “A couple of days later it all ended. He sent photos of them tied up and videos of them being used in ways no person should be. It wasn’t long before we realised they were already dead by that point. I thought it was sick watching those bastards use them, but after that piece of information, I—”

I hush him, watching as silent tears roll down his cheeks. “You don’t need to relive it, Dario. I don’t want you to experience it again by telling me.”

“I do it daily, Liana; it helps me stay sane. It helps me see things clearer on a day-to-day basis. I don’t like telling outsiders about it because it’s something I haven’t been able to resolve yet. But I will.”

“So—”

“We know who he is; but we can’t find him,” he continues. “How is it fair that he gets to live in the shadows when the girls don’t even get to live at all? How does he get away with something like that and just… vanish?”

“You’ll find him, Dario.”

“I know we will, but it’s been seven years. It’s impossible for men like him to only do something like that once. He is, no doubt, a repeat offender—we just haven’t found any similar crimes yet.”

“And you probably won’t,” I tell him, shaking my head. “If he has done this more than once, it’s possible that Scarlett and Serraweren’t his firsts, and if that’s the case, then he definitely knows how to hide his crimes. It’s more than likely you’ll never get to the bottom of this.”

He exhales a shaky breath. “Then I’ll die trying.” His words are soft and quiet again. “I want you to know that I understand the feeling of loss, and if I were to keep you from your brother, I’d hate myself for it. I’d hate myself if I kept you from seeing your brother because I want, more than anything, to see my sisters again, but that’s impossible. You have the chance to make up for your lost time and I don’t. I won’t take that from you.”

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