The Prisoner Project

TWENTY EIGHT

Celebrating 500,000 reads and 5,000 followers with a double updates! Also, I broke all my new year resolutions in the span of two weeks. Record breaking. We stan an unreliable queen.

You might want to skim read chapter 25, 26 and 27 to familiarise yourself with the characters before you start reading ;)

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It's when a serial killer makes a mistake that you get to live another day.

— Anthony T. Hincks

TWENTY EIGHT

AND SO IT WAS SETTLED. I was the unfortunate star of the show. The final masterpiece at an art museum. The king pin. It sated me partially to finally understand that I had been right all along. I knew there was too much focus on me for it to be wholly focused on Banshee. What I didn't understand though, was who? Who wanted to do this to me?

My mind had been looping in delicate spirals in a pathetic attempt to grasp at the straws of Banshees words. His eyes were excited, and his lips remained pulled apart. Obviously, he was aware of how well he had weaved his fingers into my brain and shocked me.  "If fear had a face, it would look like you." He chuckled. "You're terrified because you knew this all the while, and you're terrified because you are guilty."

"I have diplomatic immunity."

Banshee sighed, quite heavily. "Christ. You're unbelievably naive."

"What are you saying?"

He tilted his head up to stare at the fluorescent lights. It dawned on me then that I was beginning to understand him. His face usually stunned me but now, he was becoming familiar. I couldn't tell if that was a good thing or bad thing.

He pushed back his hair behind his ears. I had never seen his ears before. "I'm saying that there's nothing you can do now to escape the consequences of whatever shit you did."

His sentence did nothing but heighten my anxiety. "Then why are you helping me?"

Banshee scoffed. "Trust me Aria, I'm not helping you. Let's call it curiosity. I'm fascinated that someone of your caliber could take lives."

I couldn't  say anything in return.

"There are a number of things about you that have puzzles me. Now, I have the chance to ask." His eyes fleeted across my face. "Are you ready?"

"No."

"I know you aren't." Before I had a chance to reply, Banshee steered me in his direction. "Tell me how many."

My arms wrapped tight around my torso. "How many what?"

"How many people have you murdered?"

I had to cup my hands over my mouth to hold back my first instinct to gag. The truth really was the most bitter thing in the world. The hardest pill to swallow. It was like swallowing a two-edged sword. Almost impossible. "Murder is a vile word."

Banshee shrugged, wholly invested in every reaction I made. "I'm telling it as it is."

I closed my eyes.

I tried to distance myself from every emotion I had attached to that gruelling day. It was ultimately difficult because I had recently come to know that every thing that happened that night was my fault, and I had selfishly repressed the thought.

His voice pierced through. "How many—"

"Three."

If it wasn't for me, they'd all be alive.