Silence of the Geisha Horror: Yukis Revenge by Bella Lamour, Ophelia Oomph Page A

radiating from him, but surely there had to be a bit of relief as well. Humans were pack animals, they were not designed to keep grief and loss bottled up all to one's self. “And by sheer will, she got my head on straight. She still lived up here, but she decided to go back to school. She would always tell me that I would book the crooks and she would cook 'em in court. I missed her, but I knew she needed to be in school. That girl's mind was always running. But then...”
    “Then?”
    “One night she didn't come back. I waited up for her. She always texted me when she was going to spend the night at a friends or go out partying. Heck, she made me text her every night before I went to sleep to make sure I did actually try to get in bed.
    “I knew something was wrong as soon as I called and her phone and it went to voice mail. I immediately called the police and we started the search.”
    “You didn't have to wait forty eight hours or something?”
    “That's just a movie myth. You can report a person missing the moment you think they are. The only catch is if they are an adult that hasn't committed any sort of crime, they can request that the police do not inform you when they are found. That really only happens in stalking cases.”
    “Did you find her?”
    He shook his head. “Not me. Xavier did. He had officers hold me back. She was-was-” His voice broke and although his back was to her, Yuki knew he was shedding bitter tears. They were so close to each other, both sitting on either corner of the small bed, but that space might as well have been a continent. “He found my little baby pants-less, face down in a storm drain. He wrapped her up in his coat and we called an ambulance.”
    He took a deep steadying breath, but Yuki felt like her throat was squeezing too tight to do the same. The pain, the torture in his voice was just awful.
    “It turns out she had been on a date with some well-to-do politician's son. On the ride back to campus, he beat her, knocked her unconscious, violated her, and dumped her out of his car like she was trash. My baby, my little Gwen. She wasn't even human to him.
    “I brought her here, and this time it was my turn to take care of her. I tried. I tried so hard. But all she wanted to do was sleep. So I let her. I let her have whatever she wanted. But she wanted nothing. It took me two months to figure out that she wanted to
be
nothing.
    “And that bastard, the smarmy little monster who hurt my baby? His dad flew him to france before we could get out hands on him. Back then, people were even more biased against victims than they are now. If her daddy's a cop, how could this have happened? She must have just regretted it the next morning. She shouldn't have been out so late if she didn't want to get hurt. That's the issue with women attending college. My little girl was wasting away in this room, missing teeth, part of her vision gone because he beat her skull in so violently with a trophy, but
no
, it must have been her fault. Not some self-entitled rich bastard who thought he was above the rules.”
    “I'm sorry,” Yuki murmured. “I'm so, so sorry.”
    “So am I. I was stupid then. I still believed in happy endings. I thought I could somehow make her better by filling her world with all the nice things I could get my hands on. A puppy. Flowers. Her childhood friends to visit for talks where she just stared out the window.
    “And then, on Saturday, the twentieth of April, at approximately three pm, when I was taking a nap, she snuck into the medicine cabinet and swallowed everything she could. The doctors told me she would have passed out within fifteen minutes. She never woke up.”
    His back straightened but Yuki could not be more of a mess. Big, salty tears were streaming down her cheeks, and little hiccups of pain fought their way out of her throat. Gwen had known exactly what she felt. Gwen had fought the same fight that Yuki was struggling with now.
    But when she lost,