OPHELIA: Chapter 44
Blurb
Elizabeth Lockwick wants one thing… to ensure Ophelia remains dead.
For years she’s weaved a life seen through rose-coloured glasses in idyllic Vermont with her husband Sebastian Lockwick, an alluring man with a broken moral compass, whose intent lies in protecting his wife. However, apart from her unorthodox understanding of Sebastian’s dark and gritty hidden nature, she finds herself slipping away from her sanity in maintaining this picturesque life.
After receiving a gruesome gift from an unknown sender threatening to expose her, she finds herself haunted and possibly hunted by her buried past.
In order to make things right for herself and ensure that her secret is hidden, she reluctantly travels back to her sleepy small hometown in Wisconsin. A town where young girls seem to be mysteriously disappearing. There, she reunites with the dysfunctional Pierre-Louis’, a French-American family who sheltered her in their manor in her time of need.
With time slipping away, she struggles with her guilt and a dangerous affair and realizes that perhaps Ophelia wasn’t dead after all these years.
Elizabeth suddenly finds herself caught in a game of cat and mouse, unsure of which she really is this time and who she can trust.
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Chapter 44
Stefan watched as the clock’s tick drained the seconds out of the hour. It felt rather endless to him. Just a little longer. He tried to convince himself that much. He refused the bail only because he wanted to get the truth. He needed to be here right now, and to his understanding they wanted to keep him here. That was not going to work out quite well for them of course because he knew his father would get their family lawyer to get him out, but for how he planned to take advantage of his time here as much as he can. God forbid anything otherwise, out of his control, takes place.
He sat at the edge of the dirty bed in the holding cell. The room consisted of four walls and a stained bar window at the top that barely let any light in. It was minimal and damp enough to send any sane man insane. The minutes turned to miles, it was almost mocking him. The sheriff’s word soon brought him to his attention.
“Take him out, bring him in for questioning.”
Within a minute, a guard returned with a key in hand and unlocked the cell. Stefan followed him into a small interrogation room and seated himself behind the large wooden table in the empty room. The loud clanks of iron were heard as the officers entered each gate inside. It could have possibly been heard from miles away. He looked at the silver rusted handcuffs around his wrist and disgust fell upon him. Disgust towards this town. Here, he remembered why exactly he hated this place, the stifling corruption, a town where the criminals were walking free while an innocent man pays for a crime he did not commit. Ironically, this was such a situation.
The sheriff chuckled at the door as he came in, “Penny for your thoughts, boy?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Ah, let me guess, you won’t speak until your daddy brings you your lawyer?”
Stefan scoffed. That man was doing nothing but irritating him. And quite frankly, he was not the man he had intended to put himself in this position to speak with here. If his hunch was correct, the man who he had wanted to speak with would have showed up any moment now. A sudden unsettling feeling rose within him, in this moment he realized what a dangerous game he was playing. He couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. He couldn’t afford to lose anyone else.
The sound of footsteps approached through the gates. Sebastian Lockwick entered the room and stood near the sheriff who greeted him as if the man was God himself. If he could have licked the shit off the soles of Sebastian’s shoes, Stefan was pretty sure the sheriff would do it.
“I know you must be wondering why Mr. Lockwick is here. You see, he has been such a great benefactor to our town and we allow him over the years the responsibility to oversee the differing aspects of concern within Rose Gap, the criminal unit included.”
Just as Stefan thought. Sebastian did have a part to play in all of this. His blood was a raging sea but he tried to calm himself from within. What else was Sebastian Lockwick hiding?
“That’d be all, Sheriff. I wish to speak to Mr. Pierre Louis alone,” Sebastian instructed. The sheriff obediently nodded and left the room. A heavy darkness fell over the room as the sun dimmed from the little window to the side. Had it been morning already? Stefan wasn’t keeping up with the time he was here. Sometimes it felt as if time stopped and others felt like it was almost too late for something.
Sebastian took a heavy sigh and dragged the ironed chair to sit opposite Stefan at the table. The loud screeching sound scraped into his ears, almost with the intent to damage his eardrum. It was as if the gates of hell itself was opening itself up to take him in.
“Pierre Louis,” Sebastian began with an intense look upon his face, it was almost serious, “Tell me what happened that night.”
Stefan found this comical, the way this man would sit across from him and pretend to care. The way it almost felt convincing that Sebastian had good intent and wished to help the family of Mya Boyle find justice. A sick sort of nauseating feeling twisted within the pits of his stomach. The thought of this man being this way towards Ophelia all these years. The way he would fool her and lead her to thinking how he was actually on her side when he was the very thing she had to be running away from. Sebastian was a manipulative and cunning man who knew perfectly well how to take calculated approaches to individuals to gain their trust. This, Stefan was very sure of.
“Listen,” Sebastian continued, “I don’t believe you did it, but if you just work with me and cooperative, I can help you. People like us don’t belong in these cells.”
“People like us?” Stefan arched an eyebrow.
“This town is filled with rats, you know that. It’s one of these rats who must have done it and tried to frame you. It’s always the ones beneath us.”
This was actually something Stefan agreed on. Except, the contexts of the word rats differed for each of them. Sebastian was taking about the lower class whilst Stefan thought it as the authorities and officials in this town such as the sheriff and father Greywood.
“I can help you,” Sebastian repeated himself.
At this point Stefan couldn’t take any more of this. He couldn’t handle this fakeness and deceit leaking out of the man before him like a fresh cut wound. If he was not mistaken, Sebastian looked as if he was enjoying this. This game. He was simply trying to buy more time.
“Why don’t you just cut the fkery and take the fking mask off?”
A hint of a small smile played upon the edges of Sebastian’s perfectly curved lips. “You seem irritated,” Sebastian noted in a matter-of-fact manner.
“Anyone would be if they knew the truth.”
Sebastian leaned back against the chair and rubbed his chain with a chuckle, “That b*tch of yours didn’t seem to mind it.”
Stefan frowned as he continued to speak.
“It was almost like she knew but the poor thing wanted to believe it was real. Or perhaps she thought it was safe? Or perhaps she thought she had no other option. I mean she did try that once and it didn’t work out for her. What’s that fool’s name again? Ah, yes, Christopher. He made her life hell. And you know what they say, anything after hell is heaven. I certainly made sure of it.”
“So you knew,” Stefan iced.
Sebastian scoffed, “You care about her so much that you let her go into the world of monsters. It’s pathetic. Christopher was our new recruit at the time so we sent him out to make a way into her life. He didn’t want to at first because he’s not into women and doesn’t like faking it, but he saw the greater good in doing what he did.”
The greater good.
“She’s not as weak as you think she is,” Stefan defended.
“Oh, but she was so incredibly vulnerable in the beginning. I enjoyed knowing how mentally crippling she was becoming. Of course, until I stepped into the picture and I helped her to become much stronger. I saved her. I kept her alive.”
Stefan was now beginning to fully understand what type of man Sebastian Lockwick was. Not only was he dangerous, but he seemed to believe that he was cynically apotheosis.
“You should thank me, you know,” Sebastian stated.
“Why?” Stefan asked dryly. He couldn’t reflect and show his truth disgust towards him. At least, not right now.
Sebastian stood and walked around the table, almost like a lion encircling his prey. “I could have killed her anytime I wanted to.”
“And why didn’t you?”
He briefly laughed, “There’s no fun in killing someone in their sleep.” “You know,” he continued, “I don’t think she ever truly forgot you, no matter how good I fked her. She’d still mumble your name in her sleep. Stef, Stefan-” he mocked, “God, how I wanted to choke her right then and there.”
Stefan felt the blood within him boiling in anger and detest. The thought of this man even touching her was beginning to send him hysterically mad. He tried to calm himself. It was almost as if Sebastian knew the way he was feeling on the inside and tried to take advantage of that. “But the best part, the part I enjoyed the most,” Sebastian said whilst balancing on hand on the back of Stefan’s chair and the other on the table. He leaned in closer, “The best part was fucking her when she was unconscious.”
Stefan shot himself off his chair and swung the handcuffs towards his face. It knocked him back. Blood oozed from his nose as he steadied himself up from the floor. Without a moment to spare, Stefan grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head into the wall. Sebastian was about to hit him back when the guards suddenly came in and detained Stefan away, from afar.
Sebastian stood with pure hate plagued upon his face. He spit out the remaining blood and saliva that gathered inside his mouth. He walked out the room with a chuckle and closed the bar door behind him. As he walked away, he pulled out a cigar and spoke, “Would be a shame if you’re out of here and too late.”
Stefan woke up on the floor of his cell. His body ached. The taste of metallic blood settled into his mouth and dried at the corners of his lips. His head ached. The last thing he remembered was the guards trashing him. He groaned as he sat up and leaned against the filthy wall behind him. He wondered what time it was. There was no light seeping through the window from above. Had it been nightfall already?
The sound of footsteps suddenly neared. God forbid, it was that piece of shit Sebastian again. It wasn’t. His father stood speaking to the sheriff at the side alongside with the family lawyer, Markle George.
“What the hell happened to him?” Victor exclaimed in a sudden fit of rage.
The sheriff chuckled nervously. “We had a bit of a situation.”
Victor was about to explode when Markle protested by placing a hand on his shoulder to allow him to speak.
“I hope you know the type of consequences you’ll have to face now for such a situation.”
“Oh, come on George, we’ve known each other a long time.”
“You and the authorities of this town have been shimmering in your own shit for far too long, Gill.” He smiled and took a step closer to him whilst turning the smile into a deep-set frown, “I don’t support the activities that take place here. I promised to put an end to it, and I will.”
“Put an end to what?” The sheriff tried playing coy.
George gave a pitiful scoff and shook his head, “You sometimes seem to forget that I too grew up here.” He turned his attention towards Stefan, “How are you, boy? I haven’t seen you in years.”
“I could be better,” Stefan frowned. “I need to make a phone call.”
His mind was too perturbed. He had hoped Ophelia wouldn’t have called and told Charlie what had happened to him, else he would have stopped what he was doing and drove back here without knowing the truth. He had hoped Ophelia remained at home and was safe. He needed to find out. First, he tried to called Charlie but to his surprise there was no answer. This was unusual as Charlie always would. Stefan tried not to think the worst, and instead attempted to call Ophelia. Hers too was unreachable.
“Father, where’s Ophelia? Is she at home?” he asked in concern.
“No, I believe Florence said she had been out since this morning.”
Stefan felt a cold chill ran down his spine. She shouldn’t have left the house. He should have told her what he knew when he had the chance.
**
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