Revenge11 min read
Like That Quiet Night
ButterPicks19 views
1
I was nine when the first terrible night happened.
"It will be all right. Don't make a sound." Elena whispered, her face wet with tears.
She shoved me toward the bedroom window before she locked her fingers on mine. "No matter what, you stay quiet. Promise me."
"I promise." I was small enough to squeeze through the iron bars. I could hear the living room door slam. Someone was banging on the bedroom door. Hard.
"Who is it?" came a man’s voice low and sharp.
"Open! Open this door!" another voice shouted.
I froze with my hands on the edge of the sill. I remember the hot air, the smell of wet earth, and the taste of blood in my mouth a second before the sound started.
"Ah!" Elena’s scream cut through everything.
Then something huge crashed against wood. "Get away from the window!" someone roared. A dull, repeating thud—like a chopping motion. A vegetable cleaver hit the wooden floor again and again.
"Please!" Elena sobbed. "Please stop!"
I pressed the side of my face to the cold metal bars and watched. A short, thick woman stood in the doorway. Her hair was white. Her mouth opened in a hard, cruel line. She held a cleaver and she swung it.
"No!" I wanted to yell. I clamped my hand over my mouth to stop myself.
Elena didn't move anymore. The woman kept cutting, cutting. "You stay quiet," Elena had said. The words had been like a spell. I would not make a sound.
One wrong move and I would be next. My legs trembled. The iron edge scraped my knees. Suddenly I slipped. I fell from the second-floor sill and felt a burning pain in my ankle as I hit the ground. I crawled away. I ran.
"Little girl?" a stranger asked when I crashed into him on the street. He smelled like tobacco.
"Murder! Help!" I cried, then the world went black.
2
"I remember your surname," the man said later, looking at me in the hall of the dance school.
"You are?" I stood up and brushed my palms on my sweatpants.
"I am Maxwell Pierce. Detective Pierce." He showed me his badge. "Do you have a moment? I have questions about a case."
"Which case?" I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
The dancing studio smelled of rosin and cheap perfume. I taught kids there after class to help pay for my father's medicine. My grades were okay, and the teachers had suggested artistic school. I had been nineteen then.
"Do you know Sterling Pohl?" he asked.
"Of course," I said before thinking. "He used to be Elena’s husband."
"Did you ever see him with his daughter?" Maxwell's eyes narrowed.
"I taught the girl. Juliet Castle. She is a good child."
He looked at the room like he was collecting pieces of a puzzle. "Were you there the night she was taken?"
"No." My voice went thin.
His glance flicked to my hands. "May I see your palms?"
I held out my hand. He turned it over slowly. "You have marks here."
"Why? What does it mean?" My throat tightened.
"There was a body found last night." He said it like a fact in a report. "Sterling Pohl. Killed."
"You mean—" I couldn't finish.
Maxwell didn't answer. He looked tired and steady in a way that made him hard to read. "We think the killer used a wire or something similar. The wound shows someone strangled him. We have reason to think this was personal."
"Personal how?" I asked.
"Revenge. Hate. Old grudges." He named those words like knives.
I turned away and watched the children leave. The hall was half empty. The dance studio's CCTV might not have seen everything, he said. I remembered a man standing at the door the day Juliet ran to him. He waved and then slipped behind a column. I had not looked closer. I told that to Maxwell.
"Do you remember what he was wearing?" he asked.
"Yes." My throat felt tight. I could not say the next part. "No," I lied.
3
When they took me to the station, my father sat in the waiting room watching the television like a man who had run out of time.
"Vivienne," he said to me quietly, thumb stroking the rim of his glass. "That girl—Juliet—she's your student, isn't she?"
"Yes," I said.
He did not say anything for a long while. He swallowed and looked at his hands. "I don't want to wait."
"Wait for what?"
He smiled in a way that didn't reach his eyes. "I have things to finish. I can't waste more years."
My heart rolled over. "Dad, you—"
"Shh." He put his finger to his lip.
At the police station, Maxwell asked everything again. "You were there ten years ago when your sister—" He paused. "Elena."
"Stop," I said. "Please." I could feel the old sound of cutting even now, in memory.
"Why didn't she run? That night, who pushed you out the window?" Maxwell asked.
I swallowed hard. "She did. She pushed me. She saved me."
Maxwell nodded like someone taking notes. He was gentle sometimes. "Your file shows you gave a statement then. You said you didn't see the person who took Juliet."
"I didn't," I said. "It was dark. I was hiding. I was nine."
"People remember things differently," he said. "But sometimes what people don't say matters as much."
4
"Tell me the truth," Maxwell said. He was up close now. "Do you recognize Sterling's car? The man who led Juliet away?"
I tried to breathe. "I do," I said. "But I can't tell you why."
"You are protecting someone?"
"Yes," I said, and heat rose in my face.
He looked straight at me. "Who?"
I could not say. I had promised Elena she'd be safe when she cared for me. That promise ate at me.
"Vivienne," Maxwell said softly. "You are older now. Secrets make cases harder."
He reached down and took my hand for a moment. "If your father is involved, we have to know."
"I won't betray my father," I whispered.
"You could be harming yourself," he said.
5
My father, Abel Cooper, had been a soldier, then a mechanic, then a man who fixed people's roofs. He had also, for me, been a gentle presence. He worked with his hands. He smelled of oil and sweat and cigarettes. After my mother died, he became small with worry about money. When Elena married Sterling Pohl, Abel had accepted him because he wanted his daughter happy.
"It's not that I hate him," Abel would say sometimes. "It's that I can't let him hurt you or Elena."
"He did hurt Elena," I said.
One day Abel walked into the dance studio with his chest on his sleeve. He surprised me by being calm, certain. "If you need me to talk, I will," he said.
I did not tell him everything. I wanted him to remember Elena as she was before the blood.
6
"Your father said he took the child and did it to make Sterling come," Maxwell told me in the car. "He claims it was all to bait Sterling, to get him alone."
"That does not sound like him." I rubbed my knee. The old injury still ached sometimes.
"People do strange things for revenge," Maxwell said.
A hush fell over us. The road hummed. Somewhere far, someone played a radio on low.
"You think Abel did it?" I whispered.
Maxwell turned on me. "He told us he did. But his story changes."
"What do you mean?"
"He said a friend named Wood was with him. Who is Wood?"
I did not know. "My father said he helped him," I admitted.
7
When they arrested Abel, he did not resist. He looked like a man who expected to be taken. He did not yell or beg.
"You did this?" Maxwell asked him.
Abel smiled a tired smile. "I have no more time for waiting."
"You killed a man."
"It was a man who helped murder my daughter." His voice cracked, like rusted metal.
"You cut out the pieces of their lives," Maxwell said. "You cannot fix it by killing. The law will decide."
"Let it," Abel said. "But I wanted Elena's death to mean something."
8
The trial was a loud thing.
"This is the court of law," the judge said. "We will hear the full statement."
The room filled with faces: reporters, neighbors, Elena's old friends, parents from the dance studio, and people who had come out of curiosity. The public gallery was packed.
"Are you ready, Abel Cooper?" the judge asked.
"I am." His voice was steady.
The prosecution laid out everything: the ransom messages, the night on the road, the wire, the positioning of bodies, the search efforts, the missing leads. Maxwell stood and gave a detailed, calm explanation.
"Mr. Cooper," the prosecutor asked, "why did you set this up?"
Abel looked at me. I felt my chest tighten like a fist. "For justice," he said. "For Elena. For my family."
The defense said Abel was a dying man, with cancer. They argued for sympathy, for lesser sentence.
"Do you feel sorry?" a woman cried from the gallery. It was Catalina Beltran. "My husband is gone and my child had to be taken. What does your regret mean to us?"
Abel’s shoulders sank. He did not speak.
9
"I want to speak," I said, surprising myself.
"You?" my lawyer whispered. "You sure?"
"Yes." I stood. The room turned its attention to me like a tide.
"Vivienne Ford, step up," the judge said.
I had not planned what to say. My tongue felt heavy. "My sister Elena saved me the night she died," I told everyone. "She called to me. She pushed me out the window. She chose me."
Tears blurred my sight. "What she could not choose for herself was who would live or die in this world. Abel, you said you did it for her. If what you did gives her back, then I'm glad. But it doesn't. Nothing can take back the way she died."
A camera clicked. Someone whispered. "How can she say that?" a man behind me muttered.
Abel reached for me, like to touch, but stopped halfway.
10
Then the judge announced the sentence. "Abel Cooper, for premeditated murder, this court convicts you."
Gasps. Someone started to sob.
"Because of your age and illness, your sentence will be death, suspended for two years to allow for review, after which your sentence may be commuted if conditions are met." The judge's voice was steady. "This is the law."
"You don't understand," Abel tried to say.
"But I do," Maxwell said quietly. "You thought in one painful night you could rewrite years of wrongs. You could not."
Abel's face broke in a way I had never seen. "I only wanted..." His voice faded. He had been tall once in my memory. Now he was small.
11
They led him out. The crowd murmured.
"This is not enough," a voice behind me hissed. "He killed a man."
"Justice is slow," Catalina said, voice hard.
People reached for their phones, recorded, photographed. A woman clapped softly, a sound like a dropped coin.
At that moment I realized how public punishment works. It isn’t just the law. It is the eyes of everyone you know. It is the cameras that keep replaying your face at dinner. It is the way neighbors look at you when you pass.
12
The punishment scene did not end at the sentencing. It stretched like a shadow.
"Abel Cooper," the prosecutor said the next week at a public hearing. "You are charged and convicted. This community must know why."
There were microphones, a low dais, and a hundred people in folding chairs. It felt like a village meeting in a different name. A local TV crew set up, bright lights cutting into my face.
"Why did you kill?" a reporter demanded.
"I killed for my daughter and for Elena," Abel said. He stood in a gray jumpsuit, hands cuffed. "I couldn't live with the thought of Sterling Pohl walking away clean."
A woman in the crowd shouted, "You are a murderer!"
"You are a coward!" someone else yelled.
Abel stared straight ahead. His face first held something like resolve. Then it softened. "I was small and afraid for my family," he said. "I wanted the man who killed my family to feel what I felt."
"Did that bring Elena back?" Catalina asked bitterly, holding Juliet's small hand. "Did that make her whole?"
"No." Abel's voice broke. "No."
The crowd's mood changed. Many faces were hard. A few were shaken. Someone took out a picture of Elena and raised it. "We remember her," they said.
Abel's change was visible. He moved from steady to hollow. His pride cracked. "Please," he began, voice shaking. "I only wanted—"
A man in the back spat. "You're nothing but a murderer."
A cluster of parents from the dance class came forward. "You took our trust," one woman said. "You used a child like a tool."
"She has no idea what happened," another said, eyes on Juliet. "You used a child."
Juliet, small and quiet, hid her face behind Catalina. The crowd's enough like an ocean that even a child can feel its pull.
Abel dropped his head. He had nothing to say that would stitch what was broken. He had made the most public of confessions, and the public had responded with noise, anger, and the small, private grief of those who realized that revenge eats people alive.
13
Then came the worst part for Abel: the people he had trusted turned their backs. A few of his old friends, who had once called him brother at the factory, did not show. A neighbor who traded bread for coffee refused to meet his eyes. "He has shame," one man said, "but he can't fix blood with that."
"Do you regret it? Regret it honestly," someone demanded near the end.
Abel closed his eyes. The world waited. "I regret that I thought I could fix it," he said. "I regret that I let my hate decide. I am sorry." His apology came out thin and slow.
A young woman stepped forward, her voice quiet. "Sorry doesn't bring them back," she said. "It only makes those left do the work of carrying the rest."
People started to leave slowly. Cameras clicked off. The television reporter signed off. The street outside was full of cars and people continuing life.
Abel was taken back to the cell. He walked with his head bent. Even the jail guards looked different toward him now. For a man who had once been a hero in a small life, he had become a story other people told over coffee: a man who tried to take back the past and lost himself.
14
A twist came months later. People asked new questions.
"The man Wood," Maxwell told me one evening. "We looked. Gage Volkov was a real person. He had a record for brawls. He disappeared. We never found him after the murder."
"Did he exist?" I asked.
"He might have. Or he might have been a name Abel used to cover up being the only killer."
Abel had changed his story a little more as he sat alone. He had tried to protect someone. He had tried to shift blame. The truth can be slippery when guilt is a heavy stone.
15
"How do I carry on?" I asked Maxwell once, quietly, in the empty hall after everyone left.
"You tell your students the truth about being brave," Maxwell said. "You teach them to stand up. Not to fight. But to stand."
"Will people forgive my father?"
"Some will never forgive him. Some will find a way. But forgiveness is not for them to ask for. It's for those who give it."
16
One morning in the hospital, Abel's breath grew thin. The cancer had come back in a way the doctors said was too fast. Catalina and Juliet came to see him.
"Hello there," he croaked, lifting his head a little. "Juliet."
She blinked, whispered, "Hi, Grandpa."
"She remembers you," Catalina told me later. "She calls him Grandpa because of that night. He was there, gentle. He helped her. That is what she knows."
I felt cold and warm at the same time. I had watched Abel become a monster in one story and a soft, tired man in another.
When Abel died months later in soft gray light, it was not a dramatic end. There were no guns, no shouting—only machines turned off and a nurse closing a door. The papers said that justice had been served. Some people felt relief, others felt empty.
17
People change the story as it suits them. Some whispered that Abel had been brave. Others said he had been weak. I sat in a corner of the dance studio and watched Juliet jump and twirl. She looked like any child. She did not carry the weight we tried to place on her thin shoulders.
One day Juliet ran to Abel's old friend at the market and called him "Wood." He laughed and hugged her like a relative.
I realized then that children can keep the world simple. They can hold both kindness and horror without folding.
18
Years later, when I was older, Maxwell came by the studio with an envelope. "A note from someone who remembers Elena," he said.
He handed it to me. Inside was a small folded page and a watch that had once belonged to Sterling Pohl. "This was found in his car at the scene. Some items were not taken even by the killer. It seemed odd then. It seems odd now," Maxwell said.
"I remember that night," I said. "The iron bars, the smell, Elena's last words. She told me to be quiet. She told me to live."
I put the watch in a glass box on my shelf. It ticked slowly. The second hand moved. When I wound it, the tick was a small steady thing that kept going no matter how loud the world was.
19
"Do you ever think about forgiving?" Maxwell asked me once at closing time. The studio smelled like lemon cleaner and rosin.
"I think about not letting hate fill my chest," I said. "Forgiveness is a word for other people. I want to live. That is what Elena asked."
Maxwell nodded. "She asked the right thing."
He left, and I turned off the lights. The room was dark but for a single lamp on my desk. I looked at the window bars I had crawled out through as a child and wondered how small I had been. I thought of Abel on the stand, of people in the crowd with their phones, of Juliet's small hand in her mother's.
20
When I close my eyes now, I still hear a cleaver's dull hit. But other sounds come too: Juliet's laugh in class, Elena humming as she braided my hair, Abel's old hands fixing a leaky pipe. Life is many sounds stitched together. Some stitches we cut and some we mend.
I keep the watch on my shelf. I wind it each week. Its tick is small and steady. I tell my students that time moves on even when everything else seems stuck.
The last time I passed the courthouse, someone I didn't know walked past and said, "She survived. How did she survive?"
I touched the watch in my bag and said, "Elena taught me. She was brave."
A stranger looked at me and nodded like they understood.
"If you ever see Juliet Castle at the studio," I added, "say hello. She prefers to be called Little Ball."
"Little Ball?" the stranger laughed.
"Yes. It stuck. It's kinder than the rest of the names some people use."
He smiled and walked on. The day was ordinary, like any other day a wound slowly heals.
The End
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