Music Recommendation: In The Stars by Benson Boone
*****
Hollow Fen Cemetery in Lakewood City...
It was exactly 6:00 PM on a gloomy Sunday evening.
The sky hung heavy with grey, weeping clouds, as though the heavens themselves were mourning.
Hollow Fen cemetery lay cloaked in a hushed stillness—serene, yet laced with a strange, spine-tingling unease.
A gentle breeze rustled through the brittle leaves of the skeletal trees that lined the graveyard's edge, their whispering branches sounding like faint, unintelligible voices.
The distant chirping birds had all gone silent and the world felt paused, as if the earth held its breath in a solemn reverence for the dead.
Standing alone, before a fresh grave was the shadow of a man carved in flesh.
He stood tall, striking and almost ethereal in his godlike beauty. But his frame trembled under the weight of invisible grief.
His usually commanding presence was muted, subdued by sorrow. His eyes—once ablaze with light and intensity—were dim, hollow and red-rimmed.
His dark, crisp and well-fitted suit clung to broad shoulders with perfect elegance. But no amount of grace could mask the hollow devastation etched across his face.
In his hand, he clutched onto a bouquet of flowers, white lilies–soft and pure, just like the spirit of the beauty buried beneath the earth in ashes.
The flowers though captivating, looked out of place in the cruel bleakness of the cemetery, just like the dead beauty, who was stolen before her time.
As his eyes bored into the cold slab of stone, where her precious name was engraved, his lips moved as if willing to speak. But not a sound came out of his mouth.
The wind curled around him like a whisper, carrying her rare laughter, now only a ghost in his memory.
With a shaky breath, he knelt beside the grave, fingers brushing the cold earth as if reaching for her through the soil.
"I should've been there that night. God, I should've—"
Damian choked on his words, biting back the sob rising in his throat.
"I know how much you love being independent. But, I should have been there to shield you. I should have protected you. If only I had called you sooner. If only I had stopped you from entering that car. Maybe you'd still be here–breathing and cursing me for being overcautious."
Damian laid his trembling hand on the grave, his fingers digging slightly into the soft earth, as if trying to touch her through the soil.
"I miss you, Raya. I never got the chance to tell you how much I loved you. You are my everything and I feel so breathless without you. God, I'd give anything to hear your voice again. Even if it's just to yell at me and punch me in the face." His voice trembled even more, raw and agonizing.
"If only I could go back in time," he whispered, voice breaking like glass. "If only I could rewrite the moment fate betrayed you... I'd trade my soul to undo it all."
Damian closed his eyes, pressing the lily to his heart, as if trying to keep a piece of her alive inside him.
Then, opening them again, something changed in him. Grief gave birth to resolve. His jaw tightened, his shoulders squared, and from the ruin of sorrow, a vow was born.
"They took you from me. They celebrate your death like you were the villain and not them. But I swear to you on everything I am and have left..." he looked up to the heavens, his frosty gaze on the darkened greyish clouds. "...I will make them pay. I will watch all of them burn in hell until the earth swallows me beside you." He kissed the flowers and dropped them by the headstone.
As the first raindrop struck the earth, it mingled with the tears flowing down his cheeks.
Heaven and heart wept in unison with him—for love lost, for vengeance kindled, and for a man who would never be whole again.
*******
Over the next few months, Hiraya kept a very low profile, residing in a low-budget motel outside of LampStone city, where no one could trace her.
She discreetly recovered all of her liquid assets stored in her different offshore accounts and had them transferred to new accounts with a new name.
She didn't bother contacting anyone from her past life–not even Damian, even though it hurts like hell, knowing how devastated he would be by her death.
Having been given a second chance at life and with a precious child on the way, Hiraya decided to leave her past as Hiraya Chavez behind and take on her new identity as Carmelita for the sake of her unborn child.
But if she was going to be Carmelita, she was going to live on her own terms– no longer the broken woman they buried in betrayal but their nemesis.
From a discreet distance—always hidden and always calculating—Hiraya watched the in-laws, who smiled in public and slaughtered in silence.
They never saw her. They never noticed her quiet presence slipping like smoke through their lives. But she saw everything.
She slipped in and out of LampStone City, like the ghost that she was.
Each name of the Mendoza family burned into her memory, starting from the head to the youngest in the family. Each of their individual and corporate bank account was traced, logged, and mirrored into her hidden files. Each company was dissected until she knew the true owners behind the front-facing masks.
She knew which brother-in-law kept secret properties under a mistress's name. She knew the offshore account that the almighty first son of the extended family siphoned wealth into. She knew the young grandson's crippling gambling debt, hidden beneath layers of falsified success. She knew of the younger granddaughter's secret affair with the eldest granddaughter's fiancé.
Hiraya studied each of the family members' habits like scripture: The way one always pulled at his left ear lobe when lying. How another only wore dark blue suits on days he expected bad news.
She knew who couldn't start a day without checking the mirror, and who couldn't end one without a double shot of vodka.
She learned their vanities and their secrets. The woman obsessed with youth, injecting her face with poison. The man who prided himself on power but panicked without his anxiety pills. The one who wore religion like armour, yet paid for sins in hotel rooms under different names.
Most importantly, she learned their weaknesses, their blind spots, their pride and their arrogance—the fatal flaw they all shared.
She was building a masterpiece of quiet ruin. Not with guns. Not with screams. But with silence, patience, and the promise of reckoning.
They took everything from her once.
This time, she'd take it all back—piece by piece—and leave them begging for the mercy they never showed her.