Twenty-one and ready to take on the world, orphan Lizzie Gold didn't expect her chance encounter with a stranger to lead to a damnable task - to take down a rising business tycoon.
Ryan Pierce - her viciously handsome target and her new boss - might...
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L I Z Z I E 51 | the silence of the graves
a week later:
The silence of the graves speaks volumes.
I like to imagine sometimes how vocal the dead must be at night. What if we never die? Just become invisible to the eyes of the world so that we could celebrate with the dead.
If that were the case, the mud in my hands won't cover up the soul of my father from me forever.
They expect me to feel something, to speak something, to show more grief. The truth is, I don't know how to. How can I grieve someone I never got to know? I grieved my adoptive parents plenty when they died. It took me days to recover from their deaths but my biological father — Winston Clarke, Silas Hayes, whoever he was — never gave me the chance to grieve for him. He only gave me a promise that he loves me too.
The wet mud after the drizzling rain sticks to my fingers when I drop a fistful of it over his coffin. I rise, dressed in all black with my heart on my sleeve as the cemetery workers take it over from here, covering the coffin with more mud.
There is a whimper behind me. I turn on my high heels, spotting Crystal under a tree where she is hugging her mother's legs. She is dressed like I am — in a black dress and a black hat. But unlike my straight face, hers has a pink pallor as tears stream down her cheeks. Seeing her makes me pity the dead a little. It reminds me that they were alive once for they have someone to grieve for them.
What good is dying if there is no one to remember you? Love makes us all worth remembering.
I walk up to them while Gloria dabs a handkerchief under her eyes which makes me wonder how real her tears are. Winston might have been nothing to many but to her, he was a friend, a lover, and a husband, the father of her child. Surely, he doesn't deserve her tears to be fake when she was the reason why his life got destroyed in the first place. I hope for his sake that she isn't faking this just for the media.
Ryan is nowhere to be seen among the crowd of people who are here for the show — mainly to see the reincarnated Josephine Hayes. Someone — I am guessing one of the servants — was quick to inform them about everything that went down. I get what they thought. A sudden change in the ownership of the mansion must be riveting to them.
"He's not gone, you know?" I say to Crystal, crouching before her to match her height. She sniffles as she faces me. "Your Dad's just become invisible. Like someone with superpowers."
"Won't he...tuck me to bed anymore, Lizzie?" the child asks me with a sob.
"Of course, he will, little one." I touch her cheek, stroking her cheekbone. "When you go to bed, just close your eyes and you'll feel him tucking you in. Just don't open your eyes when he comes or else he'll disappear again."
