CHAPTER FORTY - ONE | Draven's True Intentions

"MOM, CAN I TALK to you for a second?"

Mom had been furiously scrubbing the scab of gravy from the countertile when my question led her out from her reverie of wanting a clean kitchen. Her hair were pulled under a white thermal cap, allowing only a couple of strands to web around her face.

"Uh huh," she murmured with great concentration, teeth gritted to its utmost.

"I got into an accident-"

Mom froze, letting the wipe fall. Slightly bending down to grab the wipe for her, I frowned. She hadn't uttered a single word in the last two minutes. If this were to happen unexpectedly, I had expected from her to hit me or to yell but there was nothing from her side. Cold as the eff-word.

I continued anyways. "-with Savannah. It wasn't serious or anything, though. Sherif came and you know Tessa. She was there too but since the accident, I've been having these really vivid, unexplainable visions. Sometimes, I hear voices. They sound familiar, yet so unfamiliar at times. It's-It's really hard to explain--difficult because I haven't experienced any of those things before. I haven't. I know. "

"Voices?" Mom's gaze hardened. "What...voices?"

Leaning on the countertop, I let my head down. "Voices calling my name. It sounded like a girl saying my name but then it could be Savannah too. I'm not sure if that was her or simply my-"

"Specify, you stupid child."

Annoyed to the core, I clenched my jaw. "Mom," I dragged. "Listen. I saw red before the car accelerated and got out of control. A brief, flash of red and I was out. Am I being driven to the brink of sanity and slowly falling into the endless pit of insanity?"

"Has the accident affected a part of your mind, Baz? Does it hurt if you put too much pressure on it while thinking of all this?"

I bowed my head further. Of course, she wouldn't understand.

"No, in all honesty, has it been hurting?"

"Has it ever occurred to you, Mom, that the joke is over and it was never funny to begin with?" I snapped.

Woah.

What is wrong with me?

Her brows dipped forward, the righteous guise dropping off of her face to disclose an appalled looking expression. Anyone could tell that I hadn't meant those words and that she hadn't been blatantly offended by by my tone but then, were her expressions for real?

"Sebastion-"

"It's alright," I murmured. "I just wanted you to listen."

I just wanted you to be a mother that you couldn't ever become. For the first time ever, I wanted to talk about the things that I had been going through but like always, she had other ideas on her mind.

Pretending to act dejected, I ambled back to my room. Since the day of my birth, I had been sent away to my Uncle and he'd cared for me as a child of his own because his had been taken away from him by the mother.

Closing the door behind me, I grabbed my phone. After unblocking the screen, I was met with a message notification from Alec.

Alec
you up?

That's strange. Sliding upwards, I clicked on the message to reply.

"WHAT THE ACTUAL fuck," I muttered, fingers gently tucking the fallen strand behind my ear as I bent low to eye the person who would soon come to betray my Dad.

Draven had turned into the alley nearest to our house. Is he trying to enter the Red Zone?  Wishing for my leather jacket,   I blended into the patches of darkness being casted down on the barren road. Grazing my boots along the fresh asphalt, I sped around the corner until I was two steps into the Red Zone: an area that was enclosed into stupefaction by a picture-perfect town for picture-perfect families.

A place with no rules, no restrictions and no equity.

A place that was now going to be visited by none other then the famous developer of an app for communication. How strange. What need could there be for him to visit such a place? Is he marking up places for traveling for the fun of it?

Unlike the roads down the town, the alleys didn't have lamp posts. An impregnable and unsuspecting darkness took over. The one that mischievously blocks out all noise and shape; abandoning you in complete serenity but if left unchecked, might unhinge you or better yet--leave you to deal with your own plunging sanity.

I had a strong desire for my dagger to appear in my hands.

In a trice, my feet went rigid as a gloved hand came around my torso. To restrict the vocals, another hand hurled close to my mouth. "Ssh," the soft voice reprimanded my struggle.

Fucking stupid ass.

Retracting my head back, I let go like the stone in a slingshot. The hold that had been imprisoning me beforehand, loosened enough to allow me to get hold of my self.

"FUCK," the voice expressed. In a whim, the gloved hands branded their move by slamming me into the brick wall. The dilapidated brick wall was rough against my back; it's ruggedness, my old bruises and the sheer amount of strength that the gloved hands had utilized had become  the catalysts for this painstakingly, agonising torment that had been going down in my ribcage.

"You're following me," the glacial voice stated.

Draven. I knew it. He had always been shady in my eyes, since the night of the Masquerade party.

"I'm afraid I can't have you ruin my plan for tonight, princess."

A hand that was tightly holding me in place soared high before coming down to cover my mouth. "You're going to be a good little girl, Savannah, and walk back to your daddy or else this'll be the last thing you see before--" he paused to whisper in my ear, his mouth freezing against my skin.

"- you die."

I wanted to laugh. And also fuck him up.

Striking at his palm on my face, I firmly removed it by giving it a vicious, meaningful jerk. " I think you do not have the simplest notion of who I really am."

A scoff, full of contempt and indignation was the response that I got from him.

"Allow me to show you something," he procceded with his act by slowly taking off the white blazer, revealing a fully buttoned up white shirt. Popping the first two buttons open, he continued to gawk down at me before walking back to the entrance of the alleyway.

One of Dad's men, I think it was the man from before who had a bleeding nose, had quirked his entire self onto a stick and was ambling down the pathway.

As soon as his stare found us, he raised his stick off the ground as a way to greet us but it was short-lived because bitchass Draven secured his palm against the old man, before shoving him to the ground and into the alley.

I retreated in awe, appalled with his action. He was going to beat up an old, innocent man just to make me scared of him.

Putting on a guise, I folded my arms and let him play a game that I was better at.

Rushing a hand through his flaming hair, he crouched low to get hold of the man's collars. "Let's give you a taste of your own medicine," he mumbled in a hushed tone. A smile crept up on his lips and it extended from one ear to another.

Creepy.

Panic set in and the man began to struggle, trepidation dancing out of his gaze and  with each passing second, he slowly got reduced into a whimpering mass of flesh and bones.

"Wh-Why?" he begged in misery but it was simply fruitless because Draven had already made up his mind.

Snatching at his collar, the old man was made to stand and then yanked to the brick wall where his fearful self was pushed against. Tarrying a hand high, he came down at the old man's face. The head lolled to another side and immediately struck the brick wall in a barbaric manner.

My breathing hitched but I refused to break my act.

He was insane. Fucking insane. No wonder he had been cruelly treated by the Sherrif.

"Are you scared now, Savannah?" he leered at me, condescendingly.

Another strike. This time, I swore I could hear the crack of his bones. Flinching to myself, I gulped. Call it my demons or my subconscious, I never stepped in to help the man. The blood and gore, and all the things that might scare off innocents, were the only things ready to house my turmoil and misery.

One thing that kept me alive was blood and the one thing that kept me from going insane was blood too.

Blood trickled down his frightful face, eyes unhurriedly transitioning to that of a lifeless look. "H-Hel-" he gurgled out, blood muffling up his voice.

He was dead.

"Run."

Casually pulling at his sleeves and folding them upwards, he came to stand right in front of me. I should be scared right now. But I wasn't. That was because I had been Savannah James before becoming a Jackson heiress. The man that he had so brutally killed was a man who worked in my Dad's company and he had always been nice to me but why had it been so easy to witness his death?

Evil. What is evil? Evil is to stare in the face of evil and having the power to change courses but not doing anything to prevent it. Evil.

"Why did he have to die?" I entreated. "Is this what you do for fun?"

Taking a step forward, my fingers intervened into a clenched fist. All those times when he'd take leave from the parties and meetings, he'd go to satiate his hunger by killing people? I reached to an assumption.

"You're a sick fuck who channels their inner self by murdering innocent people. A sick, fucking douche bag who's homicidal to  such an extent that you might as well become the town's first serial killer. The label that you walk around with helps you to mop up your crimes as you go around taking their lives from them. Who gave you this right?"

As if he was hanging off of my sentences, the look of derangement subsided to reveal an immaculate expression of nothing. Clean slate.

"You own the riches and it gives you power but power makes you evil. Power made you feel like you won't have to face any sort of consequences!"

Anger took the best of me.

"HOW COULD YOU KILL THAT MAN?" I couldn't control myself. "YOU FUCKING PSYCHOPATH!"

When I leaned closer, I found his eyes to be conveying dichotomy. There was a conflicted emotion in his gaze that froze me in my tracks: first, the slight curve of his mouth, and second, the depth of his eyes that nourished an understanding. As if he was understanding and analysing every bit of word that was leaving my mouth. As if.

"Leave my Dad and his company--"

"Don't say a word anymore," he interrupted me. "Don't say a word, Princess, if you don't know anything."

My gun seemed more desirable then the dagger right now. One bullet in the head and he'd be a white cream puff on top of the old man's red velvet of a corpse.

Taking his dark gloves off, he knelt down to place a small card next to the body. A mask of pride dominated over his face as he got up to face me.

"Bernie McCutchen, the President of Entertainment Sector of the Express2Way, is done. This man isn't a man but a 76 year old, alleged and accused harrasser as well as the one who was proven to be the one behind the case of Laura Wang."

Something finally broke in me.

Laura Wang.

About a year ago, nine year old Laura was kidnapped from her hometown. She had been living in a trailer by the mountains with her mother and after days of  her gone missing, her body was found floating in the river by the mountains, face down. Surrounded by an air of mystery around it, media dwelled in it's rawness but everyone soon forgot all about it once they came to a realization that she might have fallen to her death by accident while playing in the mountains.
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[Trigger Warning]
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However, the case got picked up again when reports of her being violated began to circulate around. According to the post-martum reports, Laura had been ruthlessly subjected to all sorts of torture and mutilation before being granted the peace that is death. For fifteen days and fifteen nights, she lost control over her own body and went through shit that no other child her age should have gone through.

She lost her innocence...

My heart began to ache with torment. In  order to not hyperventilate in front of him, I gulped. What would Sebastion be doing in this situation?

Warming into his denim jacket more, I turned to glower at the man who had taken Laura's case into his own hands.

"Wasn't that monster caught?"

The grey curtain was flowing along with the wind. The rustle of the trees below my room. Impenetrable, inky darkness. No. No. I have to get out of that zone. Don't go back, Savannah.

"Monsters are never caught. They have to be cherrypicked from among the masses and killed in order to reinstate justice-" he casted me a grave look. "The man that was caught was an understudy. He was simply acting out his role of an obedient, and law abiding server of power.".

I took a step back.

"That is why I kill them. I take their will to live and force them to live their last moments thinking how hell awaits them, both on earth and the world beyond. Their unjustifiable, heinous crimes deserve punishments and in this lovely, private town of curruption, everyone's fond of pushing all the crimes they had done under the carpet but not anymore. "

He needed to stop. I couldn't keep up my hard exterior. I needed a time out.

"Laura's mom never got justice for her daughter. Honestly, who'd ever stand up for trailer park Laura Wang and her messed up mother? No one. The world is one fucked up place-"

I was so cold right now. I know it is.

"The world is a game. To master this, all you have to do is fuck up things and then be good at hiding them under a fake pretense," he narrated his philosophy, oblivious to the paling of my skin.

Fix. I needed my fix.

"If they like it so much, why not give them something worthwhile to cover up? That's why I kill. I want their pretences to crack and shatter, allowing their conscious to fall through. I want their fears to blind them and rush to hide this murder by hiding his body even if the cause was against their agenda. I want them to go insane. I want all hell to break lose."

I turned around swiftly, my feet enchanting me to run back to the house.

Escape.

My feet were shaking and the entire form trembling with absolute convection.

He was just fighting the demons. I got it all wrong. He had not placed a finger on an innocent. The man was the criminal and he deserved that came his way. I had it all wrong.

Draven Aldridge was surely an anomaly that I wasn't prepared to understand.

A. N: omgg, another draining chapter

So, sebastian is finally coming to terms with his unchecked past. He argued for the first time ever w his mom. Let's see what unfolds hehe

Why did Alec even message him?

Also, Savannah and Draven? What are your thoughts?

-f.q.🥀