chapter 13. five years later

Five years had peeled themselves away from the humid, blood-slicked air of Santa Carla, but for Blossom Lane, time didn't erase—it embalmed.

She was twenty-one now.

On the outside, she was the very image of success: a sharp, intelligent woman with almond-shaped eyes that had seen too much, a gait like precision, and a voice honed to cut through courtroom silence. But beneath the surface, trauma coiled quietly. Her past didn't scream—it whispered through walls, curled under her skin, lingered in the corners of her bright white home.

Her house—three stories of sleek, modern architecture—sat at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, surrounded by manicured hedges and iron fences. The interior was an immaculate contrast to the chaos she'd once survived: pristine white walls, pale marble floors, minimalistic furnishings in black, grey, and cream. It smelled faintly of vanilla and clean linen, like someone had Febrezed every memory of rot.

Her bedroom was spacious and sterile, almost clinical. Every object had a place. Her closet was color-coded. Her desk was polished to a shine, only broken by the worn notebook she still carried, filled with old poetry and stories written in a younger hand—shaky loops of ink from ages 9 to 15. She still kept them. Locked in a drawer. Paper ghosts she couldn't throw away.

And parked in her driveway was her car: obsidian black, sleek, expensive. It glistened like ink spilled from a demon's mouth. It hummed when she touched the wheel. She drove like she used to survive—quiet, fast, never looking back too long.

She was a criminal defense lawyer now. Respected. Calculated. Chosen from a pool of candidates far older than her because she didn't just argue—she understood. When she spoke in court, she didn't posture. She dissected. Blossom didn't see cases. She saw patterns. Motives. Scars.

Maybe that's why she was good. Maybe that's why people feared her a little.

Sometimes, alone in her cathedral of white walls, she'd sit cross-legged on the cold marble floor and reread her old writings.

Stories from childhood shimmered with innocence. Princesses who tamed dragons with tea parties. Talking cats named Trouble who ruled kingdoms made of bubblegum. Her first story was written on lined paper and stapled crooked, titled Moonlight Pie. Age: 7. She had written her name in purple glitter pen. Back then, love was soft. Happy endings were required.

Then came the others.

The ones she wrote between 12 and 16.

Aged ink. Horror. Violence. Girls with bruised knees. Haunted boardwalks. Characters based on boys with fangs and leather jackets. Santa Carla oozing through every plot.

She found one titled The Cannibal's Lullaby. Another: Twisted Encounters. She had written Paul and Marko like predators, David like a cult leader. She even gave the unnamed boy a fake name—Mr. Brooding—and turned him into a silent god of rage.

She remembered how her dad used to make her watch horror movies. How her mother said her stories were "too much for a girl." How her psychologist would glance at her poems and say softly, "You write pain like it's a map."

Now she stood in her gleaming kitchen, coffee brewing silently, blinds half-opened to the safe street beyond.

And suddenly, May returned to her mind.

Just a flash.

Skin like creamy coffee. A joint perched between her fingers. That laugh—raspy, slightly broken, dazzling.

Blossom had only known her for a single day.

But May stayed.

Two years after Blossom had been removed from Jenny's care—after another terrifying bipolar episode left Blossom bruised and trembling in a hospital cot—she learned the truth.

May was dead.

A newspaper on a foster care breakfast table. BODY FOUND DOWN ALLEYWAY IN SANTA CARLA. A grainy black-and-white photo showed crime scene tape, blood-soaked pavement.

She read the article three times.

Stabbed in the gut three times. Throat slit clean open. Assaulted before death.

She couldn't breathe.

And the whispers twisted: Was it Paul? Was it one of the boys? Was it Santa Carla itself, finally swallowing her whole?

Weeks later, a tabloid ran the image of May's corpse. Someone had sent it in anonymously. Blossom stared at it in the darkness of her foster care bedroom, unable to cry. Unable to scream.

Just... silence.

Her mother—gone long before that. Removed from Blossom's life after the courts deemed her unfit. Relapses. Gin bottles. Shadows.

Only later did the full truth unravel.

All those nights Jenny vanished with a black duffel bag... she'd been dancing. For strangers. For cash. For cocaine.

No meds.

No motherhood.

Just a hollow woman orbiting decay.

Now, Blossom had everything: safety, power, clean floors, a house that smelled like success.

But sometimes, in the dead of night, she opened her drawer and touched her stories. Her poetry. Her earliest ghosts.

She'd whisper the titles like prayers.

And still wonder...

Could the quiet girl she once was have written all this?

Could anyone have seen it coming?

After all—

It's always the quiet ones.

The next morning arrived like a scalpel.

Not gentle. Not golden. Just clean, clinical, efficient.

Blossom Lane stepped into the marble foyer of the courthouse like she belonged there—which she did. These halls had become her second skin. Smooth white corridors, cold fluorescent light, heavy oak doors with brass handles that gleamed beneath the weight of justice. It smelled faintly of coffee, old case files, and ambition.

Her heels clacked steadily against polished floors—soft, deliberate, commanding.

She wore her courtroom uniform like armor: a crisp white blouse buttoned all the way to the collar, tucked neatly into a long black pencil skirt that hugged her frame without apology. Her sleeves were rolled precisely at the elbows, just high enough to reveal the delicate curve of her wrist and the silver watch ticking like judgment.

Her glasses were rectangular, matte black, perched elegantly on the bridge of her nose—framing sharp, observant eyes that had seen more blood than love. Her hair, once soft honey-blonde in her youth, was now a glacial silver-blonde pulled into a sleek low bun. A few icy strands had broken free and curled around her temple like frostbite.

Still the same height. Still short. But she moved like she was ten feet tall.

She didn't try to be intimidating. She just didn't try to be small anymore.

Inside Courtroom A5, she was known as The Razor.

Criminal defense was her game, and she played to win. Not with theatrics—Blossom wasn't a show pony. But with precision. Facts. Patterns. Pressure.

She didn't shout. She leaned forward and stated. Her voice always arrived soft, cool, and lethal.

"Your Honour, the prosecution has failed to demonstrate intent beyond reasonable doubt. Let me walk you through why that matters."

She had graduated top of her class, passed the bar before 22, and was now handling high-profile cases that older colleagues found "emotionally taxing."

But Blossom? She didn't flinch at trauma.

She read autopsy reports like novels.

Because she used to write horror.

At night, she returned to a modest but pristine sanctuary: white walls, polished concrete floors, modern furniture that whispered minimalism. A tall bookshelf lined with legal texts, crime novels, and—hidden in the back—the folder of her old writings.

Her kitchen gleamed in pearlescent white. Coffee pods stacked in perfect rows. A silver kettle with a mirror finish sat untouched except during her ritualistic 5 a.m. caffeine burn.

Her bed was king-sized, untouched on one side.

Windows tall and wide, curtains always half-open—light allowed in, but never fully.

It was a world away from Santa Carla.

No broken mirrors. No ashtrays on the floor. No screaming. No blood-stained carpets.

Just order.

But sometimes, when the wind rattled the trees outside, she'd hear her mother's voice echoing through rooms that had never belonged to her.

As she waited for the case to begin, standing outside Courtroom A5, she felt it again.

Santa Carla.

That smell of salt and sweat.

Of boardwalk carnivals and flickering neon.

She was 16 again. Bruises on her arms from where Marko had held her too tightly. The boardwalk cold under her feet. Her mum tossing a twenty-pound note at her and saying, "Come back when I'm asleep."

She blinked away the memory.

Stared into her reflection on the brass door handle.

"I'm not her anymore," she whispered to herself.

Back in the courtroom, she slid into her chair.

The defendant—a man accused of stalking and assault—looked fragile, twitching fingers.

Blossom opened her case file.

And smiled.

Because she knew predators.

She'd met them under carnival lights.

Dressed in leather and fangs.

And she knew exactly how they thought.