After Ten Years of Revenge, He Built Time Machine Bring Me Back Chapter 05

After Ten Years of Revenge, He Built Time Machine Bring Me Back Chapter 05

The Siren Lounge’s main stage.

Elowen collapsed flat on the floor, empty liquor bottles scattered all around her. Her once-clean uniform soaked through with spilled whiskey, the thin fabric clinging tight to her gaunt, bony frame.

They’d forced nearly a dozen full bottles of premium hard liquor down her throat already.

“Drink up! Don’t look so miserable!”

“You’re a cruel, manipulative monster. Seven years ago you crippled Mrs. Voss, and now you’re throwing yourself at Silas to steal him from me.”

“How shameless can you be, trying to lure him away?”

Silas had invited all their former prep school peers to the lounge hours prior, ordering Elowen onto the stage to publicly admit she’d seduced him. She’d bowed ninety-nine times to Celia’s feet as ordered.

Celia still hadn’t forgiven her, demanding Elowen finish ninety-nine full bottles of liquor to earn absolution.

Elowen dropped to her knees, hitting her forehead hard against the stage floor repeatedly.

“I’m reckless, I’m shameless, I’m worthless trash. Punish me any other way, please—I can’t drink alcohol.”

The liquor would trigger her terminal stomach cancer instantly.

She hadn’t gotten to hand Lila the three thousand dollars she’d saved over the years. She couldn’t die tonight before seeing Lila one last time.

Celia kicked her roughly aside. Silas pretended to pull Celia back from violence, but shot a silent signal to the watching crowd of former classmates.

Two men dragged Elowen back to the center of the stage.

Whiskey burned every inch of her insides as she drank, vomiting between every bottle, convulsing across the sticky alcohol-soaked floor.

The crowd grew nervous at her violent spasms, all eyes darting to Silas to gauge his reaction.

Silas’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of her skeletal frame. When had she wasted away this badly?

A faint flicker of pity stirred in his chest, gone the second he turned back to Celia, soft smile sliding back onto his face.

“Feeling better now, baby?”

“Are you softening up for her?” Celia crossed her arms, scowling.

“Not a single bit,” Silas said sharply, snuffing out the fleeting twinge of remorse. He couldn’t feel sympathy for the woman who’d destroyed his family.

“Prove it then. Tear that Polaroid portrait she wears around her neck to shreds.”

The words jolted Elowen fully awake through her drunken haze. She clutched the locket holding her family’s photo tight against her chest, eyes wide with raw terror.

“Don’t do this, Silas, please.”

Silas hesitated for half a second, then the memory of his mother’s decade-long coma swallowed all hesitation. He stepped toward her slow and unyielding.

Elowen scrambled backward until her back hit the cold wall, crippling stomach pain spreading through every limb, draining all strength from her body.

She watched powerless as Silas pried her swollen fingers open one by one, yanking the photo free from her grasp.

“You burned every single portrait of my parents years ago,” Elowen screamed, reaching uselessly for the photo. “You erased every trace they ever existed, and now you want to take my last memory of them too?”

After Margaret’s fall, Silas had broken into her family’s home and burned every photograph and heirloom they owned. Lila had been only six years old then, clinging to Elowen and crying hysterically.

No amount of begging had softened his heart back then.

“How can you be this cruel?”

Rage ignited in Silas’s chest. He ripped the Polaroid apart right in front of her face, scattering the tiny fragments over her head. One hand locked around her throat, squeezing tight.

“I’m cruel? What about what you did to my mother? I destroyed paper trinkets—you nearly murdered a living, breathing woman.”

Elowen surrendered to defeat, no longer fighting back. Nothing she said or did would ever make him see the truth. She’d hurt Celia’s feelings, and Silas would destroy anything she cherished to make amends for that slight.

Her eyes turned hollow and empty. As Silas turned to leave with Celia, a quiet murmur slipped from her lips.

“I hate you, Silas.”

Silas halted mid-step, marching back to yank her hair hard, leaning in to whisper directly into her right ear.

“Funny. I hate you too.”

He glanced at her deaf left ear, voice dropping lower, almost gentle.

“But I’m still in love with you.”

He turned and walked away before he could see her reaction.

Elowen hadn’t heard a single word—her left ear couldn’t pick up any sound at all.