I thought it was over.
But three days later, I found the letter.
No postage. No name. Just a single page slid beneath my door, like it had bled through the walls themselves.
"Brilliantly executed.
You destabilized him faster than I anticipated.
He was phase two.
You are phase three.
Welcome to the real experiment.
—Dr. A."
My hands shook. I read it again. And again. But it never changed.
The therapist, the one Leonardo trusted had never stopped pulling the strings. I wasn't the killer.
I was the knife.
And now I can't sleep.
I see smoke when there's nothing burning. I feel heat crawling over my skin in the dark. I hear Leonardo's voice at night, calling me from the rocks, from under the floorboards, from inside my head.
I smashed every mirror in the apartment because my reflection won't move when I do.
I think he's inside me now.
Or maybe he never left.
Maybe this is what Dr. Alben wanted. To pass the madness like a curse. To feed it, let it breed, and then release it into the world wearing my face.
I killed Leonardo.
But the real killer?
He's watching.
And worse he's waiting
I thought I had all the answers.
I thought killing Leonardo would end it. That he was the monster. That I was in control. It wasn't Leonardo who killed my parents.
It was him.
Dr. Alben.
The man Leonardo thought was his savior. The man who gave him pills to unhinge his mind. The man who'd been guiding me from the shadows like I was some broken marionette.
He set killed that night. I remember it now his face in the crowd as the police dragged the injured away, the faint smile, the way he vanished before anyone could ask questions. He didn't just watch my life burn.
He lit the match.