No Love For The Villain - Chapter 18
Right after that, music began to flow out. His car had a radio. After adjusting the radio frequency so the music became clear, Eli placed his hands on the steering wheel and drove onto the road.
The music he listened to felt unfamiliar. It wasn’t the classical music his father used to play, nor the hymns the pastor would turn on.
The light tapping of piano keys, the heavy plucking of strings, and the resonant cry of a saxophone crossed paths yet blended into one.
He only learned the music was called jazz when the radio announced the name of the channel. A soft voice drifted along the frequency.
“What is jazz? That’s a difficult question. The charm of this music lies in the fact that it can’t be defined. It refuses to be confined even by its own definition… Jazz is freedom.”
“Jazz…”
Sierra whispered the new word softly, afraid she might forget it.
The jazz continued. The gentle piano sounded like a quiet weeping. As the performance slowly swelled, the piano released the sound it had been holding back and cried.
The trees ran, and the piano wept.
Buried among the things that carried her wishes in her stead, Sierra forgot her loneliness.
Just as the piano began to fade, a low voice came, as though it were part of the music.
“Shall I kill those people for you?”
He was as calm as when he had asked if she wanted the window open. The disconnect between his detached tone and the cruel words made Sierra slow to comprehend their meaning.
“The pastor, the pastor’s wife, and their son too…”
He spoke of death so easily. A sense of strangeness suddenly made Sierra realize what kind of man was beside her.
While she remained unable to answer, the car slowed down. The world that had been racing came to a halt. Eli’s gaze, which had been fixed ahead, turned toward Sierra. The black eyes meeting hers felt piercingly cold, as if cutting through her entire body.
“No.”
Sierra forced that single word out with difficulty.
If only the person who wanted my father dead had been told that…
If only they had been told, ‘There’s no need to kill that prosecutor.’
If only…
Sierra knew that no matter how many times she said “No,” it wouldn’t bring her father back. That realization made the word feel powerless and heavy, pressing down on her chest.
“Those people… they are my family.”
The winter air, whose cold she hadn’t noticed before, now felt freezing. It was so cold her shoulders trembled.
“Please don’t kill them. They are my family…”
Sierra muttered in a small voice, like a broken radio. The words she should have spoken ten years ago to the one who killed her father—words she had been unable to transmit anywhere—now trickled out, fragile and faint.
“I won’t kill them.”
Eli answered.
Sierra heard the sound of the window rolling up again. The wind stopped. But her body still trembled.
Clutching her own cold hands, Sierra spoke.
“I want to go home.”
The car began to move again.
The jazz had ended. The time allotted for the piano’s lament was brief. As a seductive female voice began to sing, Eli turned off the radio.
The car drove on in silence and soon arrived in front of the Red House. The gradually approaching house grew in size like an oncoming wave. A wave that would surge back and swallow her whole, no matter how far she tried to escape.
‘Be careful of that man.’
Mrs. Miles’s warning circled in her mind. But Sierra wasn’t afraid of him harming her.
What she feared was the waiting.
If he left like this, she would end up waiting again in the Red House. Living another day of extended life, waiting for him to return, clutching a hope that was both uncertain and cruel.
The price for waiting ten years for her father had been nothing but a dead body. She didn’t want to wait for someone who would never return again.
Never again, please, never again.
“If you’re not going to kill me…”
Sierra clutched her own thigh tightly. As if to stop herself from running. She swallowed deeply the surging desire, the unfamiliar emotions, everything that threatened to burst forth.
“Then don’t come looking for me anymore.”
The car came to a stop. The rough, sudden halt sent Sierra lurching forward. Though the seatbelt kept her from tumbling over, her chest ached from the momentary, violent constriction.
As Sierra tried to undo the seatbelt, the moment she bowed her head, Eli grabbed the back of her seat.
“Did the pastor’s wife’s words scare you? Are you afraid I might get you pregnant?”
Sierra was trapped. Trapped by the man gripping her seatback, by the belt he had locked, by his watching black eyes. The hand fumbling to undo the belt was snatched away.
“What did your father teach you? That a stork brings babies if you hold hands?”
How children are made—her father had never taught her that. All Sierra knew were the prohibitions written in the Bible.
<‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’>
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