Nightshade: An Enemies to Lovers, Dark Academic Romance (Sorrowsong University Book 1)
Nightshade: Chapter 14

Eike, Colette’s driver, sits in stony silence as we wind our way beside Loch Garve, the green curves of Ben Wyvis to our left. He’s a very good-looking, dark-haired man in his thirties with a gruff voice and a short beard.

I half wonder why he agreed to such a strange job.

It stopped raining twenty minutes ago, and the rugged scenery of Scotland is that myriad of shades of green and orange that only come out after an autumn shower.

I may moan about Sorrowsong, but I love Scotland. I spent most of my childhood here, and despite the fog and the rain, it’s all golden in my memories.

There’s a pride in Scotland. It’s in the heart of the people and the veins of the landscape. It’s in the way people carry themselves, in the way people stop to chat on the hiking trails, in stories at the pub, in the deep gold of the whisky. My father was born and raised here, and it’ll always be special to me.

I just wish it didn’t have a giant black stain on it now.

Without the dense Sorrowsong air hanging on my shoulders, I feel ten times lighter.

Eike pulls into a petrol station in a small village not far from Inverness. “Can I get you anything, ma’am?”

“No, thank you. You’ve already done more than enough.”

He nods once, taking his black blazer from the passenger seat and shrugging it over his broad shoulders. He refuels the Mercedes and heads inside to pay. I drum my fingers on the window, riddled with anxiety. I don’t know what to say to Laura, don’t know what she’ll say to me. I’m nervous she won’t say anything useful, but mostly I’m nervous that she will.

I’m scared she’ll hand me the bullets for Cain Green, and I’ll have to replace the courage to pull the trigger.

Eike pulls his car door open again and I jump out of my skin. He deposits a bag of Jelly Babies onto my lap. “Colette said you would want them, miss.”

To be loved is to be known, and this week, I feel both. “Oh…thank you. These are the best.”

He glances in the rearview mirror and peels the car back onto the road. “I’ll take your word for it.”

It only feels like a few more minutes of silence before he stops the car outside a small terrace of run-down houses. “This is the address, ma’am.”

I look out the window at the tiny, overgrown front garden. The white paint is peeling off the door, exposing the rotting wood beneath.

The door says number one, but there’s a silver seven that’s fallen onto the faded doormat beneath. The lights are off inside. It looks like my house back home. “Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”

“It’s what I’m paid for.” He rolls down the window to get a better look. “You seem nervous. Is it safe?”

“It’s safe,” I reassure him, clambering out of the car with great care. I cannot afford to accidentally scratch the black paint.

Straightening my stiff limbs, I move the broken gate aside and knock on the door, shuffling from foot to foot.

I let a minute pass in silence before I knock again. I glance back at the car where Eike eyes me suspiciously. I push the rusty mail slot inward and call Laura’s name, but my hopes are dwindling.

The house looks completely uninhabited.

Just as I turn back to the car, I hear the handle turn and the door creak open. A dark-haired woman peeks around, eyes wide with anxiety. She looks like she’s only a few years older than me, but she’s frail and thin, her cheeks hollow. “Ophelia?”

I give her what I hope is a reassuring smile. “Laura.”

She opens the door just enough for me to step inside, slamming it shut the second that I do. “Tea?”

I walk into a tiny living room. There’s only one dent in the sofa. One mug on the coffee table. The house is freezing cold in a way only those who visit lonely relatives would understand. God, I’m dreading going home in December. “Yes, please.”

I sit down on the fraying sofa, listening to the kettle boil in the next room. There are old photos of Laura and a man who must be her father on the side table. She looks happier. Her cheeks fuller and pinker, her hair not so limp.

Is that what people would think about me?

A teapot rattles on a metal tray as she comes back in. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Milk would be lovely, thank you.”

She cringes as her shaking hand pours the tea into two stained mugs, and I want to tell her it’s okay, that I understand better than anyone. But the words are stuck. I’m too nervous. “My father never had any milk,” she whispers eventually.

I smile as I pour some into my mug. “Mine had too much milk and too much sugar. I always told him it would affect his health. He…he died in the helicopter crash.”

Her face pales to a ghostly shade of white. “That’s why you’re here. For revenge. You’ve got it all wrong, it wasn’t him.”

A knife appears out of nowhere, the tip against my throat. I shake my head as much as I am able. “I’m not, I swear.”

Her fingers tighten on the handle. I feel a warm bead of blood pool on my skin. “It wasn’t his fault.”

I don’t feel afraid. Now it’s just me left in my world; my death would not happen to anyone but me.

But I do want to taste revenge before the end.

“I believe you,” I whisper, holding her gaze as gently as I can.

Her eyes widen, the grip she has on the knife weakens. I watch her brain short-circuit, not knowing what to do. Like perhaps she’s been fantasizing about hearing those three words for a long, long time.

“You do?”

“Yes, and I’ll make everyone else believe you, too, if you’d just tell me all you know.”

She sinks down onto the fading brown sofa, her hands shaking violently over her face. “It was my fault,” she chokes out, her body wracked with a sob. “It was all my fault.”

My heart hammers in my chest, torn between shaking her shoulders out of desperation for information and being patient with a woman who is clearly even more broken than I am. “Please explain.”

She begins again, whispering even though we’re alone. “My father was asked to…tamper with the helicopter.”

The tea threatens to come back up. “And?”

“His supervisor at Green Aviation asked him to loosen some bolts on the rotor hub at the next full maintenance check. He refused, of course. He knew what would happen. He was a good engineer and an even better man. The most senior mechanic who visited Sorrowsong. But a week later, he had a visitor.” Her bottom lip trembles.

“I was stupid. I skipped school to go shopping, and a man came and told me I’d make a good model. He said he’d take a headshot of me outside and…I was so stupid. I went with him. They sent Dad a video of me with my hands and mouth bound.” Her shoulders shake with sobs. “I think about it every day. Every minute.”

The sharp tang of iron coats my tongue, my teeth biting so hard on my cheek. “So he did it? He tampered with it?”

She buries her face in her hands and nods. “He was at gunpoint, believing his daughter was the same. They said it would kill one man. One criminal who deserved it. He didn’t know. He didn’t know.”

“Who was the visitor?” I whisper, swallowing the bile in my throat. I don’t want to ask. I don’t need to ask. But I do it all the same.

“It was the CEO. Cain Green.”

My heartbeat slows to a dull, syrupy thud in my ears. My mouth feels like it’s full of cotton wool. I feel sick. Disgusted with myself from the past few weeks. How could I stray so far from my values that I got into Alex’s bed, twice, whether he was there or not?

My palms are clammy. I rub them on my skirt, but it only makes them feel too hot.

Breathing becomes a labored effort. I want to grab her shoulders and shake her. Scream at her for not doing more the same way I’ve screamed at the mirror for not telling her parents she’d be fine if they just drove and were a little late to dinner. Here in this moment, I want to break her.

But she’s already broken. She’s on her knees asking for my forgiveness like her life will be on pause forever if I don’t grant it. She is me, and I am her. A grieving young woman let down by far more powerful things.

So instead, I clasp her cold hand in mine and tug her into the tightest hug I’ve given someone in a very long time. I try to glue her shattered pieces together with the remaining ones of my own.

“Do you have any evidence?”

She nods into my shoulder. “He told me that same week it happened. He was crushed, but he left it on a tape before he…before the guilt killed him.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and my arms tighter. She’s suffered as much as I have. “Thank you for telling me. I just don’t understand why.”

She pulls away and wipes her red eyes with her sleeve. “I don’t know. I don’t think my father knew.”

“Why haven’t you done anything with this information before?”

“At first, I was scared of what they’d do to me. I had dreams, you know? But I’ve given up on them now. If Cain kills me, too, I’ll be ready, as long as he comes down with me. I tried to approach two journalists, but they dismissed me.” She hiccups another sob. “Everyone is wary of saying anything about that fucking university. The students there have too much power.”

Tell me about it.

As I stand to leave, I replace myself laden with more questions than when I arrived. What would the CEO of an American private airline want with a chef and a groundskeeper at a Scottish university?

And also, what the hell do I do now? I hover awkwardly in the doorway. She looks up at me questioningly.

“The tape?”

“I can’t give you the tape.”

My chest falls. I knew this had all gone too well. “Why not?”

“The tape was his…the tape was his suicide note. It’s all I have left of him. I can’t give it up to you. He wishes me goodnight each night.”

“Let me use it to prove Cain’s wrongdoing. You’ll get it back. I’ll clear your father’s name.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Can I have a copy made?”

“What if…what if they damage it? You can’t take it. It’s all I have left.” She shakes her head to reinforce her point, and I know she will not be convinced.

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. For each step forward I take, I take another back. Crestfallen, I trudge back down her path, so overcome with such a spectrum of emotions that I don’t know whether to scream or laugh or cry.

As I pull open the car door, Laura calls my name from the doorway, her thin frame casting a shadow on the doormat.

“Yes?” Please just give me the tape.

“Maybe after all of this…maybe we can be friends? Have coffee? Or text each other?”

I’m too angry to consider that right now, but I give her a smile. “Okay.”

I slide into the backseat and let one small sob out as a treat. But it’s not enough. More come, and then the tears start to fall, hot lines of frustration that carve a path through my cold skin.

I catch Eike’s eye in the mirror and shake my head. “Don’t try to help. Just ignore it. If we both ignore it, it’ll go away.”

He takes a packet of tissues from the center console and passes them back, pulling out of Laura’s road and leaving my optimism behind.

I thought not knowing what happened was bad, but knowing and not being ready to do anything about it? Agony.