The air in the apartment always smelled like expensive perfume and fresh lilies. To four-year-old Aqua, that was the smell of safety. It was the smell of his mother, Amy Smith.
In the year 2011, Amy was at the peak of her acting career, but in the quiet of their home, she was just a mother who read him stories. Aqua sat on the floor of his bedroom, playing silently with his toy cars, his ears attuned to the sound of the front door opening. He expected the familiar click of his mother’s heels.
Instead, he heard a heavy, rhythmic thud. A man’s footsteps.
"I told you never to come here," Amy’s voice was sharp, trembling with a fear Aqua had never heard before.
Aqua crawled to his door and cracked it open just an inch. Through the gap, he saw a towering figure. Sr. Stallone Williams. He was a man whose face appeared on every business magazine, a titan of industry with eyes like cold flint.
"You’re becoming a liability, Amy," Stallone said, his voice a low, terrifying rumble. "The press is starting to ask questions about where I spend my Friday nights. My wife is getting suspicious. This... arrangement... is over."
"Arrangement?" Amy’s voice broke. "You told me you loved me! You told me we were a family! You have a son, Stallone! He’s in the other room!"
Stallone didn't even look toward Aqua’s door. "I have a family. A legitimate one. I have a daughter who will inherit an empire. What I have with you is a mistake that needs to be erased."
"Get out," Amy whispered. "Get out before I call the police and tell them everything."
Stallone didn't move. He simply checked his gold watch. "The police won't be coming, Amy. But someone else is."
He turned and walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar. Amy stood frozen in the center of the living room, her hands over her mouth.
Suddenly, a shadow fell across the doorway. It wasn't Stallone. It was a man in a dark gray windbreaker, face obscured by a cap. He didn't speak. He didn't argue. He moved with a clinical, terrifying speed.
Aqua watched through the crack of the door. He saw the flash of silver. He heard the muffled thud of a body hitting the carpet. He saw the red—a deep, staining crimson that began to swallow the white lilies on the floor.
The man in the gray jacket looked around the room, his eyes scanning for witnesses. Aqua held his breath, his tiny heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Don't cry. Don't move. Don't breathe.
The man eventually turned and left, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Silence returned to the apartment, but the smell of lilies was gone, replaced by the metallic tang of copper.
Aqua crawled out of his room on his hands and knees. He reached his mother’s side. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. She looked like a doll that had been broken.
"Mama?" he whispered.
She didn't answer. But her hand was resting near a fallen vanity drawer. Tucked inside a hidden compartment that had popped open during the struggle was an envelope. It was addressed to Aqua.
With trembling fingers, the four-year-old pulled out the letter. He couldn't read all the words yet, but he recognized the name written in his mother’s elegant script.
...Stallone Williams... he is the father... if I disappear... he is the one.
Aqua didn't cry. The shock had frozen something deep inside his soul. He sat there in the red room, staring at his mother’s still face, clutching the letter that revealed the truth of his existence.
He stayed there for hours until the police arrived, his blue eyes turning from the bright color of a summer sky to the dark, frozen hue of the deep ocean.
The detective who found him tried to pick him up, but Aqua wouldn't let go of the letter.
"Who did this, kid?" the detective asked gently.
Aqua looked at the man, but he didn't see the police. He saw the image of Stallone Williams on a nearby magazine cover.
"I'm going to kill him," the four-year-old whispered.
The detective sighed, thinking it was just the shock talking. He didn't realize that at that moment, the child named Aqua died in that room, and a predator was born.
ns216.73.216.141da2
and then Add to home screen.