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Scars That Never Known

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CHAPTER -1

“You confuse silence with innocence. I never make that mistake. If the law were fair, I wouldn’t have a job.”

- Aelara Vivienne Rudwick

Being a Criminal Defence Lawyer sucks.

And being a psychology major who can see the gears turning in someone else’s head? That sucks even more.

Just like right now—sitting in Central Prison, Albania, across a metal table from Walter Rossi.

The most wanted criminal.

The newspapers call him the Butcher.

The police files call him Subject W.R.

Who killed more than twenty girls.

Some were forgotten by the public.

Some were still alive in bedrooms that hadn’t been cleaned out yet. Some were too young for the lives they never reached.

They weren’t just killed. They were used. Broken down. Cut apart slowly enough for him to learn what panic really sounds like—then what was left of them was thrown into the sea, trusting sharks to erase the proof.

If fishermen hadn’t noticed what the waves kept returning, he’d still be free. And God knows how many more girls would already be gone.

He’s been in this prison for seven years.

Seven years of silence. Seven years of refusing every lawyer, every profiler, every cop.

And today, for the first time, he agreed to talk.

To me.

The interrogation room is too white. Like it’s trying to scrub memory itself. The light flickers.

The air smells of disinfectant and cold metal and something underneath it that never really leaves.

Walter is smiling.

Wrists cuffed. Ankles chained. Calm like a man waiting to be entertained. His prison uniform hangs loose on a body far too relaxed for someone who will never again see an unbarred window.

“So,” he says, dragging the word out, tilting his head as he studies me like a curiosity. “You don’t look like the others.”

I place my file on the table.

I don’t open it.

“And you don’t look like a man who’s about to spend the rest of his life in a concrete box,” I say lightly. “Yet here we are. Life’s full of disappointments.”

Walter’s smile deepens, but something sharp moves behind it. “Most of the people who sit there try to look bigger Louder. Meaner.”

“And I’m what?” I ask.

He tilts his head again. “You look like you’re already somewhere else.”

He’s trying to unbalance me. Shift the air. Make this about me instead of the twenty girls whose names are stitched into my memory.

I won’t give him that.

“I’m right here,” I say. “And you’re exactly where you belong.”

He leans forward. Chains whisper against the floor. “Do you know what they all had in common?”

“They met you,” I answer. “That was enough.”

A breath of surprise slips through his smile.

“You think this is about me?” he asks. “I was just the last place they ended.”

I keep my voice steady. “You hurt people because emptiness terrifies you. Because silence reminds you there’s nothing inside you worth listening to. You needed a reaction.”

His fingers curl against the cuffs.

Good.

“What do you want to know?” he asks. “How they begged? How long it took? Or which one screamed the longest?”

“I want the truth,” I say. “And the truth is, you’re not extraordinary. You’re predictable.”

“That’s not what the girls thought.”

I lean forward.

“That’s because you hunted the vulnerable,” I say quietly. “Not the brave. Not the protected. You didn’t choose strength. You chose access.”

His smile fades a fraction.

“You didn’t choose them because you hated them,” I continue. “You chose them because they were available. Because they fit. Because no one was guarding them the way no one guarded you.”

“There it is,” he murmurs. “You think this is about my childhood.”

“I think,” I reply, “that if you were truly powerful, you wouldn’t need witnesses.”

He leans back slightly. “And what about you, Aelara? What kind of person sits across from me without opening the file?”

“The kind who doesn’t need your version,” I say calmly.

“Then why are you here?” he asks softly. “You don’t look curious. You look familiar.”

My jaw tightens.

“You think you know me?”

“I do.” His smile returns—but thinner. Sharper. Like a crack in glass. “Tell me… did they die screaming, or silent?”

Fire flashes behind my eyes. Smoke.

Heat. Screaming that never finished.

“You sit like someone who’s already lost someone,” he continues quietly.

“Not to death. To fire. Or water. Or smoke.”

“You don’t get to talk about my fear,” I say.

“Oh, but fear is the only thing in this room that doesn’t belong to me,” he replies. “And it’s loud on you.”

My fingers curl under the table.

“What are you afraid of, Aelara?” he whispers. “That you won’t save them? That you’re already too late? That one day you’ll be standing somewhere you can’t fix?”

My chair scrapes as I stand.

The sound is harsh. Necessary.

I step closer to the table and place my palms on it.

“What happens,” he asks, “when you run out of control?”

I lean closer—close enough that he has to tilt his head back.

“Then I stop talking to monsters,” I reply. “And start burying them.”

I gather my file and turn toward the door.

The door buzzes open.

Behind me, for the first time since I sat down, Walter Rossi doesn’t laugh.

And that?

That’s how I know I won.

Without looking back, I move through the corridors, my heels echoing against concrete.

Doors. Bars. Shadows. I ignore the uneasy eyes watching from behind steel, the low murmurs, the hands wrapped around cell bars like they’re trying to feel something human.

I don’t slow down. I don’t let myself.

The gate finally groans open.

Cold air hits my face—and that’s when I realize I wasn’t breathing.

I try to take a deep breath, but it gets stuck. My throat tightens. My chest feels heavy.

No. Not now.

My vision blurs at the edges, dark bleeding into white. My heartbeat is suddenly everywhere—ears, ribs, skull.

Too fast. Too loud.

I know this feeling.

A panic attack.

I try to do what my therapist taught me.

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.

I start counting in my head.