Chapter 23
The whole place fell silent.
Howard suddenly turned his head to look at her, emotions swirling in his eyes, and Edward’s gun immediately turned.
“That’s interesting.”
“Victoria!”
Howard roared.
She didn’t look back, walking step by step towards Edward.
“I have all of Howard’s transaction records. Let the villagers go, and I will go back with you.”
Edward squinted his eyes.
“Why should L..”
“Bang!”
Howard suddenly shot and blew up the lighthouse’s searchlight. In the moment darkness fell, he lunged towards Victoria. “Lie down!”
When the bullet pierced through his back, Victoria heard him laughing in her ear.
The sound of sirens approached from a distance, Edward cursed and ordered a retreat, but was caught off guard by the ambushed SWAT team. Victoria knelt in a pool of blood, holding Howard in her arms, watching his wound continue to bleed, her hands shaking too much to apply pressure. “coin…”
Howard reached out and touched her cheek with difficulty.
“In fact is a pair…”
He coughed up
pblood foam.
“You wrote “peace“.”
“I wrote ‘Going Home“.”
The footsteps of the police were getting closer and closer.
“Howard,” she choked out.
“I took you home.”
Three months later, in the prison visiting room, Victoria pushed a coin through the glass window.
Howard raised an eyebrow and looked at the newly engraved words “idiot” above, laughing so hard that his shoulders shook.
“How long was the sentence?” he asked, pressing her palm against the glass.
“Twenty years.”
Tsk, am I, a person who is about to be executed, going to escape?”
“You can give it a try.”
Howard had committed too many crimes, so he could only be sentenced to death immediately.
Actually, Victoria used to go to the police station in the village every day to write petitions, exaggerating Howard’s humanity a li ten years he had inde–never killed a good person, and he was also guiltless in her heart.
a little bit, because in these
She had thought of this ending.
Vitoria had her sentence reduced by a few years because of her good behavior in prison. On the day she was released, the sunlight was so bright that she couldn’t open her eyes.
She stood outside the prison gate, squinting her eyes as she looked into the distance,
Grandma leaned on her new cane, Elliot held a light blue dress in her hand, and the sea breeze gently swayed the hem of the dress.
Chapter 23
D GoodShort
“Vicky”
Grandma trembled as she approached, her thin hands caressing her pale face
“He lost weight.”
After returning to the fishing village, Victoria took over Elliot’s fishing boat.
Every morning, before heading out to sea, she would sprinkle a handful of shelled peanuts into the ocean. Howard used to love eating this, saying it was like bullets and had a good chew.
Melina always loved sitting on the dock sunbathing. One day, she suddenly asked her, “Vicky, do you hate it?”
Victoria paused in her mending of the fishing net at the sound of the words.
“Who do you hate?”
“Hate the heavens, hate the world, hate…”
י
The old man pointed to the “coin” on her wrist.
The fishing net shuttle spun a circle in her hand.
“I don’t hate.”
It’s true that I don’t hate
finally taught her what it means to let go.
Over the past decade, Howard taught her how to use a gun, taught her to see through people’s hearts, She wrote 326 petitions, knowing better than anyone the c crimes he had committed, and understanding more than anyone that the boy who reached out to her on that rainy night and the man who went to his death with a smile on the gallows were always the same person.
Three years later, Victoria went to Howard’s house alone.
In front of her was a bunch of fresh white chrysanthemums, with morning dew still clinging to the petals. She squatted down and took out a small cloth bag from her pocket inside were roasted peanuts, still steaming hot
“Try it,”
“It’s newly fried.”
When I got up, the coin bracelet suddenly broke, and the coin rolled to the base of the monument, getting stuck in a gap,
Victoria reached out to push, but felt something cold, another coin.
The one engraved with “homecoming“.
It was firmly fixed in the deep crevice with iron wire, as if it had been waiting for a long, long time.
glass, “Wait for me to come home.”
Victoria knelt in front of the grave, suddenly remembering the last visit when Howard mouthed to her through the gl Seagulls flew across the clear sky, and the waves crashed against the distant reels.
She finally cried, holding two coins tightly in her hand. As if this could piece back together her broken heart.
