Chapter 5

Opening the journal felt like cracking open a storm, the pages heavy with emotion, as if Scarlet’s pain had soaked into the very paper. The leather binding was worn and soft beneath my fingers, but the weight of what I held made my hands tremble. Each word she had written seemed to scream out at me, etched in messy, desperate strokes that bled with all the emotions she hadn’t been able to say out loud.

The first entry I flipped to was from April 10th, the numbers pressed into the page so hard it left indentations. She wasn’t just writing; she was carving her pain into these pages.

“It happened again today,” it started, shaky, like her hands had been trembling when she wrote it. I could practically see it—Scarlet, cornered in the bathroom, surrounded by Blaise and his pack of hyenas. Their cruel laughter echoed in my mind as I read. “They shoved me around, laughed at my clothes from the thrift store like they always do.”

My chest tightened, a hot coil of rage forming in my gut. Those bastards. I could picture it all too clearly—Scarlet, standing there, trying to make herself smaller, trying not to cry as they tore her apart with their words. Her shame, her helplessness, it seeped off the page, and I felt it, like it was my own.

She tried to stand up for herself, but the words caught in her throat. “Blaise taunted me, his face too close to mine. I hate how weak I feel, how my voice just disappears when I need it most. I hate myself for still finding him attractive after he did it too.”

My jaw clenched, the heat of fury rising. That fucking prick. The fact that she still felt anything but revulsion toward him made my stomach churn. That’s what they did—monsters like Blaise. They played with your head, made you doubt yourself, made you hate yourself.

The entry unraveled into a flood of Scarlet’s emotions, the ink smudged like she’d been crying as she wrote. “I went straight to my room and cried into my pillow. I’m always the freak, always the one on the outside looking in. Why can’t I just be normal?”

The weight of her loneliness pressed down on me like a vice, squeezing the air from my lungs. God, she was so alone. I could feel it in every word she wrote—how desperately she had wanted to belong, to be seen, to be heard.

As I turned to the next entry, dated May 2nd, my fingers brushed the dark spots on the page—dried tears. My heart pounded with each word, the fury simmering beneath the surface of my skin. Blaise had crushed what little hope she had left. “Did you actually think I’d be interested in a pathetic loser like you?” His sneer was almost audible, his cruel laughter echoing in my head as I read. Scarlet had written every word of her humiliation, every moment of her degradation, and it burned through me like acid.

I swallowed hard, blinking away the sting of my own unshed tears. How could anyone be so cruel? How could they break someone just for the fun of it?

Her parents… Where the hell had they been? Her world was falling apart, and they were nowhere. No comfort, no support. Just empty spaces where love should have been. I could feel the rage coiling tighter, hotter. They let this happen. They let her drown in this, and they did nothing.

I clenched the journal so hard my fingers ached, my knuckles white. Scarlet didn’t deserve this. No one did. And those who had ignored her pain—those who had pushed her into the darkness—would pay. One way or another.

The last entry felt like a punch to the gut.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she had written. God, I could almost hear her voice in my head. Broken. Defeated. “The pain, the loneliness, it’s all too much. I thought things might get better, that maybe if I just held on a little longer, something would change. But it’s all the same, day in and day out.”

I sucked in a breath, my throat tight, my heart hammering in my chest. Scarlet had been so close to giving up, so close to letting go. She had tried—tried to be strong, tried to hold on, but no one had been there for her. No one had seen her.

She’d written about telling someone, reaching out for help, and I felt a surge of something painful and bitter lodge in my chest. She was ready to ask for help, but it came too late. Too fucking late.

My vision blurred, not from the fury but from the sheer, aching sorrow that filled me. She was just a kid. A kid who had been broken by the world and by the people who should have cared for her.

I stood up so fast the chair toppled backward, crashing to the floor with a sharp bang. The sound startled me, but it didn’t stop the rage boiling under my skin. I wanted to tear something apart. I wanted to scream. I wanted to grab a gun and storm into that high school and make Blaise and his cronies feel what they’d done to her. What they’d stolen from her.

My hands shook, itching for my service weapon, the comforting weight of it. But it wasn’t there. I wasn’t a detective anymore. I wasn’t Poppy Mills. Not fully. I was Scarlet now, too. I was wearing her skin, carrying her pain, and I couldn’t let it go.

My eyes fell on the crumpled school counselor appointment card, tucked away like some forgotten relic. Mr. Jennings. That name twisted something deep inside me. I thought of how he had spoken to that boy, Eli, yesterday. That cold, harsh tone.

Something wasn’t right there. Something ugly lurked beneath the surface.

A plan began to form, slow but steady, coiling around the red-hot anger in my chest. I wasn’t just going to sit back and let this happen. I wasn’t going to let them get away with it.

Blaise was first. He was the one who had toyed with her the most, ripped her apart piece by piece. I’d strip away the façade, show the world the monster beneath. He’d pay for every scar he left on her soul.

And Mr. Jennings… I’d uncover his secrets, too. I had a feeling his hands weren’t as clean as he pretended. His voice, his cold demeanor—it didn’t sit right with me.

I breathed in, forcing my anger down, letting it settle into something cold and focused. This wasn’t about me. This was about justice. For Scarlet.

I cast one last look around the room, my gaze lingering on the journals scattered across the desk—the journals that held her story, her heartache, her truth.

“I promise you, Scarlet,” I whispered into the silence, my voice raw and trembling with emotion. “I’ll make them pay. Every last one of them.”