On The Border - Marry Him or Die

12

Jenny’s POV

Could my life get any better than this?

Yes it can.

My father was finally dead. No longer able to hurt us anymore. No longer controlling every breath that we take. No longer keeping us prisoners in this depressing town.

My life is just about to get so much better after my mom and I escape to live with my aunt in Canada.

Our plan was set, we were just waiting for the town to open up again and for the people to come to a peaceful understanding.

Our passports were ready, we just needed to book a flight to Toronto where my aunt lives.

She was so thrilled when I told her what came of my father and that we were coming to live with her soon.

I still remember the day me and my mom sneaked out of town; behind my father’s back, to Fairbanks to issue our passports, about a year ago.

It couldn’t have been done without the help of my only friend in this town, Megan.

Megan wasn’t a walker nor a Snow. Her parents moved into town when she was ten years old. They were one of the few outsiders that were allowed to live in this town.

Her father was brought over by Isaac Snow to manage his dairy factory. Because none of the town’s people had the required experience or skills to manage it properly.

We became best friends instantly. Her parents were the best parents I have ever seen. They didn’t have the same mentality as the rest of the town people. They gave Megan the freedom that every girl deserved to have. They were sending her to college in Fairbanks after summer. I felt so happy for her, but a tiny little trickle of envy settled in the pit of my stomach when she told me.

I was so heart broken that I could never go with her because my father would never allow it.

Megan was the only one who knew the extent of the miserable life I was living in this house. She always stood by me and kept me from going crazy.

She offered to help me and my mom by taking us to Fairbanks herself.

Otherwise no one could be trusted enough to drive us without informing my father right away.

We took advantage of my father’s urgent business trip to Canada and sneaked out of town that day.

It was the first and last time I went somewhere out of Snow. Fairbanks was simply mesmerizing to me. I felt like I moved to a completely different planet.

When we were done with our application for new passports, after ensuring that we put down Megan’s home address instead of ours so that the passports get delivered to her, I wanted to walk just a little more in the city. I wanted to see everything I was deprived of seeing all these years, everything I couldn’t see because of my father.

We kept it short though as we were back home no later than four in the afternoon that day, because we were certain that my uncle would come check on us; which he did of course.

After that, I kept whishing for one of two things. He either dies soon, or has to go on another business trip so we could escape out of town.

The death option was more favorable because the dead can’t hunt us down and chase us to the ends of the earth, so I preferred it.

My wish finally came true, at last.

My father was murdered last night.

That memory will never be erased from my mind, it is forever etched into my head as a horrible, satisfying, and heart wrenching memory all at the same time.

My mind delves into that memory for the hundredth time today.

I was hiding in my room for almost three days, bored out of my freaking mind. The clock was hitting 3 a.m. and sleep still refused to claim me.

After my father came back to our house on the day of Alex Snow’s wedding and literally triple locked the front door, he forbid us from opening the door to anyone or stepping foot outside it.

His voice was deadly cold and vicious, my mom and I simply nodded our heads without daring to ask what was wrong. It was apparent though, he got himself in some deep s**t, that most probably involved the Snows.

I went back to my room right away and called Megan. She was supposed to be attending the wedding with her parents.

When she told me everything that happened, including my father’s huge act of betrayal, I stayed shocked for almost five minutes, as Megan kept calling my name.

I told her I would call her back and hung up the phone on her as I tried to register the massively stupid mistake my father just made against the Snows.

They were going to tear him limb from limb now, there was no doubt about that, and to be completely honest, he so f*****g deserved it. But what would become of us then? My mom and me? Will they take it out on us too?

I shook my head quickly, no they wouldn’t.

They had some shred of human decency after all, I couldn’t deny that, as much I despised them all.

But my father was going to pay the price, that’s a no brainer.

What confused me the most though, was that killing Isaac Snow this way was so not my father’s style. It was too obvious. If he wanted Isaac dead, he would make sure that nothing leads back to him even remotely.

He is not that reckless. Which told me that something was missing.

After that, I kept listening in on his phone calls through his office door.

I don’t know why I cared. I wanted the Snows to kill him and get this over with, whether he was involved in what happened or not.

But my father took every precaution possible to protect himself, as he stationed all the Walker clan at the front of our house. The Snows couldn’t get near this house without going in guns blazing.

After listening to multiple weird phone calls, I came to a final conclusion.

My father had no hand in killing Isaac Snow, not directly. He was still very much aware of Isaac’s looming fate. He was set up by the drug lord my father was conspiring with to push out the Snows out of town and take over the town himself. He knew that something was happening to kill Isaac but he didn’t know when or how it was going down.

And for that greediness, that drug lord; whom he mysteriously addressed as Lord Z, double crossed my father and set him up for the murder of Isaac Snow to get rid of both of them at the same time and take control of the town himself.

It was a hell of a smart move by that lord whatever, I’ll give him that.

He threw the fuse of animosity among the town people, and sat back to watch them kill each other, making his job easier to control the town afterwards.

My father tried to explain all of this to Alex Snow when he showed up to kill him that first day, but Alex refused to believe him.

So we spent three days locked in our own rooms and fearing an attack on our house at any moment.

I checked my watch again and saw it come closer to 3:30 a.m. When I felt my throat dry, I sat up and grabbed my glass of water that was left on the night stand. It turned out to be empty.

So I got up slowly from my bed, opened my bedroom door and took a step outside to head for the kitchen.

I looked up suddenly as the corner of my eye caught a movement in front of my father’s office door; which was to the right side of my own room.

My hand almost let go of the glass I was holding from the unexpected sight that appeared in front of me, but I quickly raised my other hand to support it and prevented it from smashing to the floor with a massive breaking sound that was probably going to get me shot right on spot.

My eyes widened and my breath got cut off as I stared at the huge man standing in front of my father’s office door.

I inspected him quickly from head to toe. His brown leather jacket and face had little tiny droplets of blood on them. His expression was cold, almost numb. It brought a tremor to run through my whole body.

I looked down and saw his hands at his sides, I could not miss the long gun held in his right hand.

I looked back up at his face as my mind began to register several things.

He was standing outside my father’s office door, already splashed with blood, which means that my father must be already dead inside.

I’ve never seen him before in my life, but a very compelling intuition told me that he must be one of Isaac’s sons.

If I know them just a little bit, they would never let someone else take their father’s revenge for them. He was definitely one of the sons, but which one? Could that be Alex? The older son? No, I didn’t think so. From what little I heard about him, he doesn’t kill people that quietly, it wasn’t his style. That must be either Jacob or Lucas.

As I stared up at him, I was half expecting him to kill me too. I just caught him red handed and saw his face. I will be able to identify him to the police and the rest of the clan when they come asking questions. There is no way he would let me live to tell the tale.

I wanted to beg him not to kill me, swear up and down that I wouldn’t open my mouth to anyone.

But my body refused to do a damn thing other than shake uncontrollably.

He could clearly see and sense my fear as he looked at me from head to toe.

We stared at each other for like two whole minutes, during which I was constantly repeating a prayer in my head: Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me…

Just as he started to take his first move, I felt my heart actually stop beating as I feared he was coming for me next. But surprisingly, he went in the other direction and disappeared into the darkness quickly.

I sighed heavily as I felt the blood return to my body and I leaned against the wall behind me for support as my legs buckled from under me, my entire body still shaking from the depth of my fear.

How the hell did he get inside the house with everyone stationed outside? And why did he let me live despite knowing that I can identify him now?

After a few minutes, I gathered my courage and went inside the office to see if my father was dead.

He was dead all right. He was laying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. His eyes open, empty and staring at the ceiling.

As much as I have wished for his death every single night before going to sleep, reality was a completely different story.

It was a completely horrific and scary death.

My hands could no longer hold on to the glass of water as it slipped from my hands and crashed into a million pieces with an extremely loud sound.

I could no longer look at his body as I stormed out of the room and collapsed against the wall, trembling and on the edge of throwing up.

I heard my mom’s footsteps approaching, probably after hearing the glass shattering inside.

She went inside and after just one second, I heard a loud long scream erupting from her.

The next few hours after that were a complete blur.

As my uncle, cousin, and some police officers including the sheriff roamed inside the house, asking questions and inspecting the scene of the crime, I stayed right where I was.

At some point, my cousin Simon, bent down to lift me off the floor where I collapsed after seeing my father dead in his office.

I flinched away from his touch and got up on my own.

As much as I hated my father, Simon and his father take the second place right under my father in the hate category.

Something about Simon ever since we were little kids always creeped me out about him. He was three years older than me. He would always look at me strangely, almost like he was devouring me with his eyes, it always brought a wave of nausea to settle in my stomach. I hated him and always tried to avoid being in the same room with him.

Everyone gathered around me after that; as I was the first person to discover the body, and asked me if I saw anyone inside the house.

I found myself instinctively shaking my head. I had made a decision right there to protect that man’s identity.

Because simply, I owed him my life. Not just because he didn’t kill me after catching him, but because he helped get rid of my father. He was the wish that came true that night. He gave me and my mom our freedom, and I’ll be damned if I rat him out in return of the huge favor he just did for me, even if he didn’t actually do it for my sake.

I lied about the whole encounter. I simply went out of my room to fill my glass of water, found the office door open, went inside and only saw my father laying dead on the floor.

Even my mom didn’t know the entire truth.

Because of that man, I was a free person, free to do everything I always wanted to do with my life.

I was finally going to start my life as if I was just reborn into this world.

My life was going to get so much better from now on.

Did that sound too good to be true?

Yeah… I thought so too.