Chapter 2 Mourning His Death

The last thing Vivienne remembered was her phone slipping from her fingers, and now, a white ceiling stared back at her. Her brain was fuzzy as she tried to remember what had happened.

She took in the faces in the hospital room with her: her mother, their chauffeur, and Zoe. Zoe looked like she had cried a lot, and her mother's eyes were puffy as well. Even James looked remorseful, and then the memory came crashing back.

"Tristan" Vivienne muttered.

"She's awake" Zoe's voice trembled. Her mother dashed to her side and clamped Vivienne's face in her hands. "Mum, tell me it is not true. I had a bad dream, right?" The look on her mother's face said otherwise, and she started crying all over again.

"No! No!" Vivienne cried wildly, jumping off the hospital bed, but James and Zoe were fast enough to hold her down. She was in total denial and was not ready to accept the dreadful reality.

"I talked to Tristan this morning. No, this can't be true," she sobbed, her body racked with grief, breaking her into tiny pieces. Worry deepened in her mother's eyes as she watched her daughter. Audrey had never seen her this broken before. The doctor entered and told Vivienne she needed to rest, but his voice was like breeze passing by her ears as she expressed the pain of her loss.

"She loved Tristan so much. Allow her to mourn him," Zoe said, between sobs. Audrey nodded in understanding.

Hours later, Zoe had Vivienne leaning on her arm in her room. Her whole body was tense and she hadn't spoken since. She had not been able to see their bodies because they were said to have been burnt afterwards. Three burnt bodies were recorded.

She seemed to be feeling the pain above everybody else, even though her parents were close friends with Tristan's parents as well.

"You need to eat something and change your clothes, Vivi," Zoe said gently. Just then, the door to Vivienne's room opened, revealing a face she was not expecting and probably didn't want to see. Tobias-Tristan's stepbrother, a young, handsome teen with prominent features, clad in a white shirt with three buttons open, a twisted rope tattoos visible on his bare worked-out chest. Vivienne didn't notice his arrival until Zoe called her attention to him.

"Tobias is here." Vivienne lifted her head, frowning at the sudden intrusion.

"No one said you could walk into my room without my permission," Vivienne cautioned with bloodshot eyes, she had cried alot and her eyes were now overly puffy.

Tobias almost rolled his eyes but was courteous enough to consider the tragic circumstances surrounding them. His green eyes, fixed in his bold face card, awkwardly looked around before he spoke. "Your mum did."

"Richard Bennett was his father too, and Tristan was his stepbrother. You should take it easy with him, Vivi. We are all feeling the losses." Zoe muttered close to Vivienne's ears, her face expressing pity. Tobias took Vivienne's silence as a cue to sit on the other side of the bed beside Vivienne, burying his head in his hands as he did.

"I know I'm not exactly welcome here considering that you never liked me, but we have both lost, Vivienne. Tristan wouldn't expect less from me right now. He would want me to be here for you. Let's get through this loss together." Tobias expressed to Vivienne, who now sat up, staring into nothingness. She could remember that Tobias played a huge role in her break up with Tristan.  He was the one who sent the trending footage of a girl straddling Tristan on his eighteenth birthday to her parents and that had made them grow furious with Tristan. Apart from that, Tobias had always been the stepbrother who made Tristan's life hell while he was alive. Tobias was a jealous one, evil even. He had always wanted what Tristan had ever since he was introduced to the Bennetts as the bastard child Richard had outside before his marriage.

His narcissistic traits had been vivid and he didn't bother hiding them. He had only hidden them from her parents of course. Maybe because he wanted her. He had always wanted whatever Tristan had. She hated him.

She would have even preferred that her parents didn't know about the trending Tristan's footage drill she sorted things out, but it didn't matter anymore, he's dead now. She suppressed a sob that threatened her throat and finally glanced towards Tobias.

Despite the utter disdain she felt towards him, knowing he was grieving too was enough reason to allow him to stay. He needed support, just like she did. But as for her, she knew the demise of her lover would haunt her forever.

The teens pushed their grudges aside and grieved together.

But there was one thing... Vivienne couldn't help but think the Bennetts' death was suspicious.

*

Days later, all efforts to find Tristan's elder sister, who was said to have not been in the car with her family when it happened, proved abortive. This almost drove the Donovans insane, especially Vivienne. But the Donovans made sure to distribute her pictures everywhere in case anyone saw her.

By the following month, the media reported that there were no traces of Laurel Bennett.

"She could have been kidnapped and killed as well or maybe burnt," Vivienne's father said, shocking her with his assertiveness.

"You can't be serious, Dad." A look of disgust was narrowed at her father, but he only shrugged.

"We've tried our best. It's high time we all resumed our daily lives," her father insisted.

"Your Dad is only being realistic, Vivi. Let's... move past it," Tobias, who had now become a regular at their massive mansion since the incident, said. Vivienne turned her head towards him, looking from him to her father. She scoffed in disbelief, then shook her head at them and angrily left the living room while her mother watched her rush up the stairs.

Tobias stood up to go after her, but Daniel Donovan, Vivienne's father, held him back. "Let her be for now."

"Nora," Audrey, Vivienne's mother, called, and a maid with pale skin and brown hair ran forward with her head slightly bowed. "See that Vivienne eats her lunch."

"Yes, ma'am." She turned and ran up the stairs, heading to Vivienne's room.

---

Japan (Sendai city)

Gray eyes fluttered open in a monk's temple, greeted by a harsh, small-white light. He groaned, his head pounding as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. The room was creepily stark white. He tried sitting up but was held back by a deep pang of pain that hit hard at the back of his head. "Argh!"

His hand flung up to hold it and he felt a huge bandage on it. Suddenly, the huge door creaked open, catching his attention. "Ah, you are awake." A man dressed in a long and large white robes hanging off his hands and feet, entered. Beside him was a girl, no older than sixteen, with long, dark hair and wide brown, curious eyes. She clutched a bundle of clean linens, her gaze fixed on the boy on the bed.

"Who are you guys?" the boy asked with an hoarse voice, looking back and forth between the man whose appearance was scary, a vivid contrast to the white cloth he was clad in and the girl with him

"I'm Sebastian, and this is my daughter, Mandy. You've been through quite an ordeal." He said, crouching to access the boy closely which the boy found creepy, his eyes giving away his feelings.

The boy blinked, trying to process the information. "Where am I? Who am I? And why does my head hurt so bad?" he asked, his voice croaky like a chalk scraping ona board. The man and his daughter exchanged a curious look, realizing he had lost his memory.

"He just asked who he was." The girl notified her father even though he knew already.

"You don't remember anything?" The man asked and the boy gently shook his head. "I don't" and just like that, a small smile made its way to the man's lips before he readjusted.

"Your name is Thompson Blake, but we call you Tom." Mandy frowned, clearly uncomfortable with her father's lie.

"You are an orphan. I will tell you everything you need to know about yourself later, but you need to freshen up now, and Mandy here will treat you to a nice meal." He added. Mandy gave Tom a dry smile.

Later that night, a man clad in a black suit and Sebastian met in a dark room beneath the monk's quarters. His expression was grim as he said,  "I have gotten every detail about him, boss. The boy you have in your care is named Tristan Bennett. And he was announced dead a few months ago.