Journal Entry of Victoria Maddox.
Today was a fruitless endeavor, torturing souls for whispers and shadows of Cody. I felt the familiar rush as I worked, the intensity that comes with peeling back layers of skin and deceit. Yet their screams yielded nothing but air; they knew nothing of substance. Disappointment is a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it I must.
Cody Everette. The name is a litany on my lips, a curse I cannot shake. Today, as I tortured that old couple for information, I saw flashes in my mind of them entwined in laughter, living life together and their joy was an affront to my solitary confinement. I felt the rage bubble up from that dark place within me, that space where jealousy has built its throne. I cannot bear the thought of him with another. His touch, his gaze—those were mine once. We were fire and passion under an African sun, two souls converging in a fleeting eclipse. And then he left me, scattered our ashes to the wind.
I’d been sent to that continent on a mission—information was my currency, and I was to collect it from our expedition members. Yet, penning down my thoughts, it’s not the information that haunts me. It’s him. It’s always been him since that night.
We had made camp in a village on the outskirts of civilization, our presence a delicate balance between guest and invader. Sleep came easy after days of travel, but it was shattered by the cries of war—the village under attack by another tribe. Chaos reigned as bodies clashed, spears glistened in the moonlight, and the air thickened with the scent of blood and fear.
Cody grabbed my arm, his grip fierce. “We need to get out of here,” he hissed, pulling me away from the tent and into the dark embrace of the forest.
As we ran through the trees, finally coming to a small glade, we glanced back. The irony was cruel—the explorers we were with were turning the tide against their attackers. We could have stayed; we could have fought alongside them. But Cody had led us away, into the sanctuary of shadows where only we existed.
There in that forest, under a canopy woven by ancient trees and stars, something ignited between us. Passion bloomed fiercely—a passion I never knew I was capable of feeling. We made love with an intensity that mirrored the violence we had escaped. Falling in love was never part of my plan. My life had been built on strength and control; emotions were liabilities I couldn’t afford. Yet there I lay in Cody’s arms, vulnerable in ways that both terrified and exhilarated me.
He had dreams beyond the chase, beyond the gunfire and blood-soaked soil we knew all too well. I can still hear his voice in the dead of night, weaving tales of a different life—a farm somewhere peaceful, where the scars we bore could fade into sun-kissed skin and hands calloused from honest toil rather than combat.
“We could have it all, Vic,” he’d say with that irrepressible optimism that made me believe in mirages. “A home to call our own, fields ripe with promise. You’d make a hell of a mother to our brood.”
Motherhood—a role I never pictured for myself, with its bindings and endless demands. Yet in his arms, as the world narrowed to the space between our entwined bodies, I saw it all. The laughter of children carrying on the wind, their small hands wrapped in mine as we walked through fields of gold. A table set for a family where love was the feast we’d share.
I began life with noble intentions. The war was a brutal teacher, and I its diligent student. As a nurse on the battlefield, I bore witness to the worst of humanity’s inflictions upon itself—limbs torn asunder, eyes vacant with shock, lives reduced to their final, pained breaths. There was a purity in trying to heal those broken bodies; it gave me a sense of purpose amid the chaos.
But war… war corrupts all it touches. In time, the blood I washed from my hands seemed to seep into my very being. It wasn’t long before I discovered my knack for extracting information from the wounded and dying. A simple press on a wound in certain areas would make men reveal their darkest secrets. Soldiers talk when death looms—about plans, movements, comrades. It started as a way to help our cause, but soon it became something more for me—an intoxicating power over life and secrets.
As I mastered this art, I couldn’t help but question the person I was becoming. Was there goodness left in me? Or had the horror of war twisted me into something else entirely? Perhaps that’s why Cody’s presence in my life felt like a redemption of sorts—a chance to believe that beneath the scars and behind the gun, there could be a life of simple joys and tenderness.
I laugh. I laugh because he promised me a life—a dream spun from moonlight and sweet lies. Cody Everette, with his piercing blue eyes and that devilish grin, promised me a world apart from bloodshed and war. A home. A family. And like a fool, I believed him. I believed in the illusion until it became my truth.
Now look at me—haunted by phantoms of a life that never was. Each day is a march through purgatory, every night an endless descent into longing and rage. He left me there in Africa, amidst the echoes of gunfire and screams, with nothing but his scent lingering on my skin and his betrayal searing my soul.
He didn’t just leave me; he left me with them—the others from our expedition, each one more hollow-eyed and depraved than the last. They looked to me for guidance, for salvation from their sins, as if I were some avenging angel come to deliver them from evil. But what am I if not one of them? A woman cloaked in sin, her hands stained with the blood of countless men who whispered their secrets through screams.
The irony is exquisite—I sought to torture information from those old fools today as if they could know the whereabouts of my wandering betrayer. Yet it is I who am tortured by his absence, by the hollow space where he once lay beside me.
I see him everywhere—in the shadows that dance along the walls, in the faces of men who cower before me as I extract their deepest fears. His voice taunts me in the silence between their cries; his touch ignites a fire within me that no amount of pain inflicted can quench.
I can’t help but feel the fool—a hound chasing a scent gone cold. I’ve ventured from the scorched earth of desert outposts to the suffocating embrace of swamplands, where the air is as thick with secrets as it is with miasma. Each place whispers his name like a cruel joke at my expense. I’ve combed through mountain hideaways, shacks hidden beneath canopies of twisted branches, and cabins secluded by snowdrifts so high they mock my persistence.
Yet he remains as elusive as a wisp of smoke in a gale.
My patience wears thin, and rage simmers within me like a cauldron ready to boil over. This man—this ghost I chase—has made me question my own prowess. I am Victoria Maddox; no quarry has ever evaded me for long. But Cody… he dances just beyond my grasp, leaving behind a trail of rumors and frustration.
I am so angry—no, I am incensed. Each fruitless interrogation, each cold lead stokes the fire of my wrath. With every whisper of his name that doesn’t lead to his capture, I vow to make him suffer for this chase. The time spent, the energy expended—they will be repaid in kind when I finally have him at my mercy.
I will be his reckoning. When I find him—and find him I will—I’ll ensure he regrets ever crossing Victoria Maddox. My methods will be meticulous; my retribution, divine in its cruelty. I will take him apart piece by piece, breaking not just his body but his spirit too.
He thinks he can run? Let him run. Let him look over his shoulder and see the shadow that’s always just a few paces behind. Let him feel the eyes that follow him through every town and down every darkened alleyway.
So run, Cody Everette. Run until your legs give out and your heart pounds its final desperate beat against your ribcage. Because when I catch you—and mark my words, I will catch you—the things I’ll do will make you wish you’d never been born.
Cody Everette… you owe me more than you can ever repay. And I intend to collect.
-Victoria Maddox
Author
