Chapter 304: Bury Your Guilt
It was 5:00 a.m.
A little more and the sun will finally be out for a new day.
Scott received a phone call from Brigid.
He slid his thumb across the screen, answering it with a relaxed tone.
"Heya!"
Brigid was so happy on the other end that she practically gushed as she spoke.
[Lord Scott! You’ve been gone for twelve hours! I miss you so much. Won’t you come back to the rental apartment? We still have three more days on it!]
Her high-energy voice vibrated through the speaker.
[I’ll get the chefs to whip up the best meals, and when we’re done eating THAT food box ... you can go down on my box, tee-hee-hee!]
Scott could tell just how cute Brigid would look behind that phone right now. It made him smile a little, and he adjusted his glasses with his free hand.
"I dunno about the other part, but I’ll make sure to get you some sweets on my way back. And ooo, there’s this hairband with a pretty shade of green I got you. It really suits your eyes. I’m sure you’ll love it."
Even from the phone, he could hear the rustling of sheets and the distinct sound of Brigid rolling around and kicking her feet happily on the bed.
He just smiled softly.
"I haven’t even shown you, and you like it!"
[MHM!] ₍₍⚞(˶˃ ᗜ ˂˶)⚟⁾⁾
Brigid chirped instantly.
[You could give me poison and I’d still like it! Hrmm... and it’d lowkey make for some poison torture porn. I wonder if that’s on the dark web...]
Scott blinked. "Uh, don’t look that up."
[Yes, Daddy! ♥️]
Sigh...
The call will go silent for just a brief moment.
And Brigid heard an odd noise.
[Huh? What’s all that screaming in the background?]
Scott chuckled softly, glancing down.
"Oh, nothing. Just cuckoldry porn. The man’s screaming at his wife getting banged."
[Oh! Is it Netorare or Netori?] Brigid asked curiously.
Scott raised an eyebrow. "Eh? What are those?"
[It’s anime speak for the cuck or the cucker!]
Scott shook his head with a wry smile on his face.
"Let’s save it for another time."
[Wait—wait—]
Beep.
He ended the call.
Scott slipped the phone back into the pocket of his trench coat as he chuckled.
He picked up his shovel and leaned on it slightly.
"You almost messed things up for me."
He looked down at Vincent, who was naked and tied up in tight ropes at the bottom of the pit. His entire body was covered in bruises and raw wounds from the beating earlier. If his mouth wasn’t wrapped tightly in layers of clear plastic wrap, you’d see his busted lips, broken nose, and a handful of missing teeth.
"Alright... time to shut the coffin."
Scott said casually.
Vincent began to cry deeply and shook his head as hot tears rolled from his eyes. Muffled, unintelligible pleas buzzed through the plastic covering his mouth.
Scott tilted his head.
"Are you gonna admit you framed Maya?"
That easily quieted Vincent down. Even now that his life was in absolute danger, his pride or his stubbornness wouldn’t break. He still refused to admit that he was the one behind Maya’s incarceration.
By now, any other person would believe they’d made some kind of mistake and that Vincent wasn’t actually guilty of anything. But Scott was certain. He’d gotten all the confirmation he needed a week before now, and Maya herself told him.
Scott brought out a pen and jotter from his coat.
"What do I write on your tombstone? RIP Vincent from 2015 to 2046?? Does that work?"
Vincent shook his head violently, his own desperate way of begging Scott not to bury him alive.
"Oh, not 2015?"
Scott mused, tapping the pen against his chin.
"Meh, I’ll put 2014 instead."
He reached into his pocket and tossed a military grade walkie-talkie inside the coffin and didn’t care that it hit Vincent right in his wounded face.
"If you decide to say the truth before you die, then I’ll be waiting to listen."
He smirked as he chewed on the tip of his pen.
"Then maybe I’ll consider letting you out—oh!"
Scott slapped his forehead.
"I almost forgot your flowers!"
He picked up the brown shopping bag he’d brought along and emptied the entire thing straight over Vincent in the coffin. But what came out wasn’t your typical beautiful arrangement of roses or lilies.
These ones were flat, jagged, and distinctly green.
Scott lifted a brow, clicking on his flashlight to point his torch on the flowers.
"Wait a minute... these aren’t roses?"
He smiled down at Vincent’s widening eyes.
"Oops. It’s poison oak."
Vincent’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. He cried so loudly through the plastic wrap that the muffled, agonizing screech echoed through the trees, scaring all the crows in the cemetery into flight.
Scott shut the coffin to drown out the noise.
...
8:30 a.m.
The cemetery was bright and peaceful.
The winter sun was out, casting a pale glow over everything the snow touched. Scott was relaxing on the snowy grass beneath a large tree, resting with his arms behind his head like pillows as he admired the clouds in the sky.
"Huh, that’s weird..."
He’s speaking to himself.
He tracked a particularly fluffy formation.
"That one actually looks like Beca’s butt... with the fluffy tail and everything."
He sighed, a little disappointed in himself for seeing and even pointing that out. It was exactly the sort of thing Brigid would point out, not him. After all, she once got turned on by looking at the stars because a constellation reminded her of him for some reason.
He’ll shake his head and exhale misty air.
"That girl really needs a therapist."
And it’s not like her being around him and his girlfriends in Emma’s mansion was going to help control her sexuality one bit. They had sex almost everyday and said the dirtiest things to each other every morning, so of course that’s just going to encourage Brigid to be a more perverted.
He shrugged against the cold grass.
"If it’s not broken, don’t fix it I guess?"
Right around that time was when he heard a very familiar, heavy rumbling engine booming through the short gates of the cemetery. When he checked, he saw Emma’s luxury G-Wagon cleaving through the high snow.
The vehicle ground to a halt.
Emma stepped out of the driver’s seat, and then, like a clown car, all his other girlfriends as well as Jake and Brigid hopped out of the car.
Scott stared blinkingly.
"Eh? How’d they all fit in there?"
Before he could process it, the group spotted him. They’ll all rush over to Scott. The first to get to him was Lady Fortress, who didn’t even bother walking... she flew straight into his chest as he rested in the grass.
"OOF!"
Scott gasped as the smallish body collided with him.
He quickly managed to catch her and wrapped his arms around her, giving her the affectionate hug she was clearly pining for.
Lady Fortress buried her face in his neck.
"I missed you! You shouldn’t be a silly globnorb and just disappear like that! I’m just glad Jake and Brigid decided to tell us where you were!"
Her voice was muffled but frantic.
A chuckling Scott gently stroked her blonde hair.
"Geez, you act like such a baby so much sometimes I forget you’re a Z-tier hero, yunno."
Lady Fortress pressed her tiny mouth against his strong chest and cutely mumbled:
"Shut up..." (⸝⸝⩌⸝⸝⩌⸝⸝)
He smiled and gently sat up, keeping Kara attached to his front like a koala. As he looked up, he’ll see all his other girlfriends approaching, and every single one of them had a deep frown on their faces.
Scott lifted a brow, looking around the crowd.
"Huh. Where’s, uh, Beca?"
Right on cue, he felt a warm nose intimately sniffing at his jawline, followed by a soft kiss right on his neck. That was all the answer he needed.
Beca sniffed his collarbone one more time, then stood up straight and placed her perfect, dainty hands firmly on her womanly hips.
"Good. He doesn’t smell like a woman."
Emma and Gwen stepped up and crossed their arms at the same time as they nodded.
"Good. At least he wasn’t cheating."
They got so desperate with making excuses for why he was missing that they thought that up.
Nadia blinked and looked around at the massive cluster of beautiful girls surrounding one guy.
"Erm... I think we’re past that point."
Emma and Gwen quickly rushed over to his sides and knelt right beside him in the snow then instantly bombarded him with questions.
"Have you eaten yet?"
Gwen asked as her eyes scanned him for injuries.
Before he could open his mouth to answer, a pushy Emma interjected with squeezed brows.
"You look a bit dirty. Where have you been?"
Scott opened his mouth again.
But Gwen cut him off by grabbing his arm.
"Why would you sleep in a cemetery in winter? Don’t you know it’s freezing cold?!"
Emma nodded like a strict mother.
"You need to cover up more. What if you get a cold? Now I have to make hot chicken soup!"
Scott was so overwhelmed by the rapid-fire questions that he just chuckled and raised his hands in defeat.
"One at a time, guys."
While they fussed, Nadia’s brown eyes wandered over to the side. She raised her brows, spotting the dirt-covered shovel and the dark red stains of blood splattered across the fresh white snow.
She pointed a cautious finger.
"Uhm... what’s all this... blood...?"
Scott’s expression blanked for a second.
"Oh, I almost forgot."
He pulled a walkie-talkie out of his trench coat and clicked the unmute button.
The moment the line opened, a deep, agonizing scream of pure pain and terror exploded from the speaker like a wave of suffering that ate the quiet morning.
Vincent had managed to chew the plastic wrap off his mouth over the last few hours.
So, now he could properly beg.
[SOMEBODY HELP ME! I CAN’T BREATHE! PLEASE YOU NEED TO HELP! SCOTT! Scott please, I don’t wanna die! I’m sorry for everything I’ve done!]
He begged badly while the audio cut out slightly due to the morbid sound of him ramming his head against the roof of the coffin over and over again.
The line cracked and so did his forehead.
The intense reaction from the poison oak, combined with the suffocating heat of the sealed box and the complete lack of ventilation, was proving to be the worst kind of torture ever devised.
At this point, Vincent felt it was better to die.
The screams were haunting and unhinged.
All the girls instantly covered their mouths.
"Oh my... that’s..."
"You need to... how can you just..."
Their faces turned pale the more they heard how much pain the man was in.
Jake stared at the walkie-talkie with a slacken jaw.
"Woah... hardcore..."
Sure, he’d suggested that they torture the information out of Vincent back on the phone, but he didn’t think Scott McQueen of all people would actually go through with something this brutal.
Saying it and doing it... two different things.
Scott, however, just looked annoyed.
He got tired of the screaming and muted the device back as he shook his head.
"Now I remember why I forgot him. So noisy."
Emma stared at him with trembling strawberry lips.
"You... you locked him in a coffin?"
Scott shrugged carelessly.
"Yeah. After beating him to a bloody pulp and filling the coffin with poison oak."
All the girls gasped together and looked at Scott like he was some stranger.
Lady Fortress gripped his shoulders tightly.
"WHY?! We can’t leave him in there! He’ll die!"
Scott gave her a deadpan stare and flattened his voice.
"Honestly, what’s with all the theatrics, guys. If he can’t own up and say the truth about framing Pulsar, then he might as well die. Well, that’s what I think."
Brigid stepped forward with a conflicted face.
"But Lord Scott... that isn’t right—"
"You know what isn’t right?"
Scott cut her off sharply.
"The fact that an innocent girl that’s only 18 is trapped in supermax right now because of this self-serving son of a bitch. So, either you find the coffin yourselves, or we wait for him to confess."
He looked at his group.
Both Lady Fortress and Beca already knew exactly where the coffin was buried due to their superhearing, and same for Brigid... but looking at Scott, they decided to do nothing and trust their boyfriend’s decision.
Emma stood up abruptly with a tight jaw.
She adjusted her denim crop jacket and walked away back toward the path.
Nadia called out after her. "Where are you going?"
"Back to the car!" Emma angrily replied.
She looked really, really mad.
Lady Fortress looked at Scott worriedly.
"Maybe you should go talk to her?"
Scott waved his hand dismissively.
"Meh, later."
He brought the walkie-talkie back up to his lips and clicked the button.
"Will say the truth now, Vincent?"
The response was instantaneous.
[YES! YES!]
Vincent screamed and sobbed so hard he was choking on his own spit.
[I’ll confess! I framed Pulsar! I did everything possible for her to end up in supermax so I never have to see her face or worry about her ever again! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’ll never do it again!]
The terror and brokenness in his voice made all the girls visibly wince. They were clearly horrified by his screams and could only imagine what he was going through down there.
Scott yawned and tilted his head softly.
"Gonna need some good proof, bro. No offense, but I don’t really trust you to keep your word when you get out of here. So, do you have any evidence I can use?"
[YES! YES I DO!]
Vincent shrieked like a crying baby.
[I can give you access to the burner email! I can show you other documents and call logs with the supermax officials! Just get me out! I have everything!]
He kept listing more and more forms of evidence he could get, all for the sake of survival.
A satisfied Scott nodded to himself.
"Now, was that so hard?"
On the other end, Vincent let out a painful, trembling laugh of pure relief as his breath rattled.
[Please free me... I can’t breathe...]
Scott smiled into the speaker.
"Free you? You’re gonna die there."
[NO! AGHH—]
Vincent screamed in panic again
Seeing the expressions on his girlfriends’ faces as they all frowned at him deeply with cute faces, Scott chuckled and cut off the audio.
He laughed and rubbed the back of his neck.
"I’m kidding, I’m kidding!"
They all folded their hands under their breasts and pouted until their pink lips blew out. As usual, it’s always so hard for him to take their anger seriously because of how beautiful they always looked.
Why aren’t they smiling at him now?
Are they really that mad?
Scott will scratch his cheek awkwardly and smile.
"Ehehe... I really am sorry, babes."
"SHUT IT!" (╬ Ò﹏Ó)
They all shouted down at him.
