They call me Raven, the brightest new star in the world of suspense fiction, whose crimes are as elegant as they are brutal.
No one knows that my best stories are never published—it's hidden in the ever-gloved companion of my left hand. Ella, sixteen years older than me, is my guardian, my accomplice, and the only coordinate of my twisted life.
There was a fire when I was seven years old, and I became a black man with no past. She picked me up from the snow and took me back to the nursing home. They said she had murdered her son and was a madman imprisoned by her family. But it was this madman who, when I was seventeen years old, held a red-hot iron object with his bare hands, just to make my captor loosen his grip. Amidst the smell of burnt flesh, she said to me: "Without you, it's not life."
Now, I'm twenty-three, and tongue studs are a rite of passage that she watches me put on. We share a villa full of secrets, share the intertwined breaths at the desk late at night, and share the moonlight that night when a body sank to the bottom of the lake. When her burned left hand caressed my spine, it was as if she was reading the evidence of our common guilt.
Until my book fans got involved with Interpol, the old case in the nursing home was brought up again, and the shadow of the family was approaching again - and the blonde "sister" who was jealous of me was holding the fragments of our past, ready to tear apart all pretenses in court.
They want the truth. But the truth is: if heaven does not accept any of us, hell is the country we all share.
This is a dark love that dances on the edge of a knife. Two women, an island of bones, and a symbiosis contract stronger than death.
"Mom." I whispered in her ear, my lips brushing against the gloves she always wore.
Concept: dark aesthetics
