Ryan

3:22 a.m.

‘What?’ Ryan shouts, panic thundering through his heart.

Emilia has fallen completely still, her arm – the one holding the gun – falling down to her side.

‘What are you talking about?’ she whispers, her focus passing back and forth between the man and the woman.

‘Emilia – they’re lying!’ Ryan cries.

The woman walks slowly towards Ryan, her stare dark and cold. He flinches as she reaches him. But she doesn’t touch him. Instead, she bends down, reaching for the pages of his letter which are scattered on the floor by his feet. He watches, his jaw slack, nausea plummeting through him, as she scoops them up calmly, placing one on top of the other in a neat pile, then stands, and walks back towards Emilia.

‘We first came across Usurper95 in the dark web. Great username, right? We saw him on a forum. Not a very nice forum. The kind of forum where men who are sick in the head all gather together and convince themselves that they are the sane ones. And that women – women who reject them – are the devil. And deserve to be punished. It’s the same forum that Luca Franco used to visit.’

‘I’ve never been on one of those forums!’ Ryan shouts. ‘You’ve mistaken me for someone else –’

‘Are you really going to say that, given what I’m holding in my hands?’ She holds up the first page of his letter.

‘When we first set up the Confession Room we used to linger in these kinds of places – the dark depths of the internet,’ the man says. ‘We used to have fun finding out who these anonymous posters actually were. In real life. And they were always like Ryan – sad, lonely little men, sitting in their childhood bedroom or alone in a flat, wondering why nobody wanted to love them. Well, Usurper95 used to talk about a woman in the forums. He used to say that there was this woman who he liked to follow home. That he was obsessed with her and he was sure that this was the woman who would finally love him.’

‘That wasn’t me! I don’t go on these forums. I’m not a fucking psychopath. You’re the ones getting a thrill from being there!’

The man’s gaze darts to the woman, glaring at her, his head shaking. But she isn’t even looking his way. Even through the mask, Ryan can see her eyes watering, the sudden emotion shining out towards them in a blazing light.

‘Our daughter was murdered by one of these kinds of men. She was just a child –’

‘It isn’t any of your business,’ the man says, his tone level and cold. ‘It just matters that we use those places to find bad people. And we found Ryan. Months after his various rants on the forum, came the post on the Confession Room. Same username. Of all the usernames that could come up, it was the same one. Usurper95. And the voice, the way it constructed sentences, the words it used – it sounded the same. All about a woman who he had pinned all his hopes on and had thought about hurting. But the confession scared us. What had brought him to post on the Confession Room? What had changed? Had he actually hurt her? So we did what we do – we found out who it was. And it was the man in this room. Ryan Kirkland.’

‘Are we wrong?’ the woman whispers.

Ryan shakes his head, his breath trapped in his throat. ‘I made that confession but I didn’t hurt anyone, and I didn’t hurt Emilia’s sister!’

‘We needed to find out who the woman was. So … we hacked his computer,’ the man continues, staring him dead in the face, his expression unwavering. ‘You spend a lot of time on your computer, Ryan, but you don’t seem to know all that much about how to properly delete your files. And … we found this.’ He points towards the woman. She holds up the letter towards Ryan with a raised eyebrow. A taunt.

‘Your letter,’ she says. ‘A letter that you wrote when you were planning on killing yourself. This letter was written just days after Emilia’s sister Sophie was murdered.’

‘I … uh, I –’

‘What’s your excuse now?’

Ryan blinks slowly, his eyes stinging with fear-fuelled tears. ‘I don’t know how you linked me to any of this, but you’ve got it wrong. It wasn’t me. That timing … it’s just coincidence.’

‘Well, let’s read the part of this letter that sparked our interest, shall we?’ She clears her throat. ‘Let’s see … where is it? Ah, here … I’m sorry for what happened to Fiona. I wish she could have loved me but she chose not to. Who’s Fiona, Ryan?’

‘Fiona is my ex-girlfriend. And I … it isn’t how it sounds. And she’s got nothing to do with Emilia’s sister.’

‘My sister’s name is Sophie,’ Emilia whispers.

The man laughs, a horrifying cackle from deep inside his chest. ‘Ryan, you are the worst of humankind. Even when faced with death, even knowing that we have concrete evidence, you still can’t admit what you’ve done. If telling the truth now could save you, would you even do it?’ He holds up his gun. ‘Who is Fiona? Be honest. Emilia deserves the truth.’

Ryan blinks rapidly, his gaze veering from the sneering man to Emilia.

‘I swear … it wasn’t me. No matter what they say, you have to believe me. Please –’ He blinks across the room at Emilia, and tears spill from his eyes and down his face. He licks them away as they pool near his mouth. ‘Fiona is my ex-girlfriend.’

The man shakes his head, rolling his eyes. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Enough lies. You want us to give her definitive proof? Fine.’

He turns to the woman and nods – a small but definite gesture. Her mouth turns upwards in a smirk, her eyes shining with an immediate understanding.