Fake Dating The Bad Boy-Chapter 73: Vengeance Or Silencing The Voices

June – POV

The first rule of running: don’t look like you’re running.

Blend in. Keep your head down. Stay moving, but not too fast. Act like you belong—even when your heart’s pounding and your hands won’t stop shaking.

I took a bus three neighborhoods over, paid in cash, and changed direction twice just to make sure no one was tailing me. It wasn’t paranoia if people were actually after you, right?

By the time the sun dipped beneath the city skyline, painting everything in dull orange and rust, I’d found a run-down motel wedged between a liquor store and a 24-hour laundromat. The neon sign outside buzzed like it was dying—"Sunny Palms Inn." There were no palms. No sun either. Just flickering letters and a clerk who didn’t even look up from his phone as I slid a folded hundred across the counter. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

"Room 12," he muttered, handing me a keycard without glancing at my face. Perfect.

The room smelled like mildew and years of unwashed secrets. The carpet was stained, the curtains barely clung to the rod, and the sheets were probably older than me—but it had a door that locked and a bathroom with running water. Right now, that was luxury.

I locked the door. Then double-checked it.

Tossed my hoodie on the lone chair in the corner. Peeled off my shoes. Sat on the edge of the bed, feeling my weight finally settle for the first time since I escaped. My entire body ached. Muscles. Ribs. Even my jaw from clenching so hard.

But most of all, my mind.

I kept seeing him.

Justin.

That hollow silence when I snuck away. The moment I’d seen what he did to the man who used to call himself my father... it changed everything.

I was afraid. Not of being alone. But of how much of him was inside me now. The same fury. The same violence. The same urge for revenge curled under my skin like a second spine.

But I wouldn’t become him.

I refused.

Still... my stomach growled like a beast, dragging me back to the present.

I picked up the cracked motel phone and dialed the number on the takeout flyer jammed under the lamp.

"Hi. Uh... yeah. One chicken sandwich, large fries, and a Coke. Room twelve. Thanks."

I paid cash at the door.

When I unwrapped the sandwich, the smell almost made me cry. I hadn’t eaten real food in over a day. I devoured it sitting cross-legged on the bed, fries in one hand, soda in the other, crumbs falling onto the thin blanket like confetti.

For one moment—just one—everything felt normal.

A motel room. A cheap meal. A shitty show playing on mute in the background.

I could almost pretend I was just a traveler passing through. A college student who’d gotten into a fight with her parents. A girl who wasn’t fractured into pieces, hunted by shadows from a lab and haunted by the boy who once promised to protect her.

But even with the door locked and the city buzzing outside, I knew one thing for certain:

This wasn’t over.

They’d come.

Maybe Justin.

Maybe the ones behind the lab.

Justin’s POV

The silence was a lie.

On the outside, everything looked still. June was gone—vanished into whatever little corner of peace she’d managed to crawl into—and I told myself that was good. That she was safe now. That I could rest.

But inside?

Inside, it was chaos. Screaming. Accusations. Memories I hadn’t invited. Voices I didn’t recognize. Mine. Theirs. His.

The voices were back—louder, sharper than ever.

One told me I was weak for letting June go. Another laughed, called me a coward. The rest argued, fought, shouted until it felt like my skull would split in two.

They clawed at the inside of my skull, scraping bone with every whisper. Sometimes I couldn’t tell which one was mine. Maybe none of them were. Maybe all of them were. It didn’t matter. June was gone. And I let her go.

I told myself it was for her own good. That I was too far gone and she deserved better than this... thing I’d become. But in the silence she left behind, I heard nothing but judgment. Her cries.

I gripped the edge of the sink, watching my reflection shimmer in the cracked mirror. My eyes looked hollow. Not empty—no, worse. Full. Overflowing with rage, with shame, with memories I couldn’t outrun.

June’s face flashed in my mind. The fear in her eyes. The tremble in her voice the night she finally ran. And behind her, always watching, always grinning, her.

Mrs. Matthews.

That witch.

Polished. Cold. Poised like royalty, but rotten to the marrow. A queen in a kingdom built on screams. Her husband was the monster, sure, but she was the gatekeeper. The quiet hand behind the curtain. She watched what he did to June. To them. All those girls. And what did she do?

Nothing.

Not the man who did the unspeakable. But the woman who let it happen. Who smiled politely at charity dinners while girls screamed behind soundproof walls. The woman who cleaned up blood with manicured fingers and whispered lies into microphones to protect her husband’s "legacy."

It wasn’t just him. She was part of it. She helped. She hid it. She watched. And she smirked. That’s what I remembered most.

I’d been trying to keep it together. I’d tried walking away. But that smirk I saw on a past live stream refuting her husband accusers? That echoing laugh in my head? That was the final crack in the dam.

I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms. Blood helped. It reminded me I was real. That I was here. But it wasn’t enough.

I tried to drown the voices in alcohol. In pills. In silence. But they always came back. Loud. Merciless. So I gave in.

I fed them.

I made the call.

Five of them. They didn’t ask why. They knew better. They were like me—shadows of their former selves, looking for something to hurt so they didn’t have to hurt themselves.

She was trembling when I found her. I didn’t even need to lay a hand on her—my reputation preceded me. Her lips quivered with pleas.

She knew why I was there the moment she saw me. No words. Just that look—the first flash of fear I’d ever seen in her cold, calculating eyes.

"Please..." she choked. "I had nothing to do with it..."

I tilted my head. "Did you plead like that when those girls begged for help? When June cried out?"

She sobbed. And I felt...nothing.

I didn’t touch her. I didn’t need to. I wasn’t there to act out a fantasy. I was there to watch judgment pass. To see fear crawl up her throat the way it had in so many others because of her silence.

I sat down in the corner chair, folded my hands. The room was warm, too warm, like it was trying to suffocate me with the stench of old money and lies.

"Let her understand," I told the men. My voice was flat, quiet. "Let her remember every scream she helped bury."

I looked away when they moved. Not because I felt pity. But because I didn’t want to become the thing I hated.

Her tears started. They didn’t move me.

I turned to the others. "She’s all yours. Just don’t kill her."

And then I sat.

I sat in the farthest corner of the room like a judge presiding over his own execution. I didn’t watch. Not really. My eyes were open, but my mind was drowning. In memories. In screams. In the stench of sweat and blood and fear from long ago.

A part of me knew I had crossed a line. That I wasn’t coming back from this. But the other part—the louder one—felt peace. A twisted, rotten peace.

For the first time in weeks, the voices quieted.

But it wasn’t peace. It was numbness. The kind that eats you from the inside. The kind that keeps you up at night, whispering that maybe you’re no better than the monsters you hunted.

I listened to her cries without listening. The sound didn’t reach me anymore. It bounced off the walls like static. Somewhere in the distance, the ghosts were quiet. The voices finally went still.

And that’s when I knew.

This wasn’t justice. This wasn’t closure.

This was vengeance.

And I’d chosen it.

I let myself become the hand of punishment. I’d told myself it was for the others. For June. For the girls who never got to speak. But that wasn’t true. Not really.

It was for me.

To silence the voices. To bury my own shame under the noise of someone else’s suffering. And maybe... to see if I could still feel anything at all.

I didn’t.

She pleaded. God, she pleaded. Voice cracking. Sobbing. Hands clawing at nothing like she could scratch her way out of the moment. And all I did was sit there and watch.I didn’t blink. I didn’t flinch. I just... watched.Because all I could see were those little girls.

I saw the way they must have screamed. How they cried when the door shut behind them and no one came. How they begged for it to stop, not understanding why the world hated them so much.

I told myself I did it for them. For her. For all the ones who never got a voice.But the truth?I did it because it silenced the voices in my head.And for that, I lost her.June.The only person who ever looked at me and didn’t see a monster.But now I was one.And maybe I always had been.