Chapter 51 – Memories – Murder

14th March, 1985

In the months that passed after their kidnapping, Leon and Rachel were growing increasingly distant from each other. Leon was immersed in his work that he had been assigned, so that in return, he and his wife could be freed, and return home to their sons. Leon would rise early in the morning before Rachel would wake up and return home in the dead of night, with Rachel asleep on the sofa after trying in vain to stay awake waiting for him. To make matters worse for her, Rachel had been feeling horribly ill for some time, since around the time they had been kidnapped, and she was only getting worse. But she couldn't tell Leon, because he wasn't there.


After some time, she gave up on waiting for Leon, and tried to preserve her health for the day that Leon would finish his work for Targent and they would be free to go home and be reunited with their lost children. Rachel hoped it would not be too long. She often cried herself to sleep at night, thinking about her two boys all alone in the world, with no loving mother or father to take care of them.


After a few months, she had given up all hope of being united with her two boys. And all the while, she was getting sicker and sicker.


After a few more months, she was bedridden. Leon had taken time out of Targent to look after her and try to find out the cause of her illness. It was only when the doctor told him that the results of her blood tests had confirmed that she had a dangerous amount of arsenic in her system that Leon knew the culprit; Chovanek.

Apparently, his work hadn't been satisfactory enough; discovering the site of the fabled Grounds of Rebirth wasn't good enough for them. For some reason, they had failed to gain access and when Leon had tried to figure it out, he had also failed. It was only recently that he had been transferred to the team out in search of the Great Azran Sanctuary, in the hopes that his skills that he had used in finding the site itself could come to some use in finding the sanctuary. It was slow work, so Leon didn't have to work late nights anymore. It was then that he found out that his wife was ill and beyond the ability of getting out of bed.

Leon was then preoccupied with his wife for the weeks afterwards and this displeased the leader of Targent; Aleksander Chovanek. He knew that, so long as Rachel Bronev was alive, she would preoccupy her husband's thoughts whilst he worked, and hoped that he could poison her to death and make her husband think that she had died due to the poor keeping of her health since she had been separated from her children. He didn't know that Leon had a private acquaintance, a doctor, who specialised in that sort of thing. But he had been called too late.

The damage that had been done to her liver was near fatal. It would have been anything from one more dose to ten that would kill Rachel. Leon was determined to discover the source of the poison, before even one more dose was administered. But he was too late.

The source of the poison had been the milk, which had consequently been delivered to the flat in which they had been forced to live each day by an acquaintance of Chovanek's – a Targent mole playing the role of a milkman, poisoning Rachel each day. As her husband had been working such long hours, he had eaten each day at work, and hadn't touched the poisoned milk. But by the time this had been figured out, Rachel had already take the fatal dose, and lay in her bed with half-open eyes. Once this had been confirmed and the doctor had told him that his wife had little more than a few days left to live, Leon knelt beside the limp form of his dying wife and took her hand. He sighed.

"I'm sorry, Rachel. It's my fault you're here. I dragged you into all this..."

"No, Leon. Don't say that. You didn't drag me into anything." She smiled. "I was always happy to be by your side. I just wish I could've seen the boys again, but... I've run out of time." She looked devastated.

Leon glared out of the window. "I failed."

"No. I know you'll succeed."

"Hmm?" Leon looked up.

"You'll fulfil your dream. Our dream." Rachel smiled again.

"I can't..."

"You can. I believe in you... I won't be able to be by your side anymore, but... I'll always be... watching over you." She leaned back and closed her eyes gently as her breathing began to cease.

Leon's eyes widened. "Rachel?" he gripped her hand, "Rachel! Don't leave me!" he leaned forward and rested his head on her chest. Tears poured down his cheeks as he felt the heartbeat of the one he loved fade away. Little... less... nothing.

Leon laid there, his head on his wife's unmoving chest. "How can I ever go on?" he thought. "Rachel... she was all I had left in the world... and now she's gone..." Leon held his wife tighter. "Chovanek," he whispered. He wanted that scum to feel all the pain he was feeling right now. He wanted him to lose his family and all those he loved, just to see how it felt. Angry, upset, and grieving, he laid here with his lover for some time before deciding to call the doctor. And ultimately deciding the next fifteen years of his life.

Chovanek would pay, even if it took him fifty years to do it.