The Last Page: Every Debt Is Remembered

I sat in the quiet of my study, the last page of my latest book open in front of me. A copy of my “masterpiece.” My hands hovered over the spine, hesitant.

Soon as I closed it, the applause in my mind faded.

I had stolen this story. Not in some petty way this was someone else’s life, their pain, their rise and fall. I had reworked it, polished it, sold it to millions. The world called me brilliant. I called myself careful.

I remembered the man behind it all. Introduced to me through a friend of a friend. The man everyone whispered about. *The Man*. Half criminal kingpin, half political shadow untouchable, impossible, influential. He disappeared four years ago. No trial. No obituaries. Just… gone.

And now, four years later, I felt it. A presence I couldn’t explain. A subtle shift in the room. My pulse started to quicken. I reached for my glass of water. It trembled.

Then I heard it a whisper, soft, almost impossibly quiet.

“Vindicta.”

I froze. The word reverberated in my mind. Revenge. Payback. I knew then that this wasn’t random. Someone had waited. Someone had remembered. And the book in front of me was the first move.

I lifted my eyes from the page. Shadows flickered across the walls. And in that instant, I realized: the story I thought was mine had been watching me all along.

Days passed. Or maybe hours I wasn’t sure. Time seemed to stretch and shrink. There were messages I couldn’t trace: emails with nothing but blank pages, letters without a return address, sticky notes in my own handwriting I didn’t remember writing.

Each one felt like a warning. Each one said: *I know.*

I tried to sleep. I tried to ignore it. But the man had a way of finding cracks in my life, subtle at first. A knock on the door, when no one was there. A shadow that lingered too long on my balcony. A cold draft that smelled of old paper and steel.

And then came the real warning.

I was reading through my book again, looking for flaws I hadn’t noticed before, when a single word on the page seemed to move. I blinked. It wasn’t part of my text. It was handwritten in ink that smelled like copper.

“Vindicta.”

I slammed the book shut. The sound echoed through the empty room. My hands shook.

And that’s when I realized this wasn’t just revenge. This was justice. And it was personal.

The first physical encounter was subtle. A tap on the shoulder in the middle of the street, a hand brushing mine when I reached for my coffee. No one else seemed to notice. But I did. I could feel eyes on me everywhere, even when I was alone.

I tried to call the police, but the line went dead. Every email I sent bounced back. My assistant vanished. My friends started making excuses, their faces tight with unease.

I was alone.

One night, I woke to the sound of the book sliding across my desk. I bolted upright. Nothing in the room should have moved. But there it was, the copy of my stolen story, spine cracked as if it had been opened thousands of times, lying in front of me with a single sheet folded inside.

I unfolded it.

It was my own confession. Every crime I’d hidden in the shadows, every lie I’d told, every word I had stolen. Written in my handwriting or at least it looked like mine but the signature at the bottom was not.

It was his.

“You thought you could escape,” the voice said from the corner. I froze. “Four years. That’s all it took. Four years for patience to become precision.”

I spun around. The man stood there or maybe it was a shadow shaped like him. He was older than the man I remembered from the whispers, yet stronger somehow, more present. His eyes glimmered with the cold weight of inevitability.

“Who are you?” I croaked.

“I am the story you stole,” he said. “I am the truth you buried under lies. And I am Vindicta.”

Everything clicked. The disappearances. The warnings. The shadows. The book.

It had all been a trap. Not for him, not for the law, but for me.

I stumbled back, my hand reaching for the book. “Please… it was just a story. I didn’t think ”

“You didn’t think. And now, you will not walk free.” His voice didn’t shout, it didn’t need to. The words struck like steel.

My legs gave out. I fell to the floor, clutching the book as if it could protect me. But it was too late.

“Soon as the book closes,” he whispered, leaning closer, “so does your life.”

The world tilted. My eyes grew heavy. My face fell against the cover, the leather smooth beneath my cheek. With the last of my strength, I lifted my gaze, trying to memorize his face.

A whisper carried to me, soft and final:

“Vindicta.”

And then everything went dark.

I awoke. Or I thought I did. I was back at my desk, the same book open in front of me, sunlight spilling through the window like any other day. My hands hovered over the spine. My pulse had slowed. My breath came steady.

I blinked. Nothing had happened. Or maybe… nothing had ended.

I closed the book.

And somewhere, I knew, the cycle would start again. Because stories have a way of being retold, even when they should be buried. And some debts… are never forgiven.

Vindicta.

Later, when the book appeared on shelves again same cover, same praise, same lies I understood the final cruelty. I was no longer the author. I was the subject. Somewhere, someone else was reading my life as fiction, applauding the craft, admiring the restraint. And in the quiet between pages, a word waited patiently, unchanged, eternal.

Vindicta.

And I understood then Vindicta is patient, circular, and endlessly hungry.