Chapter Three – Something Broken
Love is not what breaks people.Jealousy is.
Jealousy is quiet at first. It slips in like a guest and smiles like a friend. It shares your meals, walks with you at night. Then one day, you wake to find it's eaten everything inside you, and all that's left is a hollow hunger to make others feel as empty as you do.
That's what I became.
Jack still smiled at me like nothing had changed.
Still called me "brother."
Still told me his secrets.
And every time he did, I wanted to scream in his face—Don't you know I hate you?
Don't you know what it feels like to watch someone walk through a world that worships them—while you're invisible?
The serial killings began around then.
The women were all young. Pretty. Kind. All found in alleyways, slumped like discarded dolls. Always the same precise method. Always something missing—an earring, a glove, a locket. The papers called him The Collector.
I knew what they didn't.
There was no "him."
Not at first.
It began with Eleanor.
A quiet girl who sold buttons and sewing kits in a tiny shop down the lane from Jack's. She used to talk to me sometimes. Smile a little too long. She noticed me.
That was her mistake.
She came to the shop one night to return a coin I dropped.
"Your lucky shilling," she said, placing it in my palm.
I remember the warmth of her skin.
I remember the silence in the room when I locked the door behind her.
I remember how calm I felt when I pressed my hand to her throat.
She didn't struggle for long.
Afterward, I sat beside her, breathing slow and steady, like I had just finished some necessary chore.
And I took her glove.
Not out of sentiment.
Out of curiosity.
What would it feel like to possess something no one else had?
The murders continued—carefully, purposefully.
Not in a frenzy.
Like a ritual.
Each time, I left fewer clues. Grew more methodical. More... proud.
But the Collector needed a face.
Someone to wear the crimes like a second skin.
And I already had the perfect one.
I began laying the trap.
I forged travel logs—sheets of dates and destinations showing Jack had visited areas tied to the killings. Easy, with access to precinct documents. I altered witness statements, added sightings that never happened.
Then came the box.
A wooden thing, old and dusty. Inside, I placed the tokens I had taken—gloves, brooches, scraps of fabric soaked in blood. I even etched Jack's initials inside the lid, for good measure.
I knew where Anna kept his spare keys.
I left the box beneath their bed.
And I waited.
A week passed before Anna came to the precinct.
She was pale, trembling. Her hands shook as she handed me the box.
"I didn't want to believe it," she whispered. "But I think Jack… I think he's the one."
She cried as she spoke. Told me about the late nights, the disappearances, the stains on his clothes he couldn't explain. Told me about the records she found in his study—my records.
She begged me to help her.
I held her hand.
I told her I would.
Later that night, I stood outside Jack's barbershop, watching him sweep the floor under the yellow glow of the lamps.
He had no idea his world was about to collapse.
I imagined how it would feel.
How it would sound, when he realized.
And for the first time in my life,I felt powerful.