#emily vickers

[emmy024]

Saint Brad Vickers, part of “The Holly Trinity- Vickers”

[thoughtcatalog]

Being gentle with myself is knowing I still do things I shouldn’t, but applauding myself for the things I do right.

(Source: thoughtcatalog.com)

[emmy024]

That afternoon he decided to put his memory to work and looked back at the past. The weeks went by extremely fast in his opinion. It appeared yesterday when he heard the good news. It seemed like yesterday when they communicated the great news to their friends and made the little baby shower. It appeared yesterday when the whole team was preparing to leave. However, the reality was different: all this already happened several weeks ago. No one saw it coming. Not even the signs. Nothing. How did it happen? A traitor on the team? Did they take them as bait just to test abominations with them? If they had told him earlier, he would have burst out laughing; still, everything was true: everything happened. How weird, huh? There was no euphoria for "the little new member"? Did no one have an appointment that cannot be postponed? A procedure with the doctor? The exhaustive training with the pleasant Kendo? Not anymore, never again. Sometimes realizing the truth would throw everything to the ground. He felt nauseous as he gulped down some coffee; he found it lukewarm and without strength, like the spirit in his house. In his life. He fell asleep on the glories of being a future father; all that took its toll on him. He precisely noticed weeks ago when he returned to his residence after breaking his spouse's heart. At the damned police station, after returning home with the sun high in the summer sky, it was there that he notified her of the sad reality.

That perfect morning, bright and clear, he saw the woman of his life crumble. He was responsible. Someone had to tell him, lift the veil that all her dearest friends died. Was Chris Redfield going to report it? The same jerk who threatened to just throw it to her? Tactless? No: it was his duty as a man and husband. It was his way of protecting her and his unborn daughter. From that wretched day she stayed away from him. Touching her was part of a wild dream, where her gorgeous light golden hair danced in the wind. The Emmy who for so many years helped and cared for disappeared, supplanting her by a taciturn liar who secretly cried in the room of his future heir. In a way he longed for that old eternal dream. Professing love and being a recipient of affection. Feel her perfume when he embraces her, kiss her delicate lips when matters were going well or badly; feel her body tremble in response to his frantic love. Brad missed what it was, refusing to accept that everything changed on July 23rd. Something cruel hung over his shoulders that day: guilt over his fear. He left without looking back as the flashback took him back to the wicked accident, sitting in that military transport, plowing through the inhospitable Iraqi roads to his next target. Could he prevent it? No, not even the best therapist would have erased the imprint of post-traumatic stress; neither did he pass it on through the war. The woman of his life entered the living room with teary eyes, lips stained with chocolate cookies. Cravings… He turned off the damn meaningless tv. He softly called her name, with the affection that she always identified with him; She pretended to get away from the encounter, but he was faster than her and wrapped his arms around her. Emily always hated to be perceived as a whiny individual. Her spouse knew why, although at that very moment he would admit her to being small and defenseless; as long as he felt her presence, she would consent to anything. He gently took her arms and tried to face her beautiful, youthful face. Emily resisted vigorously. He begged her to look back at him. May she grant him the favor of being judged by his powerful celestial icy eyes. Emmy begged to be let go. He knew it: she was again navigating her deepest memories and reached the point of no return; she heard the voices of the past, recalling the scenes where she felt real happiness. She fell apart like a house of cards. She let him see it, but she flatly denied it; Emily Vickers was always characterized by being stubborn. Poor girl awaiting birth. She would arrive in a dangerous world, with despicable people seeking to harm them to demand retaliation. Brad was scared. Brad wished he could be much stronger than he was. He longed to be someone like his late friends, or worse yet: like the annoying Chris or the clever Jill. He kissed and then embraced his special other half in his arms. That specially made little doll, unbreakable and at the same time terribly fragile. "I miss them so much, Brad! They took the best I had from me; I am no longer anyone. " He wanted to tell her that she was the universe concentrated in a single soul. He stroked his limp hair gently, as if never in his life had experienced such sensory pleasure. However, they could not afford to collapse. What would they say about that? "We'll do what we can, honey." He rubbed her arms lovingly, trying to infuse her with the nonexistent courage inside him. “We are going to try, even if life goes away while trying, okay?” He saw her encouragement to start an argument; anything lately ignited the enormous rage that boiled inside her. Only one thing was able to appease that beast. Then he lowered himself to one knee on the ground; he kissed the bulging belly with unusual desperation as he swore a solemn promise. Never, ever would he allow the two women in his life to be hurt. He would pay with his life if necessary.

[emmy024]

“Loose ends”

——————

The quiet of the English countryside was disturbed by the muted purr of an immaculate Rolls-Royce as it cut swiftly through the rolling hills. From the back seat, he watched the scenery unfold: vast stretches of green meadow dotted with proud, ancient oaks lining the roads, welcoming him warmly on a mild spring afternoon. In the distance, beyond long and immaculate driveways, the old mansions of the English aristocracy could be glimpsed.

He would never use the ridiculous common term “neighbors.”

Each family was an institution unto itself, not some rabble pretending fraternity with their social equals.

He realized, then, how much he had missed the beauty of those landscapes—their delicate solitude and their distance from the great cities. It was the place where he had spent his childhood, far from ordinary eyes and only occasionally disturbed by interviews for society magazines; the place where he had once played freely in the sumptuous gardens of surgically trimmed lawns, alongside his beautiful Alexia.

Both of them ignorant of the dreadful truth of their family, unaware that they lived alongside the enemy.

Memories shook him—the voices, the crying, the fears of the past. The uncertainty, and the unbearable certainty that followed it. He shook his head slightly, suppressing the growing specter of rage.

This was not the time.

Patience and cunning were required before he could unleash his implacable fury upon the last mistakes of his father. They had to be eradicated before the Queen awakened.

In the distance he finally saw the immense Ashford Mansion, the building he had called “home” for so many years. Completed in the mid-eighteenth century, its Georgian walls of impeccable symmetry had been adorned during renovations by his great-grandfather Arthur with elaborate moldings and a severe wrought-iron portico.

Years had passed since the last time he had set foot there, and even then only out of obligation—summoned by accountants and lawyers regarding the family inheritance. His true home now, shaped entirely to his taste, stood at Rockfort.

A few minutes later, the luxurious car turned right and rolled along the straight road toward the carriage sweep at the entrance. Tall windows with white frames, reflective in the spring sunlight, seemed to welcome him back. The dark roof, nearly hidden behind the original parapet, revealed two mansard windows added in the late nineteenth century.

He stepped out with elegance, resting part of his weight on a cane with a carved handle. His gaze moved haughtily across the carefully trimmed shrubs, azaleas, and rhododendrons. Beech hedges surrounded the building, while the humid air of Surrey filled everything with a faint, sweet fragrance.

“Money well spent,” he thought with satisfaction.

“A queen’s castle must look splendid.”

His Italian shoes crunched over the gray gravel. He needed to enter the mansion, walk through its refined interiors until reaching the Central Office—the seat of power for every head of the family.

Once, documents such as contracts, wills, and financial reports had been stored there. But his father had added something new—something Alfred had once considered entirely pointless.

A photo album.

Who would want a photo album among shelves overflowing with books? The very idea was absurd.

Alexander had always liked keeping the past within reach. In his mind, the history of the Ashford family absorbed everything. What better proof of time’s passing—especially from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth—than a collection of photographs? A monument to better days.

To Alfred it had always seemed like a ridiculous extravagance, a waste of space and resources. And yet that very foolishness would now serve a divine purpose. Without meaning to, his late father had left him the means to exorcise his sins—the stain he had allowed to form upon the noble Ashford name.

He entered without so much as glancing at the staff and headed immediately to the left, passing through the salons and smaller sitting rooms that connected to the Hall of Aristocrats. In his pocket burned the evidence the mercenary team and the private investigator had gathered over the past nine months.

A single photograph.

Taken outside a modest middle-class house where the abomination resided.

A child conceived in sin and disgrace—the very one Alexander had intended to use to extend his personal legacy.

“He will be called Maximilian, the future of the Family,” the bastard had said before dying, as though his pleas and ramblings might somehow alter his fate.

Even now the memory of those words still angered him.

A bastard of mixed and tainted blood: the son of an aristocrat and an ambitious middle-class whore. Yet that had not spared Alexander from paying dearly for his incompetence—quite the opposite.

The sniveling Chelsea Simmons—never Ashford—had done nothing more than flee the Base with her tail between her legs under the pretense of an Umbrella-sponsored “conference.” Neonatal surveillance reports later mentioned a second-trimester pregnancy. The wretch had been carrying an illicit gestation, something wholly alien to the natural order of the Family.

The mere recollection made his blood boil.

At the time, he had not even deemed the matter worthy of raising within the line of succession. Chelsea had been nothing more than a fleeing remnant, and whatever she carried within her possessed neither form, name, nor weight. Alexia had only just established herself as the new matriarch, wholly absorbed in consolidating the Veronica Project—the only thing that truly mattered.

But now, with the evidence burning in his pocket, he saw clearly the mistake he had made.

With a single motion he pushed open the double doors leading to the Hall of Aristocrats. It was a long chamber with dark wooden floors covered by an expansive red carpet patterned with golden arabesques. Finely carved furniture displayed the original relics through which the heads of the family had once assumed their authority.

Magnificent portraits of his ancestors adorned both sides of the hall. The air smelled faintly of floor wax, ginger, and lemon.

He passed the portrait of his grandfather and that of his beautiful—if short-lived—wife Elizabeth. Then Arthur. Then finally his father.

That gaze was impossible to ignore: fixed, distant, stripped carefully of all emotion. The silent judgment of the dead man, captured with uncomfortable precision, did not attempt to impose itself. It merely observed—as if he had already measured the generations that would follow and found nothing worthy of surprise.

Very proud in the painting, Alfred thought coldly. Yet you ended as you lived: a coward.

His footsteps, softened by the thick carpet, came to a halt before the sliding doors leading to the Office vestibule. He inhaled and pushed them open.

Now the space was his.

Free for him to begin his thorough examination.

Leaving the small vestibule behind—illuminated by standing lamps and antique table lights—he stepped into the spacious study while reaching inside his jacket. He retrieved the dossier of photographs, his military decorations faintly clinking together.

The scent of aged mahogany and leather enveloped him the moment he crossed the threshold.

Dark, severe, and oppressive, the Office was exactly as he remembered from childhood. The parallel walls, lined entirely with books, seemed almost to close inward around the massive desk of solid mahogany dominating the center of the room—carved and polished to an almost obscene shine.

Black leather sofas studded with silver nails flanked it before and behind, their legs in Louis XVI style. A two-seater stood behind the desk to the right, as though eternally awaiting a host who would never return.

A gigantic crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, while the white molding tried in vain to soften a space designed to suffocate.

His father’s Xanadu.

The refuge where he hid from the world to brood over his failures.

That room had once filled him with fear.

Now it inspired nothing but disgust.

He lowered his gaze.

The high-resolution images—taken from a distance through a private investigator’s telephoto lens—showed three individuals in the central park of Raccoon City. Beneath a brilliant sun, a small family played together in the open air among footballs and greasy fast food.

The boy, perhaps twelve years old, appeared in the photographs with light blond hair, tousled by the wind and the commotion. He was thin, all long limbs not yet fully coordinated, bearing the familiar awkwardness of a body still growing into itself.

That face…

It still possessed the rounded softness of early adolescence, yet faint angles had begun to emerge—the upturned nose, the shape of the bridge, the slight tilt of the eyes when he laughed, the dimple at the left corner of his mouth.

Since the moment Alfred had first seen those photographs, the unease had never left him.

Taken individually, those traits might have been dismissed as coincidence. But together they formed a pattern far too precise to ignore.

And Alfred had no intention of granting chance any further space.

He walked straight to a small archive cabinet beside the door to the private bathroom. The wood, identical to that of the desk, remained immaculate—brilliantly polished and untouched, as if no one had disturbed the family’s memories in years.

Excellent, he thought. Everything remains exactly the same.

Arranged chronologically were photographic albums containing portraits from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1970s.

His fingers slid across the worn spines as he mentally followed the gold-stamped dates. One by one he dismissed them until he reached the 1950s—the family’s golden age.

He removed the volume, turned on his heel, and placed it upon the desk.

He flipped through black-and-white photographs showing his grandparents in their youth attending galas, receptions, scientific conferences, and opera evenings.

Nothing useful.

He reached for another with the same methodical urgency.

There he found what he sought: his father’s life.

Postwar childhood. Early adolescence. The growing anxiety and coldness already visible in those ice-colored eyes.

The boarding school where he had been educated. Group photographs in which he always looked oddly out of place—too serious, too rigid. With his governess in the delightful park behind the estate. With the butler in the library before towering shelves. Charity dinners. Horseback riding. Visiting the Queen.

This was his father’s “public” self—artificial, unnatural, inhuman.

Uncomfortable. Distant. Solemn.

Alfred opened the dossier and spread several loose photographs of his target across the desk. In each of them, the boy laughed easily, smiling without restraint.

How could one compare learned rigidity with someone who had grown up without it?

How could he find conclusive proof when the two bodies had developed in entirely different worlds?

Exasperated, he turned the page with abrupt force. His eyes swept every inch of the photographs, bringing his own evidence close to them at different angles.

This absence of proof does not refute my suspicion.

Perhaps the final two volumes. Perhaps the seventies would bring him closer to the truth.

He closed the album and was about to return it to its place when something caught his attention.

A series of loose photographs collapsed backward, sliding onto the empty space. Alfred froze as a chill ran down his spine. He set the book aside and retrieved his discovery, studying the faces captured there—smiling, youthful.

There, in an image he did not recall ever seeing before, was his father, only a few years older than the American boy, smiling openly beside Henry Sutherland and Amber Calloway. The sight of Amber, radiant even in monochrome, churned his stomach. He knew her far too well: the one weakness Alexander had never managed to eradicate.

A woman far too constant in his life to be dismissed as merely a lapse.

The scene had been taken in the French countryside, during a relaxed summer in the early sixties. Without the beard or the carefully styled hair Alfred remembered; young, handsome, and at ease. He wore exquisite clothing, free from protocol: a white linen shirt neatly rolled to the elbows, light stone-colored trousers perfectly pressed, a dark leather belt, and designer loafers. An expensive watch gleamed on his right wrist; a sweater rested over his shoulders.

Leaning against a half-brick wall, he posed with his lifelong friend—and current Attorney General of England and Wales—and her.

“It’s him.”

With deliberate care, Alfred removed one of the photographs of the American boy from the dossier—the one where his face was fully exposed, free of shadow or forgiving angles. He placed it beside the old image, aligning them with surgical precision.

It took no more than a few seconds. Certainty settled in his chest with a dark, final weight.

He exhaled slowly, controlled. It was no accidental resemblance: the boy was the very image of Alexander. Before his eyes stood Maximilian, the single useless card his father had tried to play to save his life. He straightened, a half-smile of cold satisfaction forming on his lips.

“So Chelsea Simmons did flee while pregnant. And through some trick managed to evade the mercenaries until she ended up in that filthy little town called Raccoon City.”

But the discovery did not end there. Alfred picked up the park photograph; his gaze drifted beyond the boy. Behind him, arms crossed and eyes alert behind cheap-framed glasses, stood a blonde woman with waist-length hair, watching.

She wore blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and a burgundy knit cardigan; she stubbornly insisted on playing the sentinel even on a family day out. She stood upright with a martial stiffness bordering on the ridiculous, imitating a discipline that was not hers.

Despite the glasses, the maturity of her feminine figure, and her impassive expression, he recognized her instantly. She was the bastard’s guardian: Emily, the daughter of Amber Calloway and an American nouveau riche, Ernest Whiteland. And therefore, the first obstacle.

The girl Alexander had taken under his protection when an aggressive cancer killed Mrs. Calloway, granting her a surname she should never have borne. Alexia’s clinging shadow, installed as a parody of a researcher in Antarctica—the constant reminder of the sin his father had tried to disguise as charity.

An old nausea rose in his throat: nothing irritated him more than seeing that parasite still breathing. And now she served as the boy’s legal guardian.

One illegitimate Ashford caring for another, pretending to be a happy family. Intolerable.

His stomach tightened as he grasped the implication. It was not only the boy: it was the bond between them. Legitimacy. The unbearable possibility of a parallel branch claiming privileges when Alexia awakened in the future—challenging the authority of the one true Ashford heir.

“No. This cannot be allowed.”

He gathered the scattered material on the desk, replaced the albums in the cabinet, and began his journey. His mind was already working as he examined every available option: cunning and fatality, ingenuity and enough contacts to neutralize the impostors.

Her husband (Brad Vickers) had fought in the Gulf War. A broken veteran, with reflexes still useful and a mind eroded by war. A functional failure, he concluded while sliding the material back into his jacket pocket.

They lived in a quiet residential neighborhood where the weekly excitement was the loss of a pet. A proper place, he conceded that much, where any anomaly would bring a swift police response.

All paths converged on a single one: the Paradise Group. Trained in “extracurricular” work, they were ideal when it came to entering the field, getting close to their targets, and mapping out their weaknesses.

Routines, frequent contacts, structural vulnerabilities, security gaps… that was why they were chosen.

He left Ashford Manor a few minutes later. Inside the vehicle, he used his personal telephone to place several calls through his special red address book. The tone sounded; seconds later they requested a client access code.

Then the line remained open.

“I have a job for Special Team Fifty-Two,” he said. On the other end, only a calm breathing could be heard as he provided the information he had about the suburban house. “I want eyes on that home twenty-four hours a day. I want to know everything: work and school schedules, relations with neighbors, trusted contacts—and especially when they lower their guard.”

A brief silence fell between them, followed by a single question.

“Observation only… or elimination?”

He could not help but smile.

“Observation. The rest will come in due time.”

“Confirmed.”

Then they moved on to what mattered: money.

“Payment will not be an issue. You are authorized to withdraw bearer bonds and the transfer to the Swiss account. One and a half million now. Another half million when you deliver every detail.”

He leaned closer to the receiver, almost whispering.

“The Ashford family will be grateful—but it expects perfection.”

[emmy024]

Yes, the suit corresponds to Alexander Ashford. And the dress is from her wife Chelsea. AND YES, there’s two Chelsea in my own “fanfic” universe.

[emmy024]

Nighttime

[emmy024]

Single mother

[emmy024]

Video of “Our Story”! First image made by Crying Horn