Paradigm Series

"I feel like someone's watching me. Whenever I'm alone, I feel this sense of alarm. I hear clicking." "Clicking?" "Like someone's walking in heels."   The door opened to reveal Detectives Ocon and Sofia. Their faces had grave expressions on them. I immediately ushered them in. "Ms. Frietz…" "Victoria. Call me Victoria." "Victoria, we have bad news. Doctor Tsunoda's body was recovered from the river. From the condition his body is in, it has been quite a while since he passed away. All signs are leading toward suicide." …   Meet Victoria Frietz: daughter of world-renowned philosopher Jacques Frietz. Victoria lives in the shadow of a father she cannot figure out. He ruled every aspect of her life without meaning to. Victoria hopes to break away from his strings after his death, but life has other plans for her. Things begin to unravel and fall out of place after her father's death. Someone new enters her life. Annette Frietz: intriguing, smart, with an unknown past. As Victoria grows closer to Annette, more and more things begin to seem unusual. Despite warnings, she continues to nurture and grow the bond. As the bond grows deeper and deeper, secrets are discovered, trust is betrayed, and hearts are broken. As promises break, so do people. Things take a turn for the worse as a fellow researcher and friend dies a mysterious death following an unseemly breakdown in his lab. When it falls on Victoria to uncover the secret behind his death, she is forced to revisit her childhood and the memories associated with her father. Will Victoria be able to uncover the mystery of her father's past, or will it consume her till she is nothing but a puppet in his play? Will Victoria be able to untangle the mess surrounding her own life, or will she let it consume her? Will she be able to protect the people she loves or watch them take their last breath in front of her? "And if we encounter even a sign of danger, promise me, you will let it go."

Victoria Frietz's journey continues as she navigates through an impending trial. She lost people, but she also gained confidence. Secret letters, abandoned nurseries, everything is written in her fate. Victoria's struggles double as she tries to keep her head cool through all of it.   The impending doom associated with her life has worsened as she tries to unravel her secrets and Andrew's death and win her trial. Discovering something unexpected had already become a part of her life, but what does she do when she walks into things completely expected but they become too real for her? New people enter her life to fill the void left beforehand.   Will the new challenges break her or make her whole? Will she be able to fend off the shadow stalking her life, or will it become more real than ever? Will she finally learn to accept her fate or choose to fight against it?

"Anyway, if it is a girl, then I have no doubt in my mind about what I want to name her. Annette. Annette Frietz."   Enter Taylor: someone Victoria cannot figure out. Victoria finds herself exposed to the secrets of the past. She learns things she did not know existed. But the secrets did not remain just hers anymore. When Victoria untangles one knot of her life, three more become exposed. Everything is bigger than it seems. Her trial makes life even more complicated for her.   Danger had always loomed on her doorstep, but what happens when it begins to knock? Slow, deliberate knocks. What happens when her mental shields against her own doubts shatter into a thousand pieces?  In a twisting turn of events, Victoria finds herself questioning everything when it is revealed that a death might have been a murder.   A murder trial, a secret stalker, a kidnapping, an escape plan; who is behind all of this? Is it really only one person, as Victoria had thought?   Is it fate's cruelty which is ruining Victoria's state of mind or is it her own vulnerability? The line between reality and imagination blurs as she navigates the twists and turns of her own past. Will she be able to maintain her sanity or will she lose herself in the wave of her own imagination?   "You know what he said to me? 'Why?' That was his last word. How sad, no? Just another person whose blood is on your hands."

"Oh, I remember something peculiar. She was wearing heels, turquoise-colored heels. I thought it was an odd choice. She was also wearing a ring on her right-hand middle finger. It was a birthstone. A small emerald, for May."   Victoria finds herself in a hospital room with no prior memories of the fateful nights. All she knows is her pain; all she can think about is her profound sadness. She finds herself in the middle of a police investigation again, only this time, she is the victim. As soon as she believes herself to be one step closer to the truth, reality jerks her back with its unforgiving hands.   She is growing desperate, but she is not the only one. Her assailant is growing desperate as well. And the desperation leads to a slip-up, a slip-up that might give Victoria an only chance to be, for the first time, one step ahead of her assailant.   Will Victoria be able to grab that chance, or will she throw it away due to her desperation? I got up to look with her as she tried to check under the china cabinet. She accidentally pushed the china cabinet ahead while trying to lift it. I walked over to her to scold her for not being careful when I saw something, which made me stop dead in my tracks. In the space from where the china cabinet had skidded nestled a pair of shoes: turquoise heels. Sitting there, in perfect shape, were turquoise heels.

"I run my hands over the cover of the diary. Possibly, this was the last thing my father wrote in. Sure, he wrote academic papers and presentations and lectures. But this, this might be the last thing he has ever written for himself. This might be the last thing connecting him to the life he left behind."   Victoria has discovered a diary her father used to keep. Many questions remain unanswered. What happened the night Sophia disappeared? What happened to Hannah? Whose birth certificates are forged? And most of all, why did Jacques leave everything behind? She finally builds up her courage to do so once the case is solved. With the diary, she goes through a journey of self-awareness and complex emotions. She learns to see her father as a human. She sees his life before her birth. She gets an in-depth look at his relationship with Hannah. His history finally connects the dots with her present as she discovers what happened the night Sophia disappeared. Finding out the truth destroys her whole sense of identity. Who even is she anymore? But, as much as it destroys her, it also helps her in finding her true self. Will Victoria finally accept her father as the man he was or continue to live in denial?   "Even as I relive it right now, it haunts me the same as it did when it happened. I mulled my decision over multiple times in my head. I realized this was the only way to save Hannah. I know. I am the cruelest, most selfish man on earth. I took a daughter away from her father just for my own selfish desires."

It was Detective Ocon. I picked up and placed the phone close to my ears. "Hel……" "Victoria, where are you?" He sounded urgent. He did not even let me finish my greeting. "I am outside." "Is Max with you?" "Yes, she is right here." "Good. Come with her to the police station right now."   New lead, a new surprise. Has Victoria been betrayed by Annette? Or is it all just a misunderstanding? Could Victoria have been wrong all along? Just as Victoria thought of herself as someone who was on the path of recovery, she faces a relapse. A new threat, but to whom? Another letter, but where? Victoria pays another visit to her ancestral home. This time, she is accompanied by even more haunting memories. This time, both Andrew and Jacques haunt her.  Is Victoria's sense of security upon moving valid? Or will it turn out to be another facade? Victoria tries to trust people by navigating through a maze of her own trust issues. New problems; someone else's doing or her own fault? A diary; could it be life-changing or just another piece of useless information? Things begin to tangle and untangle themselves on their own. Will it give Victoria closure or send her deeper into her own shadows?   "Look, Anthony. Remember when you told me about that woman who visited Dad? How angry she looked? Well, Dad has some unresolved stuff with her, and she is coming after me for that. She is dangerous, very dangerous. She has targeted many people around me. She may have even killed."

I think there are two types of people in the world: people who daydream and people who have nightmares. I refuse to believe there is any other possibility than this. I belong, unfortunately, to the latter group. It is safe to say that the nightmares seem to be persisting more than I thought they would. Victoria is nearing the final stages of her journey. So close, yet so far away. Everything is happening too fast. She is not able to cope with it all, and all of it is projecting itself into her dream world. As she tries to figure out who the killer is, another kidnapping takes place. Detective Ocon has hit a dead end. So many lives and people are at stake because of the murderer. Victoria is trying to unravel the mystery while simultaneously trying to figure out who to trust and how to not lose trust in everyone.   She gets a phone call to meet the killer alone. Will Victoria survive as her life's plot twist nears its end, or will she succumb to her circumstances?   "What do you want?" I asked her with as much spite as I could muster. "I want to see you. I want to see you alone. No police, absolutely no one but you, especially that girl you keep around yourself with a leash. If you try to play any tricks on me, I will kill him first thing, and I will make sure he suffers the most, and I will also make sure that this time, you are here to witness his demise."