Though I did not want to look up, I could not control my eyes from moving to his face.
Josh was standing there, right beside the bed, moving so quietly I had not even heard the door open. His face no longer carried the broken desperation from earlier. Instead, his eyes had turned cold, hard, and sharp like blades.
Before I could react, his hand shot forward, snatching the phone out of my grip.
My voice cracked, "Josh..."
But he did not let me finish. He leaned closer, his pale face twisted with something dark and terrifying. "I told you, Elena. You should not have tried to go against me."
His voice, which was no longer the weak, trembling one I had pitied a few moments ago, was now steady. Calculated.
I felt my stomach churn as realization struck me. His act... all of it, the tears, the pain, the broken loyalty, it had been a mask all along, and unfortunately, I had fallen for it.
"No... you..." My words trembled as my back pressed against the pillows, "You lied to me."
His lips curved into a bitter smirk. "I did what I had to do. You were never going to believe the truth unless I made you."
I tried to push him away, tried to scream, but before I could even protest, his hand moved swiftly, pulling out a small vial and syringe from his pocket.
My eyes widened in horror. "Josh, don’t..."
I felt the prick of the needle in my arm, sharp and burning, my body jerking weakly against his hold.
"Shhh..." he whispered close to my ear, his voice sickeningly calm now. "You’ll understand soon. This is for the best. You don’t belong with them, Elena. You belong with me." ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ ɴovel(ꜰ)ɪre.nᴇt
My limbs grew heavy, the world tilting sideways as my vision blurred. Darkness started to creep in from the edges.
My last thought, before everything went black, was not of Josh’s twisted face, but of Dave and Grandpa Albert.
Of whether they truly betrayed me... or whether I had just handed myself to the real villain standing right here.
And then, there was nothing.
Three and a half months.
That’s how long it had been since Elena disappeared.
On the surface, everyone had accepted the story of her eloping with Josh.
Even the whispers in the mansion had quieted down after a while, as if people had finally grown bored of the scandal, but I knew better.
From the very first night, something inside me whispered that it was not right. Elena would never run away without leaving even a word, without a single explanation.
She was not careless like that. Especially, she was not selfish in any way and did not intend to hurt anyone.
And yet, that’s what everyone wanted to believe.
I had seen the truth in her eyes, and even if that was not the truth, then she had to be a better actor than I was.
Everyone believed her to be the traitor except Grandpa.
He and I had both received missed calls that night.
The missed calls came from Josh from that night. If they both were traitors, then why was he trying to connect to us at the time of eloping?
It did not make any sense except that they both were innocent and some third party got to them and then framed them as traitors, but I did not dare to believe it, as if it had happened in reality, then they might be dead.
Grandpa and I tried to reason with Nicole and Grace, but it was pointless.
They had already been suspicious of Elena for months. To them, her "elopement" was simply proof of what they had always believed, that she was trouble.
A liar who got into this family to break it from the inside.
Every time Grandpa pushed them to help in the search, their replies grew colder.
Grace would simply shrug and say, "She made her choice."
Neither could Grandpa. So, we searched.
Days turned into weeks, and weeks then turned into months.
Every clue we found led us into a dead end.
A sighting of Josh near the city border turned out to be nothing.
A woman matching Elena’s description in a nearby motel was just a stranger. Even the police, after half-heartedly investigating, closed the file with "voluntary disappearance."
I tried to bury myself in recovery during those weeks.
My body had healed, but my mind had not. Each night, when the house was quiet, I would hear her voice in my head.
I would see the last look she gave me before everything fell apart, filled with doubt, confusion, and something that looked a lot like pain.
And each morning, when I faced the family, I carried that same storm inside me.
Grandpa was the only one who understood. Late at night, when everyone else had gone to bed, we would sit in his study, poring over maps, call records, photographs, anything that could bring us closer to the truth.
His eyes, once tired and heavy, now burned with determination.
"They didn’t leave on their own," he would mutter, almost to himself, "Someone took them. Someone planned this."
And I would nod, because deep down, I knew he was right.
But the question remained. Who did this and why? What was their intention towards them? Towards us?
After the first scenario, the second scenario portrayed Josh as the obvious suspect.
He had always hovered around her, waiting for an opportunity, but if he had her, then where was he?
No one had seen him either. His name vanished from every record, his phone inactive, his accounts frozen. It was as if both of them had been wiped off the face of the earth.
Sometimes, the thought crept in, like what if Elena really did leave with him? What if she chose him, despite everything?