Chapter 13
That night, both families were wide awake, dealing with the fallout.
The Wrights pushed for damage control. After all, every powerful family had skeletons in their closets. Jenna’s mother–who’d personally “handled” several of her husband’s affairs over the years–downplayed her daughter’s actions as “just being too passionate.”
“She’s already lost her baby,” Mrs. Wright argued. “And after what Elijah did to her, she might never have children. Hasn’t she suffered enough?”
Meanwhile, the Phillips family demanded an immediate divorce. They refused to keep a killer in the family, no matter how well–connected she was.
As the families argued behind closed doors, police officers broke in and arrested Jenna in front of everyone.
By morning, the scandal dominated social media. The golden couple had imploded spectacularly: wife in jail, husband in the hospital.
While both families scrambled to control the narrative, Elijah couldn’t care less about any of it. His sole focus was finding Gloria and making things right.
But she remained a ghost. His investigators returned with nothing each time.
The business titan who once commanded respect in any room now lay in bed staring at walls, hollow–eyed and
broken.
Only now, alone with his thoughts, did Elijah fully grasp how catastrophically wrong he’d been. He had become the monster who drove someone who genuinely loved him straight into hell.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her desperate face, heard her begging voice echoing in his memory.
And how had he responded? With cold dismissal. With stubborn disbelief. With cruel indifference.
When Elijah finally returned to the empty house, the silence hit him like a physical blow. He remembered how she used to ambush him whenever he came home, jumping on his back and calling his name through laughter.
He’d always smile and carry her around, pretending to complain. His friends would tease that Gloria seemed less like a family friend’s daughter and more like a wife–in–training.
At parties, someone would inevitably ask if there was something more between them. His answer was always absolutely not.
Beyond their ten–year age gap making him see her almost as a kid, his heart had always fixated on Jenna. From the moment he first saw her, he’d decided she was it for him.
Any strange feelings Gloria occasionally stirred in him, he’d pushed away without examination.
48.9%
Chapter 13
Now, standing in the empty house, he found himself drawn to her room like a magnet. Everything remained exactly as she’d left it, as if she might jump out at any moment with that smile that lit up her whole face.
Elijah lingered in the doorway before finally stepping inside. He didn’t disturb anything, just traced a slow path around the room.
Each object triggered vivid memories–fragments of their life together that he’d never properly valued.
When he reached her desk, he pulled open the drawer that had once held all those letters and sketches–physical proof of her feelings. Now it was empty.
The memory hit him with fresh clarity–her tearing those pages right in front of him, her quiet voice saying she no longer loved him.
Pain gripped his heart with such intensity that he doubled over. His hand clutched the edge of the drawer until his knuckles turned white.
When the sharp pain finally subsided, it left behind an emotion he couldn’t–or wouldn’t–name.
Just as he tried to make sense of it all, his assistant burst through the door:
“We found her.”
