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To say Simon was annoyed as he skimmed through the “hot” online article his assistant had handed him over a while ago would be an understatement. His jaw had clenched so tightly that he wondered if it might be possible to break a bone there. He sighed and closed the paper. “Is this her idea of distracting the media from the investigation?” His assistant who stood across the desk nodded. “Looks like it, sir. But if I have to be honest, it’s not a bad move either. It might actually work.” Simon tossed the tablet away and pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew his brilliant assistant had a point, but at the same time, he felt a piercing impulse to put an end to this damn thing once and for all. He just couldn’t stand it, you know. The thought of Elena with that idiot Richard. Even though the rumours were as fake as they could be, and it was just for the media’s sake, he couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit possessive and territorial over the woman he had come to consider his own. But t
Elena was helping Caleb get ready for school when Betty Adams came rushing through the main door of the mansion and doubled over, panting, as if she had run a marathon to get to the place. “What’s wrong with you?” Elena asked, as she took one look at the assistant who was bent at her waist, breathing heavily, before looking at the butler who looked equally confused by the situation. Caleb, who always had been playful around Betty perked up from the table as soon as he heard her coming. “Bets! Bets! Look at me, look at what I’m eating!” But Betty, who seemed to have trouble breathing at that moment, shook her head at the excited little boy, a small smile appearing on her face, nonetheless. “Caleb, you look great and that looks, well, yummy,” she managed to say before looking at Elena. “Madam, I’m sorry, but there’s something that needs your immediate attention.” Elena could tell from the face of Betty that whatever had her worried enough to be so out of breath had to be big news. S
It was after a few hours spent brooding over the entire charade Simon had pulled that Elena realized things might not be as straightforward as she thought. Now that she had the time to think about it, to process the situation and understand how all of this was actually going to play out, she wasn’t so sure if Simon had done what he did to piss her off. Perhaps Betty was right. There was a reason, the one she had refused to see initially. Perhaps Simon did have an angle. Perhaps he was still doing what he did best. Make a game out of everything. And now that she had a reason to believe that Simon might have done something like that to actually take the heat of the media off her, she realized she wasn’t so furious anymore. Which, of course, made her wonder—why did she become so angry in the first place? As far as she could remember, it was Simon who had pursued her since the beginning, while all she had done was to reject him time and again. She had made it clear that she wasn’t look
“We’ve found something!” One of the uniforms yelled from upstairs, making Elena turn in his direction with a scowl on her face. She looked back at Cortez, who seemed just as surprised by the news.He immediately gestured to a couple of other men standing behind him.“You take it from there, I’ll handle this here,” he pointed at Elena before taking off towards the stairs and leaving her behind with the other uniformed man who seemed to be taking a bit of interest in the vase right beside him.A couple of minutes later, the sound of someone walking down the stairs echoed in the hallway and had Elena turning in the direction of the staircase just in time to see Cortez appearing with a plastic bag in his hand, something silvery and shiny.For a second, Elena thought about why these men were interested in her wardrobe instead of looking for clues or whatever the hell they were there for.But when she looked closely and thought deeply, that’s when it hit her.It wasn’t something she owned.I
“Why are you in such a rush?” Danika’s manager yelled from the doorway of the studio, a confused expression on her wrinkled face.Danika turned around, flashing one of her most winning smiles. “Gotta go, Liz. Have a flight to catch. See you on Monday?”The manager shook her head. “Fine. But text me when you land. We still need to talk about the script that the asshole made. Can’t understand why can’t these people just do their damn job.” Grumbling, the middle-aged woman turned and walked back inside, the sound of her yelling at someone loud and clear.Danika let out a heavy sigh, finally able to relieve her beautiful face from the torture of smiling too much. There were certainly some perks of being a good actress, but the downsides were just as many and miserable.First, you have to be nice to everyone. Like every single one. Even the ones who had done nothing to deserve your kindness. If anything, you hate their guts for one reason or another. You cannot show anger, because that jus
“Why did you do it?”“I did not do anything.”“Oh yeah?” Cortez scoffed, staring directly into Elena’s eyes from across the small wooden desk. They were back to the interrogation room after Cecelia’s clothes were found at Elena’s place. It was time for a confession as all the shreds of evidence were piling up against her.“Then why don’t you take a moment to enlighten us how that hell Cecelia McDowell’s clothes ended up in your closet? How do you explain that, huh? That’s pretty fucked up, Ms Matthews, don’t you think?”Elena leaned forward and said the same thing again.“I did not kill her. I don’t even know why her clothes were at my place, because I did not have anything to do with her.”“But you were the last person to see her before she went missing, or should I say, you killed her,” Cortez said, not giving her even an ounce of rebate.Elena let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose as a migraine began to settle in. She had no clue how she could explain things to him or anyo
*A Few Hours Ago*“I could have stopped her,” Melinda sobbed, dropping her face that was soaked with tears in the palms of her hands. “I could have said something.”Richard didn’t know what to say.Sure, he had never been a fan of his stepmother and he hadn’t actually shown her that he cared, ever. But right now, seeing her the way she was, heartbroken and miserable, he couldn’t stop himself from feeling absolutely bad for her. No matter how she was, no matter how she treated him and his father like a bank account all her life, even she did not deserve to lose someone she loved beyond reason.She did not deserve to lose her only daughter.He looked down at his hands while from the corner of his eyes, he watched as his father did his best to console his wife. She was a mess. An absolute mess that might take his father a lifetime to collect and put together.But at least, he was trying.Richard, on the other hand, felt sick to the stomach, knowing that even at this hour, even at the time
“When I caught her mixing something in your drink one time and saw her dragging you to a room after you passed out. That day I was there to stop her, but I didn’t know she would try to do something like that all over again.”She looked at him as if to gauge his reaction, before dropping her face into her palms and letting her shoulders shake as she cried.Richard felt frozen on the spot. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t blink, he couldn’t breathe. The information Melinda had just given him, he couldn’t process. His mind refused to. It was as if everything around him was turning to dust.What she said could only mean one thing. And he felt sick at the mere thought. He felt disgusted. He felt like throwing up. He couldn’t believe that he had missed that. All of it. The signs. The warning. He couldn’t believe he had been too dumb and blinded to notice anything.But he could feel it all now.He could see it.In fact, he could almost…remember it.The way Cecelia would stare at him when she tho