“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
Danika had a huge grin on her face as she hopped out of her car, grabbed her bag from the backseat and started towards the private airport.Last night, after she heard of Elena’s arrest, she had immediately called one of her admirers, the one who owned an airline business of his own, and asked him for a small favor.She had lied to him, obviously, had told him that she had a small break until her next movie shoot started and she could use a small vacation to sit back and relax. And of course, she was hoping he would be keen to give her some company because—why not?—she had always enjoyed the time spent with him.Well, the last part wasn’t exactly a lie. Garrett was a good-looking guy, in his early forties and seemed to have a face she could enjoy while fucking.It was of no concern to her that the man was kind of married and his wife was one of the women she always came across in the parties or galas.For Danika, Garrett was just another fuckable face that she was willing to have sex w
Danika knew something was off when she heard those words coming out of Simon’s mouth.She knew the way he was looking at her, as if wanting her to know her place, as if wanting her to know she fucked up—big time at that—he had something horrible in his mind.Sweat broke through the pores of her skin and she had to wipe it off with the back of her hand, struggling—for the first time, ever—to find a way out of this unfortunate situation.So, she decided to come straight to the fucking point.There was no use in pretending to be nice anymore. She could tell that he didn’t care how beautiful she was, or how she could promise a great lay if given the chance.As far as she knew—or had heard of—Simon had a certain taste in women, and he never stirred from what he wanted. Trying to flirt with him or offer him something most people would fall face first for would only prove to be a waste of time.“What the hell do you want?” She asked, almost snapped, but not to the point it sounded rude, but m
Elena had no clue what to expect when she found Danika—her best friend—on the other side of the tinted window.At first, she thought maybe Cortez had hounded her just like he did to Elena all night, and now it was because Danika had slipped and said something she shouldn’t have—something that made the case even stronger against her—she was brought merely to show her how the hell she was going down.The thought brought a bad taste to her mouth and a shudder to pass through her spine.All Danika would have to do was to spill everything about Elena’s small revenge plan and that’s all it would take for Cortez to pin the murder on her. The man was hellbent on proving Elena a murderer and she couldn’t understand for the life of her, why?Surely, not every evidence could be pointing at her, right?There had to be something—no matter how small—to prove that she was innocent.Behind her, she felt Detective Cortez whispering something to his partner—another detective. And when she glanced over h
Elena felt drained by the moment she stepped out of the police station.Her eyes looked bloodshot as if she could finally use some sleep, and her legs wobbled with how little movement she had been allowed in the interrogation room all night.But the said exhaustion was nothing in comparison to the pain she felt in her heart, the betrayal that cut so deep, she didn’t think she would ever be able to recover.She couldn’t believe that during everything that happened in the past—from catching Richard cheating on her to Josh’s accident, from her divorce to spending more than a year away from home just so she could heal herself in the best way possible—if there was one thing that remained constant in her life, it was Danika.It was because of her she always managed to push through—or at least that’s what she told herself. It was she who showed her the way when Elena couldn’t make up her mind, when she was broken beyond repair, and all she was good at was being there for Caleb and nothing els
With tears tracing the length of her face, Elena placed a hand against his chest and felt his heartbeat race as fast as her own.But even though, nothing about the kiss—about the man—should have felt foreign, or wrong, or out of place, it did. And she couldn’t understand for the life of her—why?They had done it so many times in the past. They had done more than kiss on the lips. There had been nights and days and mornings when they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves, when they had lied and pretended to be sick just to spend some extra time with each other.It should have come naturally to her, the kiss that is. The feeling of his lips on her should have felt the most right thing in the world—but it didn’t.It didn’t.In fact, it felt all wrong, misplaced and… she pushed against his chest and pulled away, gasping for breath.When she finally got the strength to open her eyes, her vision still fogged from all the tears she had been crying, she found Richard looking at her. He looke