Chapter 3 - Two Weeks of Silence

Two Weeks Later 

Elara existed.

She didn't live. She didn't grieve properly. She simply… existed.

The apartment felt wrong without her mother's soft breathing, without the small sounds she used to make - the gentle clink of her teacup in the morning, the shuffle of her slippers on the worn carpet, the soft humming she would do while folding the clothes. The silence pressed down on Elara's chest until breathing felt like work, until even the simplest tasks seemed impossible.

She went through the motions like a ghost.

Signed papers at the funeral home, her hand moving mechanically across forms she barely read. Arranged a small funeral that almost no one attended - just a few elderly neighbors who had known her mother from the building, a nurse from the hospital who had been kind, and Maya, her childhood friend who had taken a bus from two states away to be there. 

“I'm so  sorry,”  Maya had whispered, hugging Elara tight. “I wish I had known sooner. I would have helped.”

But there was nothing anyone could have done. Not really.

Elara accepted condolences from neighbors who barely knew her mother's name who said things like “she is in a better place now” and “at least she is  not suffering anymore,” as if those words could somehow fill the gaping hole in Elara's chest.

She cleaned out her mother's things slowly, painfully. The worn Bible she had  read every night. The photo album is filled with pictures of happier times. The scarf that still smelled faintly of her perfume, cheap drugstore perfume that Elara had bought her last Christmas.

She couldn't bring herself to donate any of it. Instead, she packed everything into boxes and stacked them in the corner of the apartment, unable to let go but unable to look at them either.

And every night, she stared at her bank account.

$517,000.

Blood money.

She should feel grateful. She should feel relief. The number should represent security, safety, a future she had never dared to imagine.

Instead, she felt sick.

The nausea started small, just a queasy feeling in the mornings that she blamed on grief. She had read somewhere that grief could manifest physically, could make your body rebel in unexpected ways.

 But it grew worse. Stronger.

By the end of the first week, she couldn't keep coffee down. The smell alone made her stomach turn, even though she had always loved coffee and  had relied on it to get through her double shifts at the diner.

By the end of the second week, the smell of food made her gag. She lost weight she couldn't afford to lose, her clothes hanging loose on her already-thin frame.

Her body felt strange, foreign. Her breasts were tender. She was exhausted all the time, sleeping twelve, fourteen hours a day and still waking up tired.

Elara told herself it was stress. Grief. Exhaustion, from weeks of sleepless nights at the hospital, from the emotional toll of watching her mother slip away.

But deep down, a small voice whispered the truth she wasn't ready to hear.

She ignored it. Pushed it away. Refused to acknowledge the calendar on her phone that showed her period was late not by a few days, but by two full weeks.

It was grief, she told herself firmly. Stress could mess with your cycle. Everyone knew that.

Her phone rang, shattering the silence of the apartment.

Unknown Number.

Elara stared at it, her heart pounding.

She hadn't heard from Sebastian since that night. The note had been clear: Delete this number.

She should have.

But she hadn't.

Slowly, she answered. “Yes.”

“You got the money.” His voice was calm, controlled, exactly as she remembered.

Elara's fingers tightened around the phone. “My mother is dead.”

There was a pause, small, brief, almost invisible.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

The words felt wrong coming from him. Like a sentence he had memorized for convenience.

Elara laughed once, sharp and bitter. “Don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Don't pretend you care,” she snapped. “You didn't do this because you cared. You did it because you could.” 

Silence.

Then,“Are you still at the hospital?”

Elara's breath caught. How would he know that?

She glanced around her apartment, suddenly paranoid. “No.”

“Good.” His tone didn't change. “You don't want people to connect you to me. And I don't want people thinking I pay for women in public places.”

Heat rose to Elara's face.

Of course.

Even now, he was protecting his reputation.

Not her.

“Why are you calling me?” she asked quietly.

“To end it,” Sebastian replied. “We had an agreement. You received what you wanted.”

“And you received what you wanted,” Elara whispered.

“Yes.”

The word was final. Like she was nothing more than a signature on paper.

Elara's chest ached. “Then it's done.”

“It's done,” he confirmed. “Delete this number.”

The line went dead.

Elara sat in the silence of her empty apartment and stared at the phone in her hand.

For a long moment, she considered throwing it across the room.

Instead, she turned it off and set it carefully on the table.

She needed to disappear.

That was the only way she could breathe again.

But first, she needed to know.

---

The next morning, Elara stood in the pharmacy aisle, staring at rows of pregnancy tests like they were explosives.

Her period was late.

Not by a few days.

By two weeks.

Her hands shook as she grabbed a box and paid in cash, avoiding the cashier's eyes.

Back in her apartment, she locked herself in the bathroom.

The instructions blurred as she read them three times.

Wait three minutes.

Three minutes felt like three hours.

Elara sat on the cold tile floor, knees pulled to her chest, and counted her heartbeats.

When the timer on her phone went off, she couldn't look.

She forced herself to stand. To walk to the counter. To pick up the test.

Two lines.

Clear.

Unmistakable.

Elara's knees gave out.

She slid down the wall and sat on the floor, staring at the test like it might change if she looked away long enough.

Pregnant.

The word echoed in her mind, heavy and suffocating.

Her mother was gone.

And now this.

A shaky sound escaped her throat, not quite a sob, not quite a laugh.

Her hand pressed flat against her stomach.

There was something growing inside her. Something tied forever to the man who had bought her desperation.

Sebastian Vale.

Her phone buzzed in the other room.

Elara didn't move.

She already knew who it was.

She couldn't let him in.

Not now.

Not ever.

She curled in on herself on the bathroom floor, one hand still resting protectively over her stomach.

“I won't let you take this too,” she whispered fiercely to the silence.

Outside, the city roared on, unaware.

Inside her tiny apartment, Elara Moore made a decision.

She would disappear.

And no matter what it cost her, Sebastian Vale would never own her again.