Chapter 41

The message stayed on the screen while neither of them moved.

Keisha’s fingers tightened instinctively around the phone.

Across from her, Malik looked like someone bracing for impact he already saw coming.

“You knew she’d do this,” Keisha said quietly.

Malik exhaled slowly through his nose.

“I hoped she wouldn’t.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No.”

The apartment felt smaller now.

Compressed by tension.

Keisha looked back down at the message.

You should ask him what happened the night I disappeared.

Not died.

Not left.

Disappeared.

The wording mattered.

Everything about this situation felt built on wording.

On implication.

On emotional precision.

She hated that she was already beginning to think like that too.

“What happened?” she asked again.

Malik leaned back against the counter, eyes fixed somewhere past her shoulder.

For a moment he looked genuinely exhausted.

Not mysterious.

Not guarded.

Just tired of carrying something alone.

“It was after one of our fights,” he said quietly.

Keisha stayed silent.

“She thought I was hiding things from her.”

“Were you?”

A pause.

“Yes.”

The honesty surprised her.

Malik rubbed his jaw slowly.

“But not what she thought.”

Keisha crossed her arms tighter.

“You keep saying things halfway.”

“I’m trying to say them without sounding insane.”

“That ship sailed yesterday.”

A small breath of humor escaped him despite himself.

It disappeared just as quickly.

“The last month we were together…” Malik continued, “she stopped acting scared.”

Keisha frowned slightly.

“What does that mean?”

“She became certain.”

The answer settled heavily.

“Certain of what?”

“That something was happening around us.”

Keisha glanced toward the hidden hallway where she’d discovered the files the night before.

“What kind of something?”

Malik’s eyes lowered briefly.

“She thought patterns were repeating through people.”

A chill crawled across her skin.

“What people?”

Another pause.

“Women I dated.”

The room went still.

Keisha stared at him.

“You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what all those files were?”

Malik nodded once.

“She believed emotional dynamics repeated themselves in cycles.”

Keisha tried to process that.

“The notes… the timelines…”

“She tracked everything.”

The realization hit differently now.

Not random obsession.

Research.

Or at least something trying very hard to look like research.

Keisha sat down slowly on the arm of the couch.

“And you let this keep going?”

“At first I thought helping her document things would calm her down.”

“But it didn’t.”

“No.”

Malik’s expression darkened slightly.

“It made her more convinced.”

Silence settled again.

Keisha looked down at the phone in her hand.

A strange feeling had started growing beneath her fear now.

Curiosity.

Dangerous curiosity.

“What happened the night she disappeared?”

Malik’s jaw flexed once.

“We argued.”

“About what?”

“You.”

Keisha blinked.

“What?”

“She knew about you before I told her.”

The room suddenly felt too cold.

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s getting old, Malik.”

“I know.”

His exhaustion sounded genuine now.

Like he hated every answer as much as she did.

Keisha stood again, restless energy moving through her chest.

“What exactly did she say?”

Malik hesitated.

Then finally:

“She said I was doing it again.”

Keisha frowned.

“Doing what again?”

His silence lasted too long.

Then:

“Replacing emotional variables before outcomes settled.”

The words sounded clinical.

Wrong.

Like love translated through machinery.

Keisha stared at him.

“You actually talked like this together?”

Malik laughed once quietly.

“Not at first.”

A pause.

“Eventually you start adapting to the language people use around you.”

That line unsettled her more than she expected.

Because she already felt it happening to herself.

Patterns.

Outcomes.

Observation.

She hated how naturally the vocabulary was beginning to fit.

“What happened after the fight?”

Malik looked down at the floor.

“She asked me if I trusted her.”

Keisha waited.

“And?”

“I said I didn’t know anymore.”

The guilt on his face answered the rest before he even spoke.

“She cried for a long time after that.”

The apartment felt painfully quiet now.

Keisha tried imagining Malik comforting someone through this kind of psychological collapse.

Tried imagining what kind of emotional environment they must have created together.

Codependency.

Fear.

Obsession.

Love mutating into surveillance.

“Then what?” she asked softly.

Malik swallowed once.

“She told me if she disappeared, I’d finally understand she was right.”

A chill moved through Keisha’s entire body.

“And the next morning?”

“She was gone.”

No dramatics.

No embellishment.

Just flat memory.

Keisha stared at him carefully.

“You never found her?”

Malik looked up slowly.

“That depends what you mean by found.”

Before Keisha could ask what that meant—

Another vibration cut sharply through the room.

Both of them looked down instantly.

Unknown Number.

Again.

This time the message appeared before Malik even picked the phone up.

You still tell the story softer than it happened.

Keisha felt genuine fear twist through her stomach now.

Because the timing felt impossible.

Like whoever was texting could hear them.

Malik locked the screen immediately.

His face had gone pale.

“She’s watching us,” Keisha whispered.

“No,” Malik said quickly.

But the hesitation after the word betrayed him.

Keisha stepped backward slowly.

“No. Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“That thing where you deny something you already believe.”

Malik said nothing.

And suddenly she realized something terrifying.

He wasn’t scared because Alina might be unstable.

He was scared because some part of him thought she might actually be right.