threads of betrayal.(chapt.14)

Alessia's POV

The room was chill—chillier than it had any business being, as if the air itself had been frozen in time. Dust shrouded everything in the secret room behind the bookshelf, but what made me uneasy wasn't the silence. It was the feeling that this room had been waiting for me.

One overhead light came to life as I switched it on. My breath was caught in my throat.

There were boxes—marked and unmarked. Folders stacked high as a mountain.

I moved to a little side table cluttered with personal effects—her old watch, a notebook, and a crumpled photograph. My heart jumped. It was a picture of one of our family reunions, years before. But my eyes caught something out of the ordinary. In the background, partly concealed, stood a fuzzy figure.

My fingers curled up. Matteo. My supposedly dead ex. In the backdrop of a family gathering I could not recall ever seeing him at. He had not been my man back them. So why had he come?

I shivered.

My phone quivered with indignation in my back pocket, snapping me out of my thoughts in circles.

It was the PI. I answered with a strained, "Talk."

His voice was strained. "You're going to have to sit down for this."

I didn't.

"We pulled testimony from a barista at a café near the opera house. Elena was there fighting with a man, and soon after, masked men abducted her off the sidewalk." Vincent took a deep breath after which he disclosed the day and time of the kidnapping.

My stomach knotted. "That was the day she was rushed to the hospital."

"Right. But here's where things get nasty. The 'accident' — the hit and run that supposedly sent her racing in? The car was owned by a shell company."

I felt a dropping in my stomach. "Let me guess—

"Nikolai Volkov," he finished. "He was the owner of the paper then. The business was closed down a week later, erased. "

I clenched my fingers into a fist. A flush was spreading up my neck. "So it wasn't just a random hit and run then."

"No. It looks like an abduction that didn't quite go as planned—or maybe staged to cover up the abduction with a more sensationalized account."

I pressed my palm against my chest, attempting to still the mad pounding. "And the guy who attacked her?"

"Student. Twenty-four. No record. Claimed it was accidental, but there were holes in his alibi. Turned out, he went abroad three weeks after the accident even when according to the judge's judgment he should have been in Jail. Guess where he went?"

My throat narrowed. "Don't tell me the Maldives."

"There. A five-star island resort. All paid for. Anyone want to guess who the resort's owner is?"

"Nikolai."

The room spun.

I believe. I believe Matteo knew," I said softly. "I believe he knew what really happened to Elena. Maybe he was helping to cover it up. Or maybe he was trying to fix it. But if he really faked his own death—if he made me grieve for him—then what in the world was the reason? Or was Nikolai compelling him to do so?"

The PI paused. "That's what we have to find out.".

I hung up the phone and slowly turned back to the corkboard. I scanned it, eyes landing on one hurried note.

My knees gave way, and I sat on the grimy wooden floor. My eyes burned. It was too much. Too many betrayals, too many secrets. My own sister, my flesh and blood, had apparently been involved in something so much bigger than I'd ever imagined. And Matteo. Oh, God, Matteo had broken me twice now. Once with his death. And again, with the knowledge that maybe, just maybe, he never loved me the way I'd believed.

And Nikolai. what did he stand to gain? Why fake dying? Why stage a kidnapping? What was so valuable, so dangerous, that he'd go to these extremes?

Suddenly, every look he'd ever given me was contrived. Every word filled with lies. Had he wed Elena voluntarily, or had she been forced? Was she killed afterwards?

If they had gotten married to each other, why will Elena pretend not to know him when I am around.

If they were dating each other, she would have told me the day I introduced him to her!

Whats all this!!" I let out a high pitched demoniacal scream as I pulled my hair in frustration.

A floorboard creaked outside the room. I sprang up, back stiff.

"Hello?" I called out.

Silence.

Probably the wind. Or possibly the ghosts of the past.

But I couldn't help but wonder if the strings I was tugging at had started to unravel something big—and dangerous. The more I uncovered, the more it all smelled of something so embedded in betrayal that my mouth went bitter.

Elena. Matteo. My father. Nikolai.

They were all involved with each other in something.

But there were some obvious things, like my sister being abducted one day before she was found dead and my ex dying six months later wasn't by chance.

"I need more" I told myself as I got up.

I searched deeper and found a photo album.

"Empty?" I snarled in frustration as I tossed it.

But a photo fell off of it.

Taking it up, it was the picture of the child, the same child who was standing with Matteo.

But he looked younger, like a toddler.

"Elena why do you have this child's picture in your secret room?"