All Chapters of A Story That Doesn’t Belong To You: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

By morning, the rose was still on the porch frozen with dew, its petals curled like silent screams.Ryan stood at the threshold, staring at it. Behind him, Daniel and Chris argued in low, tense voices.“He’s escalating,” Chris said. “This isn’t just mind games anymore. He’s testing how far he can push before we crack.”“We should’ve gone to the police again last night,” Daniel muttered.“They won’t care. Not until Adrien actually does something irreversible. And by then ” Chris stopped himself, glanced toward Ryan.Ryan didn’t speak. He crouched down, picked up the rose. The stem pricked his finger, sharp enough to draw blood. A single bead welled up.He looked at it. Then at the torn page beneath the flower.This time, the message was written in crimson ink.Or blood.“Don’t you see? I’m the only one who sees the real you, Ryan. The version that even you try to forget.”Chris came up behind him and snatched the note away. “That’s enough.”Daniel grabbed a trash bag. “Burn everything

Ryan didn’t scream. Not out loud.But inside, he was shaking apart.Chris and Daniel tore through the room the second he called out, the note trembling in his hand. Daniel read it once, then twice, his expression hardening. Chris checked the window, the vents, the closets every shadow but there was nothing. No open latch. No movement.No Adrien.Just the chill of violation in the air.“He was in here,” Ryan whispered, voice barely holding. “He stood right here. And we didn’t hear a thing.”Chris crouched beside him. “We checked everything. That window’s locked from the inside. He must’vehe must’ve found another way in. Or someone’s helping him.”Daniel stood silent, scanning the room like it could confess. His jaw clenched. “It’s not just obsession anymore. This is a game to him. He wants us to feel powerless.”Ryan looked down at the photo again his own sleeping face. Peaceful. Exposed. Vulnerable in a way that made his skin crawl now. “I don’t know what he wants from me anymore.”

Ryan barely slept that night.Even with the apartment cleared, even with Adrien behind bars, even with Chris sleeping on the couch and Daniel sitting awake by his door his mind wouldn’t let go. Every creak sounded like a threat. Every shadow looked like Adrien’s silhouette. He didn’t trust the silence anymore.He stared at the ceiling until light filtered through the curtains.By morning, he hadn’t closed his eyes once.Chris handed him tea with honey. Daniel made eggs, though Ryan barely touched them. It wasn’t hunger gnawing at him it was fear, burrowed deep into his chest like a parasite that refused to be cut out.“He can’t hurt you anymore,” Chris said, but even his voice sounded tired. Hollow.“I know,” Ryan said. “But it doesn’t feel over.”Chris sat beside him, one hand on Ryan’s knee. “It will. You just need time.”Daniel leaned on the wall, arms crossed. His gaze hadn’t left Ryan all morning.“There’s something you need to see,” he said finally. “But only if you’re ready.”

The black card The sun was already beginning to set by the time Ryan stepped out of his last lecture. The sky was a wash of burnt orange and gray, like someone had smudged charcoal across a canvas. He paused at the edge of the walkway, watching students scatter across campus laughing, moving in groups, untouchable by the kind of darkness he’d lived through.It felt like he was walking through the wreckage of someone else’s life.Daniel was waiting by the fountain. He looked up as Ryan approached, offering a quiet smile. “You made it.”“I said I would,” Ryan said, even though he hadn’t been sure this morning if he’d be able to handle being outside for this long. “Thanks for waiting.”They sat on the stone edge, watching the water ripple.Daniel leaned back on his hands. “You’ve changed.”Ryan didn’t answer at first. “I know.”“Not in a bad way,” Daniel added. “It’s like… you’re still you, but harder to knock down.”Ryan chuckled softly. “That’s one way to say I’m numb.”isn't i

Ryan hadn’t meant to return to the archives alone.He told Chris and Daniel he was going to class. He even grabbed his books and smiled like everything was normal. But the moment he was out the door, his steps carried him not toward the lecture hall but back toward the library’s underbelly a rarely used annex behind the special collections wing. The part of the building that smelled like old paper and forgotten secrets.He had to know more about Elias.There was something too deliberate in Adrien’s silence lately. Too calm. Like he was waiting. And Ryan had a sinking feeling that knowing what happened to Elias might reveal what Adrien was planning.He reached the far cabinet, slid open the top drawer of local incident reports, and flipped quickly to the right year. It took time. Most of the Augustine Street Case had been sealed or redacted. But Ryan found fragments bits of news stories, mentions of a young man who’d vanished after being linked to “a violent outburst at an unnamed re