Then She Was Gone Series Novels & Stories

“It’s the truth.” Her eyes glassed over again, but this time there was something else behind the hurt. Fear. Real fear. Because the ground was shifting under her feet and she could feel it. “Elena is gone,” she said suddenly, like she was trying to anchor herself with certainty. “She’s gone and she’s never coming back.” My jaw tightened. “We got what we wanted,” she continued, faster now, like she needed the words to solidify reality. “She’s out of the way. That was the whole point. So why are you acting like—”

"She's a person! How does someone just vanish?!" "Your Highness, please, calm down—" "I can't calm down!" I shoved him against the wall. "Tell me where she is!" "She's gone." A cold voice came from the doorway. Viktor walked in slowly, his face an emotionless mask. "What do you mean, gone?" I stared at him. "Where did she go? When?" "While you were at your ceremony," Viktor's voice was devoid of emotion. "She left of her own free will. To a place you will never, ever find."

And she had disappeared a week before the wedding. That’s when she left. No warning. No explanation. Just gone. One day, she was beside me, laughing, touching me, talking about the future. The next, her number was disconnected. Her apartment emptied. Her existence erased like she had never been real at all. I had searched. I had turned over every stone, but there was nothing. No clues. No traces. Just a ghost where a person had once been. And if she was dead? If something had happened to her? Then, whoever took her had hidden her well.

“No trail. No signs of forced removal. Nothing.” A beat. Then— “She’s gone.”

And what she’s becoming. “Leon…” her voice comes again. Weak. Breaking. “Help me—” The screen flickers. Cuts. Static floods everything. Then— black. Complete. Final. Silence crashes down. No feeds. No signals. No trace. “She’s gone,” someone says. “No,” I reply quietly. “She’s not gone.” I step forward. Eyes locked on the empty screens. Mind already moving. Already rebuilding the puzzle. Because now— we have something we didn’t before.

Then, he took out his phone and called back immediately. “Did you find them?” A voice answered at once. “Yes. Miss Macrino and the young master did not board the flight to the Switz. Their last recorded destination shows they flew to Izela.” Gabriele stopped in his tracks. Izela was a decaying port city in the south of Sicile. That city was filled with rust-covered tin roofs, drunkards in the streets at night, gunfire echoing in the alleys, and the smell of mold and salt in the air. It was where I was born and where he had once nearly died until I dragged him back from the edge of death.

"This money is enough to keep the Keller family fed and clothed for a lifetime. Consider it compensation for breaking the engagement. I'm leaving." With that, she ran off without looking back, giving Preston no chance to stop her. Instinctively, he shouted her name, hoping she would change her mind. Rowena kept moving; she never once looked back at him. … The outskirts of the city were in chaos. Police officers and forensic teams were conducting investigations at the scene. Rowena's limbs went weak as a suffocating pain wrapped around her entire body. No matter how hard she searched, she could not find that familiar figure.

Serena Vale closed the curtains the moment she got home, her hands trembling so violently she nearly dropped her phone. Her heart thrummed—fast, frantic, terrified. She had rehearsed the story for years: Amara is gone. Amara accepted it. Amara will never come back. Caleb chose you. Elara is yours. But all lies crumble eventually. And today, they had shattered. Serena pulled her knees to her chest on the sofa. Her breath came in ragged bursts.

However, it seemed like she had vanished into thin air since she left New York. Her social media account was deactivated. Her LinkedIn page indicated that she was on hiatus. Even Lisa would not tell me where she was. That was until a certain afternoon when Chloe, a new intern at the firm, suddenly cried out while scrolling on her phone during lunch break. “Oh wow… a former architect doing a ‘countryside aesthetic’ livestream?” As she passed her phone to her colleague, I snatched the phone from her and watched the livestream.

You've been hiding your dad's death for ten years because you didn't want anyone to know you're on your own, right? She was losing it. "If you'd been honest from the start, we wouldn't even have bothered with you! This is all on you." The room went quiet, all eyes on her. Harriet did not care about the stares, panting as she went on. "And what about your old housekeeper, May Johnson? How did she lose her legs? "You can't say you had nothing to do with it, can you?!" I was confused. I was not sure why she was bringing up May now.