Twenty-Six receipts of betrayal Novel novel Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The second Nicholas’s plane touched down at JFK, he turned on his phone, only ro see dozens of missed calls from his mom and over a hundred

unread texts.

His chest tightened. He was about to call her back when he looked up and saw her waiting at arrivals.

She looked like she hadn’t slept all night, her face drawn and pale, her eyes wide with panic.

“Nicholas! Elara’s not home. Where would she go? Don’t you know?”

Everything he’d told himself on the plane–all those reassurances he’d built up–came crashing down.

He didn’t even bother to grab his luggage, rushing out of the arrival gate, his eyes full of disbelief.

“Not home? That’s impossible!”

His mother realized then that something was seriously wrong. The doubt came tumbling out.

“I went to your place like you asked. She wasn’t there. I looked everywhere–turned the whole apartment upside down. Her stuff is gone, Nicholas. The closet’s empty. Those little things she kept around, her snacks, everything–it’s all gone. Did you two have a fight?”

Suddenly, memories he’d been unconsciously suppressing started flooding back.

Before the cemetery. Elara had been cleaning out things and throwing stuff away.

She’d been doing it every day–a little bit at a time. He’d noticed, sort of, but hadn’t thought much of it. His mind had been too full of his plans with Valentina.

She wasn’t just decluttering junk, was she? She was removing herself from his life.

Had she been planning to leave him?

The realization hit him, freezing him in place, a cold dread seeping into his bones.

This time, he finally understood what had been bothering him.

When he’d left her at the hotel, she hadn’t asked where he was going. Hadn’t tried to stop him.

And the emotion in her eyes wasn’t just calmness. It was indifference

Like she was looking at a stranger. Like she didn’t care anymore.

Why would Elara look at him like that?

It was the first time he’d even asked himself the question.

In the cab ride home, Nicholas desperately replayed the last few months, trying to pinpoint when exactly Elara had started looking at him that

way.

At the cemetery, stranded in the rain, her eyes had been hollow.

At home afterward, she’d avoided his attempts to make it up to her, always silent, head down.

The day of the fire at the mall, he’d grabbed Valentina first. Elara had been lying on the ground, covered in cuts, and the way she’d looked at

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Twenty–Six Receipts of Betrayal: My Silence Was the Countdown to His Eternal Regret

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Chapter 10

him–detached, resigned, like she’d seen it coming.

Before that, his memories got hazier. He couldn’t really remember the details of their time together anymore.

He only remembered the easy, fun moments with Valentina.

He couldn’t remember what Elara had been doing. Where she’d been. What she’d said.

The fragmented memories kept coming, and slowly, a terrible thought took shape.

He thought he knew why Elara had disappeared.

She must have found out. She must have known about him and Valentina, about the line they’d crossed, about the intimacy that was far more

than “just friends.”

When Nicholas finally walked into their apartment, the thought took root completely.

And for the first time, he saw it. The apartment was half–empty, stripped of so many things. It was no longer the warm, lived–in home he

remembered.

And before now, he hadn’t even noticed.

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Chapter 11

RICK