Every news channel was covering the same thing. A large red headline was flashing on the screen.
‘Mr. Elias Creed Spotted in Australia With Close Friend Miss Bianca Anderson’
Below the headline was a picture of Elias and Bianca standing outside a hospital together.
Amara stared at the screen without blinking.
Beside her, Juliet sat peeling an apple aggressively with a fruit knife, irritation written all over her face.
“That bitch was always jealous of you,” Juliet muttered angrily while slicing the apple into pieces. “Remember high school? She copied literally everything you did. Your bags. Your shoes. The way you styled your hair. Even the way you talked.”
She shoved the apple plate toward Amara with annoyance.
“And now somehow she enters our social circle with some sugar daddy and suddenly she’s constantly around Elias?”
Juliet scoffed loudly.
“What the hell is going on? This isn’t even the first time they’ve been seen together, so we can’t call it coincidence.”
Amara kept staring at the television quietly.
Her fingers slowly tightened around the blanket covering her legs.
Then, after a long silence, she finally whispered,
“So that’s where he’s been busy all this time.”
It wasn’t until a month later that Amara had fully recovered.
The stitches had healed. The dizziness had finally stopped. She could walk normally again without Juliet hovering anxiously beside her every few seconds.
Little by little, life had returned to silence.
A strange, empty silence.
The mansion no longer felt suffocating the way it once had. Instead, it had become painfully quiet. No arguments. No cold looks. No waiting all night for someone who never came home.
And somehow… she had gotten used to it.
Three months had already passed since Elias had left.
Three months since she had last seen him.
She had even stopped checking her phone for Elias’s response to her messages after the day of the operation.
In the afternoon, soft sunlight poured through the large windows of the living room, casting warm golden light across thefloor. Amara stood quietly near the vase on the table, arranging fresh roses one by one.
She wore a simple cream-colored dress, and her long hair was loosely tied behind her back. Her movements were slow and calm as she adjusted the flowers carefully one by one.
The house was silent except for the faint rustling of flowers.
Then suddenly—
Footsteps echoed through the mansion.
Her fingers stiffened around the rose stem as her heartbeat skipped violently.
Startled, her grip slipped, and one sharp thorn pierced deeply into her fingertip.
