5

ELENA DUVAL

All I could do was stare blankly at the car window and into the darkness with my blurry eyes. I haven't been able to stop the tears that flowed from my eyes since we left the station and flew out of Texas.

No matter how I tried, I couldn't halt his words from repeating and echoing in the corner walls of my mind. If I wasn't sure before, I am now. I hated him.

I hated him so much.

As I shut my eyes, more tears still rolled out through the jammed gates of my eyes.

There's nothing much to understand, Elena. And there's nothing to go back there for. That woman didn't lie. Your parents are dead. Your family is gone. And that's the truth.

As his words repeated once more in my mind, I shook my head, sobbing silently.

“What happened?” I had asked him right before I was forced into the private jet in Texas and all I could get were vague answers.

Cold heartless answers.

He couldn't even spare me a glance as he threw what he called the truth to my face. 

My parents were dead. And what was worse, my sisters —Chloe and Zoey— were missing. The Duvals enterprise went under two years ago all because of Dad. He had been involved with illegal shell companies, and his affairs came to light.

He embezzled everything and ran the company into bankruptcy with debts. And that was where the deal with Mr Castello came into play. Dad sold me to him to pay some of his debts. And when he couldn't get more than he hoped for from Mr Castello, he sold my sisters as well and now no one knew exactly where they were or with who. And when he still couldn't pay off his debts, he committed suicide right after killing my mum.

I brought a hand to my chest, as I drew in a painful breath and hot tears slipped past my closed eyes. This was the truth the whole world believed, but it was a damn lie.

I may be missing the last two years of my life, but that didn't mean I had forgotten the last twenty years of my life with the best parents anyone could wish for.

That wasn't the truth. Dad would never sell me or my sisters. He loved us more than his life. And mum would never approve of it. I just couldn't believe how a good and respectable man's name could be tainted in the face of the world. Dad could never be involved in anything legally or morally wrong and it hurts me so much what everyone thought of him.

“We are here,”

I was pulled out of my thoughts by Chris' voice. As I pulled my eyes open, I realized the car was now parked in front of the mansion and I could see Greta and an unfamiliar man dressed in a suit standing just outside the double doors.

Without sparing another glance at the devil beside me, I wiped my tears with my palm and got out of the car. Before I could take five steps closer to the mansion's double doors, I heard the devil's voice blend smoothly into the night.

“I still have some work to do,” I heard him say as I kept walking. His words weren't directed at me but to Greta as she nodded. “And I'd like to believe I still have a security team around my house,” His voice impossibly turned colder and deadlier as his words were now directed to the suited man next to Greta.

“I apologize—” The suited man started but the devil cut him off.

“What happened today shouldn't repeat itself ever again, Jake, otherwise…” Mr. Castello's tone caused me to stop dead in my tracks.

Otherwise what?

I didn't turn around to look at him but everyone could feel the underlying threat in his words.

And with a minute of knowing silence, his car roared back to life and sped off.

The second I entered the mansion, I went up to the master's bedroom, locked the door, and collapsed against it. In a second, several emotions exploded within me and I couldn't stop bawling my eyes out, sobbing uncontrollably without holding it in.

I needed it. I needed to release the bitter pain in my chest and mourn for the family I had lost.

*****

The sun crept over the horizon quicker than usual. Or maybe it was my lack of sleep that was affecting me. I wasn't so sure. Regardless, it has met me in a position I had been in for hours now.

I couldn't bring myself to fall asleep. I had to talk to someone and find out what truly happened to my parents. Tyler. But the last few hours trying to unlock my phone had brought me no luck. I had literally turned the large bedroom upside down in search of my diary, and luckily I found it.

I had always written down everything in my diary, so I was hoping maybe I could get a little insight from my diary. And I was right, I had written something down in many pages but strangely everything from two years ago had been ripped out.

I sighed in frustration, resting my head against the white walls and the cold had begun to seep into my bare feet from the marble floors. My head has started to hurt badly. 

At this point, I couldn't tell who could have ripped these pages off and why. Maybe I was the one, or maybe someone else had. But why?

What on earth had I written down in those pages?

As I flipped through the blank pages of my diary, I saw a number written on the back page. One without a name.

Quickly, I was up from the floor and headed down to the main living room. I dialed the number using Lydia's phone. After the third ring, someone picked up.

“Yes,”

I paused, trying to recognize the voice. It was a woman's and sounded very familiar.

“Hello?” She spoke again and my eyes widened in recognition. 

Fuck. Tiffany?

“Okay, that's it. I'm hanging up psycho or whatever you are—”

“Tiffany?” Before she hung up, my lips moved with rush and I could swear my heart was beating from excitement.

I couldn't tell if she heard me or not because her end quickly became quiet.

I could already feel tears stream down my cheeks. I felt so happy I could finally contact someone I knew. Tiffany was a friend of mine. We've been friends since high school, together with Tyler and Nicole whom I have no idea where she could be now.

Nicole had suddenly left Texas years ago, a few days after Tyler and I became engaged. We were all best of friends.

I sniffled back my tears, wrapping both of my hands around the phone. “Tiff. It's me, it's—”

“Elena?” Tiffany's voice became softer. “Is it really you, Elena?” I could hear her voice crack with an emotion in the middle.

I nodded like an idiot as if she could see me at the moment. “Yes. It's me, Tiff. It's really me,”

“What the hell, Elena? You hurt me so much, what did I ever do to you? I thought we were friends,” Her voice kept cracking with every word.

I hurt her? How? 

Before she could speak again, I spoke quickly. “Let's meet up, Tiff. Right away,”

“You want to meet up?”

I nodded quickly. “Yes. Come to the mansion,”

“You want me to come over to the Ford mansion?” She sounded shocked.

“Yes. Right away, please. How soon can you fly in from Texas?”

“Fly from Texas? I've been in the city for two years now. Jesus, Elena are you okay?” I could hear the worry that coated her words. “Tell me, Elena, did something happen?”

“Please just hurry,” I said desperately. 

She must have heard the desperation in my voice because as we hung up it didn't take up to fifteen minutes before Greta ushered in my guest.

“Tiffany?” I pulled her into my arms the second we were next to each other. “Thank you for coming,”

She hugged me back almost refusing to let go, and as we pulled apart, I met with her teary eyes. “Oh Elena, I never thought we'd ever see each other like this again,”

I grabbed her hand and led her to one of the white sofas in the mini living room.

“Tell me Elena, what's wrong? I'm really glad you called me again, but I'm sure something happened. What is it?” She asked, and I was about to speak when Lydia brought in some drinks and cookies.

I nodded with thanks and waited for her to leave before my eyes came back to Tiffany's curious ones.

Calmly, but as fast as I could I narrated everything that had happened to me the last few weeks since I woke up from a coma after the accident.

“I'm really sorry, Elena. I always wanted to contact you but I couldn't since you never left the mansion and you blocked me from every social media, and my number too,”

“What? Why would I do that? Please, Tiffany, you have to help me, maybe then I will get my memories back. I have so many questions. About my parents, my sisters. Something is not right. Everything they are saying about Dad is a lie. And you know it, Dad would never —” I broke down in tears.

She gripped my hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. I lifted my eyes to meet hers in tears.

“Oh, Elena. It's painful to watch you break all over again. You don't have to say anything, I know everything against your family is a lie. We both knew it. That's why even a few months after your parents' deaths and you moved to California, we kept following through on the case you filed. But no one believed us that your parents would never commit suicide, not even the cops, and they kept dismissing the case,”

“You also think someone had murdered my parents instead?”

Tiffany nodded. “And whoever that person is, is so powerful that they have the cops right in their pockets,”

I tried to fight off my tears from falling but it was of no use. “Please continue, Tiffany. Tell me everything. What happened to us?”

“That's what I would like to know. Suddenly, you stopped picking up my calls and responding to my messages. And whenever I came to the mansion to see you, you wouldn't let the security let me in. You avoided me like a plague and cut all ties with me. All these years, I kept wondering what I could have possibly done for you to treat me that way,”

“I wished I knew, Tiffany. I'm sorry for everything. I truly am,” I said, “What about Chloe and Zoey?”

Tiffany shook her head. “I don't know. We were never able to find out what happened to them, where they were, or with whom. It was like they completely vanished from the face of the earth,”

Her words were like a thousand pieces of broken shards, piercing into my heart, wounding me. “Do you think they are still alive?” I wiped the tears that fell from my eyes.

Tiff sent me a sad look. “I truly don't know, but I do hope they are,”

I inhaled deeply, wiping off my tears. “Now, I need to know about him. Tyler Whitman. What happened to us?”

Instantly, the sad look in Tiffany's eyes was replaced with anger and hate. “You mean the snake, Tyler. He's a fucking bastard,”

I was completely shocked by her raging outbursts. Tiffany and Tyler were pretty close so it was surprising where all the hate and anger towards him was coming from.

“Tell me, Tiffany, what did Tyler do to you!”

She shifted her gaze to me. “Not to me, to you, Elena,”

At her words, I felt a lurch in my stomach.