18. Eliana #2
"Don't apologize. It's your grandmother."
"I'll come back as soon as I can."
I watched him carefully. There was something in his eyes that bothered me. He was trying to remain composed, but beneath that control was a fear I hadn't seen before.
"I'll be fine," I assured him.
He stepped closer and gently touched my cheek. "Stay inside until I get back."
I nodded. "I will."
"Please, Eliana." The seriousness in his voice made me pause.
"I promise."
He leaned down and kissed my forehead, his lips remaining there for a second before he pulled away. "I won't be long."
I smiled faintly. "Go."
He gave me one last look before walking toward the door. I watched him disappear down the path toward his car, and after the engine started, the vehicle soon vanished beyond the trees. I remained in the doorway until I could no longer see it.
Something about the way he had looked at me before leaving refused to leave my mind. I tried to dismiss it because he was worried about his grandmother, and anyone would have been shaken in his position. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that the fire meant more than he had told me.
The first few hours passed slowly. I tried reading, but I couldn't concentrate. I made myself another cup of coffee, sat on the porch, walked through the living room, and eventually returned inside again. Every few minutes, I checked my phone, but there was still nothing from Adrian.
I told myself not to worry. Adrian had promised he would return, and I trusted him. Yet as the hours passed, the cottage began to feel different without him. The rooms seemed larger, and even the ocean outside couldn't distract me from the uneasiness that had settled beneath my ribs.
I decided to explore the cottage properly. Maybe keeping myself busy would stop my mind from imagining every possible disaster.
I wandered through the hallway, studying the old photographs I'd noticed the previous day. There were pictures of Adrian as a child, some with Sophia and others with his parents. In one photograph, he couldn't have been more than ten, standing beside a vase that appeared to have been repaired.
I smiled despite myself. Eleanor had been telling the truth about him breaking things.
I moved farther down the hallway and discovered a small library tucked behind another wooden door.
The room looked as though it had been preserved rather than used.
Tall bookshelves covered almost every wall, filled with novels, biographies, poetry collections, and old leather-bound books.
A large armchair sat beside the window, positioned so whoever sat there could see the ocean.
I walked toward the shelves, feeling strangely drawn to the room. Perhaps it was because it felt like the first place in the cottage that belonged entirely to the person Adrian had been before he became the billionaire everyone knew.
I ran my fingers across the spines, reading the titles. Some were classics I'd taught my students, while others were books I had never heard of. I pulled one out and flipped through it, but a few pages later, I noticed that one of the books behind it seemed slightly farther back than the others.
I frowned and reached between the books, pushing it gently. It moved.
My curiosity sharpened immediately.
I looked toward the doorway, but there was no one there. After glancing at my phone and seeing that there was still no message from Adrian, I turned back to the shelf and carefully pulled the book forward.
Something dark was hidden behind the row.
My heart began beating faster as I reached into the narrow space and pulled out a worn leather diary.
Dust covered the surface, and the leather had faded with age.
The corners were frayed, and a thin mark ran across the cover as though it had been handled frequently many years ago before being deliberately hidden away.
I stared at it, wondering why Adrian would hide a diary behind his books.
I should have put it back. I knew that. This wasn't mine, and whatever was inside belonged to someone who had clearly wanted it hidden.
Yet my hand remained wrapped around it as every unanswered question I'd been carrying came rushing back to me: Doctor Lara, Sophia's warning, the mysterious key Eleanor had given Adrian, the locked door in the cottage, and the sadness in Adrian's eyes whenever he looked at me.
And now this.
My thumb brushed across the dusty cover as I wondered, What are you hiding from me, Adrian?
I sat down in the armchair with the diary resting in my lap and stared at it for several seconds before finally opening the cover.
The first pages were filled with neat, delicate handwriting that I didn't recognize.
My eyes moved slowly across the first page, searching for a date, a name, or some explanation for why the diary had been hidden.
There was nothing.
Only one sentence.
I stopped breathing as my fingers tightened around the edge of the diary. I read the words again, hardly believing what I was seeing.
"I met Adrian Ashford today."
The final entries were much shorter than the earlier ones, and the handwriting had become increasingly uneven.
The writer no longer described ordinary moments or little memories with Adrian.
Instead, almost every page seemed consumed by fear, confusion, and the growing suspicion that something was terribly wrong.
She wrote about the cottage more often now.
At first, she had described it as beautiful, almost like a private escape from the rest of the world.
She mentioned the ocean outside her window, the pine trees surrounding the property, and the comfort she had once felt waking beside Adrian there.
But somewhere along the way, the cottage had stopped feeling like a home.
She had begun referring to it as a place she couldn't leave.
"Adrian says I need to stay here until I'm better. I asked him when I could go home, but he wouldn't give me an answer. I don't understand why he keeps the keys with him whenever he leaves."
I stared at the words, my fingers tightening around the diary.
The writer described watching Adrian's car disappear down the road every morning.
Sometimes he returned that evening. Other times, she wrote that she waited through the entire night before hearing his car outside again.
And whenever he returned, there was something different about him.
His clothes sometimes carried a perfume she didn't recognize.
Once, she found a long strand of unfamiliar hair caught against his shirt.
She had asked him about it. He had refused to explain.
The next entry was filled with uncertainty.
"I think Adrian is seeing someone else. I asked him, and he told me I was imagining things. But why does another woman's perfume keep following him into this house?"
My stomach twisted as I read the next page. The writer admitted that she had begun wondering whether Adrian hated her.
"Maybe he doesn't love me anymore. Maybe he regrets bringing me here. Maybe he keeps me here because he doesn't know what else to do with me."
She wrote that Adrian had become increasingly distant, leaving the cottage for long periods and refusing to tell her where he went.
She described hearing him speaking to women on the phone and once hearing laughter in the background when he thought she wasn't listening.
She had started comparing herself to those women, wondering what they had that she didn't.
"I keep thinking about the life outside these walls. I wonder if he takes them to the places he used to take me. I wonder if they know about me."
The handwriting became shakier.
"I used to think this cottage was where Adrian wanted to keep me safe. Now I think he simply doesn't want anyone to know I'm here."
I stopped reading for a moment. The words seemed to crawl beneath my skin. She had been living in this cottage. The same cottage where Adrian had brought me. The same rooms. The same ocean outside the windows. The same locked door I had noticed in the hallway.
I looked toward it. For a moment, I wondered whether the woman had slept in the room beside mine, whether she had once sat in this very library writing these words, desperately trying to understand what was happening to her.
I forced myself to look back at the diary. The final entries had become almost frantic.
"I asked Adrian again when I could leave. He wouldn't answer. He only looked at me with that same expression and told me I needed to trust him. But how can I trust him when he keeps leaving me here alone?"
The next page contained only a few lines.
"He went away again tonight. I heard a woman's voice before he left. I think he is with someone else."
Then, beneath those words, the writer had added a sentence so faint that I almost missed it.
"Maybe he hates me now."
My heart began pounding. The final page contained no date and no explanation.
The handwriting was so uneven that several words were difficult to read, as though the writer had been struggling to keep her hand steady.
There were only two words written so deeply into the paper that the pen had nearly torn through the page.
SAVE ME.
A chill ran through my body. Every warning Ethan had ever given me came rushing back with a force that made it difficult to breathe.