Chapter 33: Chapter 32 Alive Doesn’t Mean Safe
The text messages were just sitting there. Unread.
I paced the length of my room, staring at the screen until the glare burned into my retinas. I had sent ten texts in the last hour alone. Giulia, pick up. Giulia, where are you? Are you okay?
Nothing. Not even a read receipt.
Giulia had already lost her job because of the mess I dragged her into. And now, complete silence.
My mind spun into the darkest corners of what this arrogant bastard was capable of. Isolation. Erasure. Making people disappear when they became an inconvenience.
Before logic could stop me, I turned on my heel and walked out.
I didn’t stop until I reached the doors of Laziel’s study. I didn’t even knock as I threw open the doors.
Laziel didn’t even look up.
He was so unbothered and it made my blood boil.
"What have you done to her, Laziel?" My voice shook, but I didn’t care. I stepped into the room, the distance between us shrinking. "Where the hell is my best friend? Why the fuck isn’t she picking up or responding to my texts?"
Laziel slowly turned a page.
"You skipped the part where people usually knock, Mireya," he said, his voice dropping.
"I don’t give a damn about your rules," I snapped, marching right up to the edge of his desk and slamming both hands flat against it.
I leaned in, forcing him to acknowledge me. "Look at me. Where is Giulia? What did you do to her?"
Slowly—infuriatingly slowly—Laziel lifted his head. Those dark, bottomless eyes locked onto mine, completely trapping my gaze. There was no anger in his expression.
Weird.
"That is not how you speak to your boss, Mireya." He didn’t raise his voice, but the drop in his tone made my knuckles go white against his desk. "Adjust your tone before I choose to adjust it for you."
He was capable of anything, and he was reminding me exactly how small I was in his world.
I forced myself to swallow the rage, taking a slow, deep breath to steady the trembling in my chest. I couldn’t help Giulia if I got myself locked away or thrown out onto the streets without a dime. I had to play his game.
"She hasn’t answered her phone in days," I said, lowering my voice, "S..she disappeared after helping me."
Oops.
I wasn’t supposed to admit that.
Laziel slowly closed the files. "Helping you with what?"
The question was simple.
My answer wasn’t.
Every lie I came up with died before it even reached my mouth. I’d lied to him before, and it had never ended well. This man didn’t need a polygraph or court evidence. He just... knew. He could detect a lie the exact second the air left your throat. Trying to manufacture a fake story right now would only pull the noose tighter around my neck.
I had to save face, and I had to do it without giving him the truth.
I opened my mouth, closed it again, forcing my mind to pivot.
"I..." My voice caught, before I pulled myself together, narrowing my eyes to mask the panic. "She was just helping me keep my sanity in this damn house. She was worried about me. That’s all."
Laziel didn’t blink.
"That," he said quietly, "wasn’t the question I asked."
Damn it.
I looked away first, his stare becoming too heavy to hold. I straightened up, pulling my hands off his desk to create some distance.
"If you touched her—"
Laziel leaned back in his chair, slowly interlacing his fingers over his chest. He looked at me the way someone might look at a puzzle they had already solved.
"If I wanted your friend gone, Mireya," his eyes tracked the rise and fall of my chest, "you wouldn’t be standing here asking questions."
A chill crept straight up my spine.
"You’d be mourning."
The room fell into a suffocating silence.
"She is alive," he continued, his tone completely indifferent. "She is fine."
Relief hit me so fast my knees nearly gave out under my dress, but I refused to let him see me wobble.
"Then why isn’t she answering me?"
"Because," he replied, "the world does not stop because you’re frightened. Your friend is dealing with the consequences of her own choices. She is dealing with the reality of her own life, not yours."
I frowned. What did he mean by that? Was he blocking her signals? Before I could demand a straight answer, Laziel picked up his pen again, completely dismissing me.
"Anything else?" he asked, not looking up. "Or have you finished accusing me of crimes I haven’t committed today? Leave my office before I lose my patience with your lack of manners."
The finality in his voice left no room to argue. I let out a sharp breath, turning around and walking out of the office before he could see how badly he had shaken me.
I kept swiping through my call log, desperation making me pathetic. Alive. He said she was alive, but that didn’t mean she was safe from his reach.
The second I closed my bedroom door behind me, my phone buzzed in my hand.
I jumped, nearly dropping it. It was a notification from the messaging app I’d downloaded yesterday to call Giulia.
An incoming voice call. Giulia.
My thumb practically smashed the screen to answer it. I pressed the phone to my ear. "Giulia? Oh my God, Giulia! I’ve been so fucking worried about you, girl! Why haven’t you been picking up? Are you okay? Where are you?"
There was a long pause on the other end.
"Mireya," her voice came through.
I froze. It didn’t sound like Giulia at all. There was none of her usual warmth, none of that loud, jovial energy that usually filled the room whenever she called. It sounded like she was reading from a script, or like she was speaking from the bottom of a deep, dark well.
"Giulia, what’s wrong?" I asked. "I’ll come visit you right now. Where are you? Are you still at your aunt’s house? I’ve been so stressed out, I thought something terrible happened to you. I missed you so much. You know we weren’t able to escape, right? Everything went wrong. I have so much to tell you—"
"Mireya, stop," she interrupted. Her voice was quiet, completely devoid of emotion. "I’m fine. I’m okay."
I frowned, my chest tightening. "You don’t sound fine. You sound... weird. What’s going on?"
"Nothing is going on. I just wanted to call and tell you that I’m fine."
"Giulia, have you seen the news?" I pressed, my words tumbling out as the panic mounted. "It’s going completely viral everywhere. The pictures of Anastelle and Laziel at the school... my silhouette is right there in the background. It’s a complete mess, the media is trying to find out who she is, and my life is literally falling apart piece by piece every single day. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I’m going to escape this house. What if Helix finds out?"
I waited for her to gasp. I waited for her to curse, to tell me she was coming to get me, to be the best friend she had always been.
Instead, there was just more empty silence.
"Don’t escape, Mireya," Giulia said softly.
I blinked, the phone suddenly feeling heavy in my hand. "What?"
"Just stay there. Stay with him. It’s safer for everyone if you just stop running."
My mind went completely blank. Stop running? This was the same girl who had risked her safety to help me. This was the only person who knew how desperate I was to keep my daughter away from this family.
"Giulia, what are you saying?" I whispered, horror creeping into my voice. "What did he do to you."
"I have to go," she whispered.
The line went completely dead.
I pulled the phone away from my ear, staring at the darkened screen as a sick, nauseating realization washed over me. Laziel’s words echoed in my head: Your friend is dealing with the consequences of her own choices.
