Loving My Future Murderer

The Man in the Photograph

That chilling warning kept echoing straight inside Aira's ears. It felt like an ice cube was pressed right against the back of her neck on purpose. For the rest of the night, she could only lie completely stiff next to Elian. She held her breath every single time he rolled over. Her eyes were closed, but her brain was running at full speed. The mental image of that silver padlock and the sound of something heavy crashing behind that black door kept haunting her until her eyes hurt from straining.

When the morning sun started sneaking through the bedroom curtains, Aira woke up. Her whole body felt super sore. She turned her head to the right side of the bed. Empty. The bed where Elian slept was already cold, and the blanket was even folded up super neatly. There wasn't a single sign that he had been sleeping there for hours. The house was dead quiet, with only the constant hum of the AC blowing cold air around the room.

Aira sat up real slow on the edge of the bed. She pressed her hand against her forehead, which suddenly started throbbing with a sharp headache.

"Why react that insanely hard just because I touched a door?" Aira muttered real quiet to herself. "If it's really just company documents, why make it feel like I'm trying to break into some secret government vault???"

Aira stood up, swapping her pajamas for an oversized gray knit sweater and long pants. She walked out of the room, keeping her steps as quiet as humanly possible. The second-floor hallway that looked totally terrifying last night was now bright, washed in warm morning sunlight. She paused briefly in front of that black door. The steel padlock still hung stiff in its exact spot. The yellow light she saw sneaking out from under the gap last night was completely gone. The whole house suddenly looked normal again, as if the creepy stuff from last night was just a wild hallucination.

Heading down the stairs toward the first floor, Aira didn't bump into a single person. No housekeeper, no security guard. Dead quiet like a graveyard. She walked through the lower level and stepped into Elian's office area, which merged right into the living room. Sitting on top of a massive mahogany desk was Elian's black laptop, shut tight. Right next to the laptop lay a small slip of paper.

Aira picked up the paper and read the note slow.

"Got an emergency out-of-town meeting until this evening," Aira read Elian's handwriting out loud. "Breakfast is ready on the dining table. Don't forget to take your pills and don't push yourself moving around too much."

Aira crumpled the paper until it got messy, then tossed it back onto the desk.

"An out-of-town meeting?" Aira whispered, throwing a side-glance around the dead silent room. "Sweet. That means he won't be back until tonight."

This was literally the perfect timing. Elian had been sticking to her like glue the entire time. He kept making up excuses that she wasn't allowed to touch a phone or stare at a computer screen so her brain wouldn't get stressed out after the car crash. But she wasn't stupid. She knew Elian just wanted to isolate her completely from the outside world.

Aira's eyes locked straight onto the black laptop sitting on the mahogany desk. She walked up to the table, her breathing getting a bit uneven. She grabbed the edge of the laptop and flipped it open real slow. Luck was actually on her side this morning. The screen booted right up, throwing bright white light straight onto her face. The laptop wasn't locked with any password at all. Elian must have been in such a massive rush that he forgot to lock his personal device.

Aira pulled out the office chair behind the desk and sat down. Her cold fingers wrapped around the mouse. The very first thing she opened was the web browser. She stared right at the blank search bar sitting empty in front of her.

Aira let out a long breath. "Okay Aira, chill out. Where do you even start???"

She grabbed her head for a second, trying so hard to dig up the full name Elian kept repeating when she first woke up in the hospital.

"My name is Aira," she whispered to herself. "Aira Natasya."

Without wasting another second, she typed her full name straight into the search bar.

A I R A N A T A S Y A.

She slammed the enter key on the keyboard. In a split second, the screen flooded with thousands of search results. Aira leaned her body forward, skimming through title after title appearing on the display.

Most of the top results were just random old social media accounts that were locked tight and a bunch of common name listings. Aira then tried adding extra keywords. She typed in the name of the massive company Elian mentioned when explaining his family business.

The browser page reloaded instantly. This time, a stack of news articles from big national media outlets published years ago popped up.

Aira spelled out the news headlines one by one in a hushed whisper.

"Successful expansion of the Natasya family business in national property and manufacturing sectors," Aira read quiet. "Full profile of the Natasya family... the only daughter of the Natasya family set to inherit all company assets..."

Aira's chest fluttered real weird as she read those words. Right next to the articles were supporting photos showing fancy skyscrapers, huge corporate expos, and snapshots of a high-society family. This information matched Elian's story perfectly. Her family was indeed filthy rich and held massive clout in the business world.

But right as Aira went to read deeper into the article, she bumped straight into something super off.

She clicked one of the top business news links written by a major news outlet four years ago. The computer screen flickered for a second. But instead of loading the full story, the monitor displayed a totally blank page with bold text slapped right in the middle.

Aira frowned hard. "Wait, what?! This page is no longer available or has been deleted???"

Aira was totally caught off guard. She hit the back button on the browser corner fast, then clicked a second news link from a completely different national news portal. This second article was titled as a story about stock changes in the Natasya family business. But the moment the page fully loaded, the exact same error text popped right up again.

"Same thing?!" Aira whispered, getting way more confused. "Why is this news article deleted too???"

Aira's curiosity instantly flipped into a massive, growing wave of suspicion. She clicked a third link, a fourth link, even jumping to the second and third search pages. The result didn't change at all. Almost every single news article digging deep into her family's background, asset ownership structures, and even big events hitting the Natasya family years ago had been wiped simultaneously from the entire internet.

Aira squeezed her hands tight over the desk surface. "This makes zero sense! How could literally all news about my family vanish at the exact same time?! Who goes out of their way to scrub all this info from Google?!"

Scrubbing news articles off major media outlets like this was definitely no easy task. Only someone with endless stacks of cash and insane legal power could pull off a stunt like that. Her brain shot straight to one single name. Elian.

"Did Elian order people to delete all these news stories?" Aira said quiet, her eyes locking sharp onto the monitor. "But why?! Why doesn't he want me to know my own family's past?!"

Aira shook her head violently. "No, I can't just stop here! There has to be one or two sites they missed!"

She scrolled all the way down to the very bottom of the search results. She tried opening random independent blogs and super outdated business forums that looked like they hadn't been updated since the stone age. Usually, tiny sites like those slipped right through massive digital cleanups.

After spending nearly half an hour digging through ancient web archives, her finger froze on a link from a small local newspaper. The layout was super basic, looking like it hadn't been touched in years. The headline didn't even mention her family's full name, just using a generic archive code for a social event.

Aira clicked that ancient link. Her breath caught tight in her throat.

"Come on... please open!" Aira begged out loud in front of the screen that was loading painfully slow.

The webpage loaded bit by bit due to the old connection. Low-resolution photos started popping up one by one. It was a photo gallery from an art exhibition and charity gala hosted five years ago at a luxury hotel in the capital city.

Aira dragged her cursor down, skipping past pictures of powerful people wearing fancy evening gowns and sharp suits. Until finally, her finger movement on the mouse stopped completely.

Aira's eyes went wide. "What the..."

Inside that old photo, Aira saw herself from five years ago. She was wearing a dark blue evening gown with her long hair styled neatly down. Her face in that picture looked insanely radiant, wearing a massive smile with eyes full of pure happiness. It looked completely different from the pale, terrified face she kept seeing in her bedroom mirror.

But it wasn't her own smiling face that made her heart feel like it was about to jump straight out of her chest right then and there.

In that photo, Aira was standing super close, wrapping her arm tightly around a guy's arm next to her. The guy was tall and lean, wearing a sharp black suit with slightly wavy hair. He was crazy handsome, with a sharp jawline and a warm smile looking straight into the camera lens.

Aira touched the cold monitor screen with the tip of her violently shaking finger.

"Who is this guy?!" Aira whispered, her voice trembling and choking right in her throat. "Why am I holding him this close?!"

The guy standing right next to her, wrapping his arm around her waist in that old photo, was definitely NOT Elian.