FALLING FOR MY SECRET BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND

CHAPTER TEN : DRIFTED APART

Days passed.

Then weeks.

Then months.

A year and six months had gone by, and still nothing.

No text.

No calls.

No messages.

Just silence.

Josh vanished as if he had never existed, and Fredrick was nowhere to be found either. It was as if an entire part of my life had been erased overnight.

I stood before Josh’s apartment door, my heart doing that familiar, painful stutter. I pressed my thumb to the scanner. Click. The red light turned green, but every time I stepped inside, the silence greeted me first.

Thick, heavy, suffocating, the rooms echoed with absence, with memories that refused to fade.

The news of Jason’s grandfather spread like wildfire across the internet. Headlines everywhere. Speculations. Rumors.

Yet Jason himself remained anonymous.

No one knew who he truly was. No one knew his face. The only image circulating online was a blurred photograph, taken by him with Sandra, the "fiancée" who was nothing more than a shield.

I pulled my phone from my pocket, re-reading the message Sandra had sent months ago.

“He only asked for my help to divert the media's attention,” she’d written. “He wanted me to tell you. He didn't want there to be a misunderstanding.”

But from what?

Was the "fiancée" ruse her plan or his? What were they truly hiding from?

Something feels off. Why would he try to divert the media's attention? Maybe there's more to it, perhaps it's some kind of secret the public shouldn't know about.

Yesss !!!,

There's definitely more to it, but what could it be…

His identity ??

Or is it something relating to his grandfather's death ??

what if it's connected to something entirely different ??

My thinking got me nowhere….

Curiosity burned in me, with questions piled up in my head, but answers nowhere to be found.

I wrapped my arms around my pillow, holding it close as if it could replace what I’d lost. My eyes slowly closed, my thoughts spiralling until the night finally pulled me under, and I let the warmth of my bed do the rest.

***

Life didn’t pause for heartbreak.

Gradually, it grew harder, but somehow, I grew stronger.

Work became a battlefield.

Ever since I spoke to the police during the investigation involving my former colleague, everything changed. She almost took her life before resigning.

Her name was Martha.

I could still see Martha’s face, the way she looked before she resigned, broken by the "higher ups." She had been a victim of a man who thought his title gave him ownership of her body and her time. When his wife joined in on the abuse, calling Martha her husband's mistress, something in me snapped.

I was the only one who told the truth. Everyone else, my friends, my mentors, looked at the floor and lied to keep their paychecks.

"You should have kept your mouth shut," the whispers followed me down the hallway.

A world where power ruled. Where money spoke louder than pain.

Sometimes I wished I had kept my mouth shut. If I had known I’d be next, maybe I would’ve stayed quiet.

I regretted it.

Martha never got the justice she deserved. She resigned, carrying depression and fear with her, while I stayed behind, marked. Avoided.

At work, I became invisible.

Whispers followed me. Conversations stopped when I entered rooms.

I would arrive at my desk to find my files missing or find out a crucial meeting had happened an hour ago without a single invite sent to my inbox.

The "silent treatment" from my colleagues was a different kind of quiet than the one in Josh’s apartment.

Their plan was simple: get rid of me.

They wanted me fired, or broken enough to resign. They saw me as a threat, knowing fully well that if they got caught, they would be charged as accessories after the fact for concealing the crime and misleading the investigator.

So they were waiting for the perfect chance. I hated going to work, but I couldn’t stop.

Especially not now. My safe place had disappeared without a word, and work was the only thing anchoring me to reality.

So I endured it.

I lived with it.

Because it was all I had left.

***

I wished I had held on to Josh.

Maybe if he had known he wasn’t alone, if he had known he had someone to lean on, he wouldn’t have left.

That night at the hospital replayed endlessly in my mind. The way he broke down. The way I froze. I should have moved. I should have hugged him. Told him I was there.

Maybe… just maybe, everything would be different now.

I couldn’t stop worrying about him.

I feared the reason he went into hiding was that the people who tried to kill him and his grandfather were still out there. Still searching.

And there I was, seated on his bed.

In his apartment.

The same place we once shared.

The only difference now was the silence.

Sometimes I stayed the night, hoping foolishly to wake up and find him beside me.

I always assumed Josh owned the apartment. Maybe even the entire building.

No landlord showed up. No one else tried to move in.

It felt like his escape.

His hiding place.

His comfort zone, away from the weight of his billionaire life.

And as the night deepened, exhaustion pulled me under once again. The world dimmed around me, and my heart filled with fragile hopes, far beyond reason, beyond reality.

Hoping that someday, somehow, I would wake to see myself in his arms.

Until then, I stayed. I breathed in the familiar scent of his sheets, listened to the quiet hum of a place that once held laughter, and pretended the silence didn’t hurt as much as it did. Every night, I closed my eyes and imagined the weight of his presence beside me, the warmth that once felt so certain, so real.

Morning always came too quickly, stealing him away again, leaving me alone with nothing but memory and hope. And yet, I returned, night after night, because even in his absence, this was the closest I could get to him.