Ashes of trust

Chapter Four – Dinner with Knives

The restaurant was candlelit and crowded, every table pressed too close to the next. Elena sat across from Marissa, who looked radiant as always—hair loose tonight, red lipstick gleaming like fresh blood against her pale skin.

The waiter poured wine. Marissa raised her glass in a mock toast.

“To new beginnings,” she said.

Elena forced a smile, her throat tight. “What’s ending, then?”

Marissa’s grin curved. “Maybe what’s been holding you back. Maybe the smallness you keep clinging to.”

Elena stirred her drink, uneasy. “You sound like a self-help book.”

“I sound like someone who sees more in you than you see in yourself.” Marissa leaned forward, eyes gleaming in the candlelight. “Don’t you ever get tired of being invisible, Lena?”

The nickname scraped raw. No one else called her that anymore. Elena’s stomach twisted.

“I like my life,” she lied.

Marissa tilted her head, studying her. “No. You tolerate it. There’s a difference.”

The waiter arrived with food, breaking the tension. But as Elena picked at her meal, she couldn’t shake the sense of being dissected under Marissa’s gaze—as if her best friend wasn’t really here for dinner but for something else entirely.

“By the way,” Marissa said suddenly, voice casual. “Rough day at work?”

Elena froze, fork halfway to her mouth. “What do you mean?”

Marissa sipped her wine. “You just look… tense. That’s all.”

But her smile said something else: I know.

Elena’s appetite vanished. She managed to push food around her plate, answering Marissa’s chatter with one-word replies until the meal ended.

Later, walking home alone, she found her apartment door unlocked.

Her breath hitched. She never forgot to lock it—never.

Inside, nothing looked stolen. The furniture was in place, the lights off as she’d left them. But on her desk lay a single sheet of paper, folded once.

Her name scrawled across the front.

Elena’s fingers trembled as she opened it. Inside, in handwriting that wasn’t hers:

“You’re being watched.”

Her pulse thundered in her ears. She spun, scanning the apartment. Shadows pooled in the corners, deep and heavy. The silence pressed too close.

And in the window’s reflection, behind her own pale face, she saw the shadow again—taller, darker, with eyes that burned like embers.

She turned sharply. Nothing there.

But the note was real. And for the first time, Elena wondered if she was standing at the edge of something she couldn’t escape.