Chapter Four
1016 Words
The first thing Eliana Jones noticed was the silence.
It was the kind of silence that felt wrong.
Not peaceful.
Not comforting.
Wrong.
Her eyes slowly opened, but the bright light coming through the curtains forced her to close them again.
For a few seconds, she stayed still.
Trying to understand where she was.
Trying to remember.
Her head felt heavy.
Her thoughts were scattered.
And the more she tried to collect them, the more confused she became.
This was not her room.
The realization came suddenly.
Eliana opened her eyes again.
The ceiling above her was unfamiliar.
The bed beneath her felt too soft.
The room was too large.
Too perfect.
Everything around her looked expensive.
Her heartbeat immediately increased.
"Where am I?"
Her voice sounded small in the unfamiliar room.
She quickly sat up.
Then stopped.
A wave of confusion passed through her.
She looked down at herself.
Her clothes were not the same way she remembered wearing them.
Her mind immediately searched through the missing pieces of the night before.
The party.
Joan.
The music.
The drinks.
The VIP area.
The man.
Her breathing became slower as she tried harder to remember.
She remembered walking into a room she was not supposed to enter.
She remembered the strange silence.
She remembered a man sitting there.
A man whose presence made everyone around him careful.
She remembered his voice.
Calm.
Deep.
Controlled.
And she remembered telling him her name.
Eliana Jones.
After that...
Nothing.
Only fragments.
The rest of the night felt like a dream she could not complete.
She pushed herself off the bed.
Her first instinct was to find her phone.
She searched the bedside table.
Nothing.
She checked the floor.
Nothing.
The small panic she had been trying to control started growing.
Where was her phone?
Where was Joan?
Why couldn't she remember leaving the party?
She walked around the room, searching for any clue.
A picture.
A name.
Anything that could explain where she was.
But the room gave her nothing.
Only questions.
Then she noticed something.
A dark stain on the white bedsheet.
Eliana froze.
Her eyes remained fixed on it.
Her mind immediately created possibilities she did not want to think about.
"No..."
She whispered.
She looked away.
Trying to calm herself.
There had to be an explanation.
There had to be.
But why couldn't she remember?
That was the part that scared her the most.
Not knowing.
She quickly grabbed her bag and searched inside.
Her phone was not there.
Her wallet was still there.
Everything else seemed untouched.
Then something caught her attention.
A black mastercard was placed on the table beside the bed.
It looked simple.
But expensive.
The kind of thing that did not belong in her world.
Eliana picked it up carefully.
There was a name written on it.
A name she did not recognize.
Lorenzo Blackwood.
She stared at it.
The name meant nothing to her.
But somehow, seeing it made her remember the man from last night.
The stranger who looked like he carried the weight of the entire world on his shoulders.
The man who barely smiled.
The man who looked at her like he was trying to understand something.
She turned the card over.
Nothing else.
No number.
No explanation.
Just a name.
"Who are you?"
She whispered.
Of course, there was no answer.
A sudden sound from outside the room made her tense.
Footsteps.
Eliana immediately placed the card back on the table.
She didn't know who was outside.
She didn't know whose room this was.
She only knew one thing.
She needed to leave.
Before someone came in.
Before she had to explain something she did not even understand herself.
She opened the door carefully.
The hallway was empty.
She walked quickly.
Every step felt heavier than the last.
The place was enormous.
The kind of place she would normally admire.
But right now, all she wanted was to escape.
As she reached the elevator, she looked back once.
For some reason, she felt like she was leaving behind something important.
Something she didn't understand.
The elevator doors closed.
And with them, the mystery remained behind.
Outside the building, the morning air hit her face.
Eliana stood there for a moment.
Trying to breathe.
Trying to convince herself that everything was okay.
But it wasn't.
She had questions.
Too many questions.
She needed to find Joan.
She needed her phone.
She needed to understand what happened.
But she refused to stay there searching for answers from strangers.
Especially not from a man whose name she had only discovered on a black mastercard.
She walked away.
Not knowing that someone had been watching the security footage of her leaving.
Not knowing that her confusion had become someone else's curiosity.
Not knowing that the man whose name she carried away with her had never been ignored before.
Inside the building, Lorenzo Blackwood stood in front of the large window of his office.
His expression remained unreadable.
A member of his security team stood behind him.
"She left, sir."
Lorenzo said nothing.
His eyes remained on the screen displaying the footage.
The same woman who had walked into his private room without fear.
The same woman who had spoken to him without knowing who he was.
The same woman who had left without taking anything.
Including the card.
Most people who came near Lorenzo wanted something.
Money.
Power.
Connections.
But Eliana Jones had walked away.
That bothered him.
More than it should have.
"Find out who she is."
His voice was quiet.
The man behind him looked surprised.
"Sir?"
Lorenzo finally turned.
His expression was cold again.
"Did I not make myself clear?"
The man immediately lowered his head.
"No, sir."
Lorenzo looked back at the screen.
At the woman who had disappeared from his world as quickly as she entered it.
For the first time in a long time...
Som
eone had made him curious.
And Lorenzo Blackwood hated curiosity.
Because curiosity was the beginning of weakness.
And he had spent his entire life making sure he had none.
- Writer
