What They Don’t Know Yet
1242 Words
Elias didn’t scream.
He didn’t cry.
Didn’t punch the wall.
Didn’t rush into that hotel room and rip Marcus’s face apart.
Instead, he stood in the hallway of that slick, glass-walled building—watching room 407 from behind a potted plant like he was just a man catching his breath. Like he wasn’t watching his wife let another man ruin her in the bed he used to imagine children in.
When Marcus emerged, buttoning his shirt, Elias didn’t blink.
When Aria followed five minutes later with lips still red and hair a little too wild, he smiled at her.
He smiled.
It wasn’t the kind of smile people shared.
It was the kind a knife would give you before slipping between your ribs.
They didn’t see him. Of course they didn’t. He made sure of that.
And as they walked off in opposite directions, leaving the stench of s*x and secrets in their wake, Elias stepped out of the shadows and whispered to no one, “You’ll never see me coming.”
⸻
That night, Elias returned home to find Aria in the kitchen reheating stew like her mouth hadn’t been all over his best friend’s chest hours earlier. She smiled at him—genuinely—and offered him a bowl.
He took it.
He chewed slowly, quietly. Every spoonful tasted like betrayal.
He didn’t mention the hotel.
Didn’t mention Marcus.
Didn’t even look at her for more than a second.
And that, for Aria, was enough to believe she’d won.
⸻
Two Weeks Earlier
(Flashback)
Marcus had once carried Elias out of a burning car.
It was 2016, the summer they both got their promotions. Drunk on cheap whisky and dreams of taking over the city, they were racing home on the expressway when Elias’s car flipped after a sharp curve.
By the time he opened his eyes, smoke and blood were already thick in the air. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream. And then—Marcus.
Marcus breaking the glass.
Marcus dragging him out.
Marcus slapping him back to life.
“You don’t get to die before we conquer the damn world,” Marcus had said, voice cracked with fear and loyalty.
Elias never forgot that night.
It was the night he decided Marcus wasn’t just a best friend—he was his brother.
He told Aria that story once.
She had cried.
Now he wondered if she remembered it at all.
⸻
Present Day
Elias pulled his phone out and opened the contact list. He scrolled until he found the name.
Camryn Silva.
They hadn’t spoken in three years. Last time, she was working security in Kenya for an oil tycoon who kept receiving death threats from his mistresses.
He didn’t call her.
He sent a single message.
“Need a quiet favor. No questions. I’ll double your best offer.”
She replied four minutes later.
“Location?”
⸻
Camryn showed up at his office in a hoodie and ripped jeans. Her hair was shorter, her skin even darker from years under hard suns. But her eyes—those eyes—still looked like they could carve truth from lies.
“You’re bleeding somewhere,” she said, sitting across his desk without waiting to be invited.
“I’m not,” Elias said.
Camryn tilted her head. “Sure you are. You just haven’t noticed where yet.”
She placed a phone jammer on the desk and a small recorder beside it. “Talk.”
He did.
Everything. From the silence in Aria’s laughter to the message on her phone. From Marcus’s lingering touch to the hotel. Everything.
When he finished, Camryn let out a low breath.
“You want me to kill them?” she asked, not joking.
“No,” Elias said. “Not yet.”
She studied him. “Then what do you want?”
Elias looked out the window.
“I want to destroy them. But first, I want to understand them. I want to know how long this has been going on. How many lies they’ve told. I want the full picture. And when I have it… I want to make them wish they’d never met me.”
Camryn smiled.
“Good,” she said. “Let’s begin.”
⸻
The Double Life Begins
From that day forward, Elias was two people.
To Aria: the quiet, work-consumed husband who was simply going through a phase. The man who came home tired, kissed her on the forehead, and said nothing about where he’d been.
To Marcus: the distracted friend who laughed at old jokes and never brought up the hotel or the way his eyes lingered too long.
To Camryn: a man on the edge of war.
She trailed them.
Got hotel footage.
Recovered deleted messages.
Even bugged Marcus’s car.
And slowly, a picture began to form.
It had started six months ago.
Marcus had consoled Aria during a fight she and Elias had over kids. From there, it became “innocent” dinners, late-night calls, emotional support. Then s*x. Then more s*x.
But worse—so much worse—were the texts Camryn recovered.
MARCUS: “He’s so clueless. I almost feel bad.”
ARIA: “Almost.”
MARCUS: “You sure he’s not suspicious?”
ARIA: “If he is, he’s too much of a coward to confront me.”
ARIA: “God, he bores me lately. Always so noble. So… decent.”
Elias read them in silence.
And something inside him broke.
But not in the way they expected.
Not in the way a man breaks and falls apart.
In the way a man breaks and reshapes himself into something dangerous.
⸻
Two Weeks Later
Marcus and Aria met at a luxury condo Marcus had just purchased under a false name. Camryn tapped into the camera system.
Elias watched them from his phone.
Marcus kissed her neck. Aria laughed. They toasted to “new beginnings.”
“Let him find out,” Aria whispered. “Maybe then he’ll finally leave.”
“You want him gone?” Marcus asked.
“I want his money. The apartment. The house.”
“And then?”
She smiled. “Then we disappear. Me and you. New country. New life.”
Elias stared at the screen until the video ended.
Then, he smiled again.
The same smile as the hallway.
The knife’s smile.
⸻
Later That Night
Aria came home to a candlelit dinner. Elias cooked.
Her favorite.
She blinked at the spread.
“What’s all this?”
He shrugged. “Thought we needed something warm between us again.”
She laughed, soft and touched. “You’re full of surprises lately.”
He poured her a drink.
As she sipped, Elias watched her closely.
“What would you do,” he asked, “if I wasn’t around tomorrow?”
She paused. “What do you mean?”
“If I left. If something happened. If I was… gone.”
She smiled nervously. “You’re scaring me. Why would you say that?”
“No reason,” Elias said. “Just thinking about what people do when they think they’ve won.”
Later, after she slept, Elias walked into his office, turned on his encrypted line, and called Camryn.
“Start phase two,” he said.
Camryn’s voice came through. “Are you sure?”
Elias’s eyes were ice.
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s make them smile—before we gut the lie they’ve built.”
- Writer
