BEHIND CLOSED DOORS | 18+ |✔

34

c h a p t e r    t h i r t y- f o u r 

One month. 

Today was exactly one month from the day he had last held her in his arms, last whispered sweet nothings into her ear. To her, it was almost as if the month had taken away a year from her life, but it had only been a month. 

Antonia sat at the table in her kitchen, her eyes lingering on the laptop sitting in front of her. Thankfully, it was a Sunday, so she was able to escape that hellhole, even though the mail she was reading said otherwise. 

If you dare show your face at the Academy again, we will have to take legal action against you. 

She pushed the device away, and put down her head on the table. 

When did it all go so wrong?

Rhys did not make it home that evening. 

After his peculiar behaviour in the morning, he had fucked Antonia in his closet, but he had taken his own, sweet time in bringing her pleasure. When he was done, he had held her in his arms for a longer time. 

And just like that, he was gone. 

Antonia should have asked if he was going to need so many clothes for just an evening, she should have shouted at him for being so strange, she should have demanded answers. 

But as she waited for him patiently in his room, with the candles and flowers she had brought decorated around the staircase, the living room, the kitchen—the evening turned dark, then darker until the candles burnt out, and the dinner she had prepared turned cold. 

Antonia stayed awake that night, but when the clock told her that it was six in the morning of the next day, she finally called him. She did not know what she had expected, but his phone was switched off when she called him the first time, and it was the same as when she called him the last time. 

She stopped calling him after a week since by then she had accustomed herself to the reality of the situation. The tears came at night, and she carefully held them back when she was at the University. The disappearance of the chancellor came as a shock to the Academy, and even more to his family. No one had seen him since he had left his mother's birthday party, and a search warrant was issued in his name. 

It was only Antonia's duty to speak the truth. 

She had completely expected to get fired from the Academy when she confessed to having an intimate affair with the chancellor. She did not have the mental capacity to make up lies, and she also wanted him to be found. She did not care if she had been abandoned, she only wanted to hear the news of him being safe and healthy, wherever he was. 

It did not surprise her that much when the police found out that the University trustee's call was a lie. He had not been seen in Cardiff, and the trustee denied having called him any time in the recent past. The police had then very rationally decided to shift their suspicion on Antonia since she was the last person to have seen him.