Page 56 of Second Chances

“No,” I interrupt and silence my sister-in-law immediately. Nobody will be talking to Elena except me. Nobody. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Ryan.” James gets to his feet. “This is serious.”

I rise as well and face off against my brother. “So’s the fact she’s obviously been lying to me. We had a discussion a week ago about her exercising too much and not eating.”

“I thought she’d lost a lot of weight.” Amy looks up at me. I can see the worry for her friend etched on her face. “What do you think is wrong?”

“I don’t know, but I think I’m going to go home and do some exploring.”

Matthew comes back into the room with a cup of tea for Amy.

“Don’t do anything about this yet,” I request. “I’ll call you later.”

Putting my boots on at the front door, I head to my house next door. There must be a clue here somewhere. I just need to start looking, but where? Elena and I share a bedroom even though it’s felt like I’ve been with a stranger for the last month. I know every inch of that room. So it can’t be in there.Think, Ryan, use your detective brain.Where is the one place Elena would hide whatever secrets she’s keeping? There’s no way my girl would steal from her best friend unless she had a valid reason.

The gym.

It’s the one place she spends all her time. I kick off my boots and trudge despondently toward the room I hate most, at the moment. I can’t believe this is happening. That she’d do something like this. Have I read the entire situation wrong? Is she struggling more than I thought? I begin searching in the cupboards, pulling out pristine, clean towels and shaking them to check nothing is hidden within them before throwing them on the floor. I don’t find anything there. Next, I examine all the equipment, checking all the small crevices where something could be hidden.

What could it be?

Why would Elena need money?

We’re going on holiday?

Maybe that’s it. She’s spent too much on the deposit and needs help with accessories to look nice.

But why wouldn’t she ask?

She knows I’ll help her out.

No, she hasn’t been normal Elena since the accident. The memory of what happened the last time she injured her leg remains prominent at the forefront of her mind. What can it be?

Having pulled apart most of the gym and found nothing, I stand in the center of the room and scratch my head. I try to think where Elena might have hidden her secrets. I allow my head to flop back, and looking up, I remember the small loft space above the gym I haven’t checked yet. In the corner of the gym is a pole that hooks into a lock on the ceiling. I fetch the pole and use it to open the loft and access the ladder concealed within. Once I’ve lowered the ladder, I climb up and peer into the void. At first I don’t see anything, but then I spot it. A little white bottle—the type you store pills in from the doctor. Reaching out, I grab it and duck out of the loft to read the label…only it doesn’t have one.

What the fuck?

The door opens to the gym, and when I look up from the bottle, I see Elena staring at me. Her eyes wide and her face white as though she’s just seen a ghost.

I hold the bottle out to her.

“Care to tell me what these are? And why Amy has two thousand pounds missing from her business account?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Elena

My tablets.

My precious medication.

Ryan has them in his hands, and he’s angry. So very mad.

How does he know?

And Amy, she knows about the money. I was going to pay it back, but then I needed more tablets because the others ran out, and they were more expensive because Victor had more trouble getting them.

This can’t be happening.

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