Chapter 8 - The Missing Wife
By the time the sun fully crested the horizon, casting a pale, wintry light over the city, Derek had officially reported me missing.
He didn't call the police out of any genuine concern for my safety. He called them because the company’s emergency board meeting was scheduled for the end of the week, and he desperately needed my physical signature on a crucial set of documents to legitimize his shadow operations.
Laying in my hospital bed, Elena and I watched his performance unfold on a news tablet. Derek gave a highly dramatic, tearful statement to the responding officers on our front lawn. He masterfully played the role of the distraught, helpless husband.
"She’s been terribly unstable since her father passed," Derek told the officers, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. "She’s heavily addicted to sedatives. She’s prone to these dramatic, wandering disappearances when she mixes her medications. I’m just terrified she’s going to hurt herself out there in the cold."
An hour later, Marlene took to social media. She posted a long, incredibly fake, tearful message on her public page about her “beloved, deeply troubled daughter-in-law’s mental breakdown,” begging the community for prayers and asking for privacy during this "harrowing family crisis."
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"They genuinely believe humiliation will force you to crawl back home," Elena noted, shaking her head in disgust as she closed the tablet. "They think you'll be too embarrassed by the public narrative to contradict them."
"Let them spin their web," I said, swinging my legs over the edge of the hospital bed. "The tighter they weave it, the harder it will be for them to escape when it catches fire."
