Chapter 4
By the third day of the business trip, Elijah realized he had completely lost his appetite for fun.
I hadn't contacted him in three whole days.
In the past, whenever he traveled for work, I would blow up his phone with back-to-back calls, desperate to know what he was doing every single second.
He remembered a trip to Northville. His phone had died right after a meeting, and a massive blizzard had hit the city, shutting down all the roads. He had to trudge miles through the snow just to get back to his hotel.
When he finally walked into the lobby, the receptionist told him a woman had called the front desk over a hundred times looking for him.
When I finally heard his voice on the line, I had broken down sobbing. I stayed on the phone with him the entire night, terrified that if I hung up, he would disappear again.
Thinking about that now made Elijah's chest feel painfully tight.
We had never gone this long without speaking.
When I caught him kissing Linda, I hadn't thrown a tantrum. I actually seemed fine with it.
I seemed like I genuinely didn't care anymore.
Realizing this made the knot in his chest twist even tighter.
The only thing keeping him sane was convincing himself that this was just a calculated stunt to get his attention.
Just like old times, when he was too busy to check his phone all day, I would eventually call him, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Wow, the busy CEO finally remembers he has a wife?
"Whatever, it's not like you're hurting for company. Go hang out with whoever you want."
Then I would angrily hang up.
But without fail, less than ten minutes later, I would call back, letting out a soft apology.
Thinking of that pattern brought a faint smirk to Elijah's lips.
He decided it was time to play the sympathy card, a little damsel-in-distress act to make me worry about him.
*****
That night, at a dinner hosted by their clients, Elijah deliberately threw away his usual restraint and drank himself into a complete stupor.
He had Linda snap a pathetic-looking photo of him slumped over the bar and text it to me.
He lay there, pretending to be barely conscious, fully expecting me to catch the next flight out to come rescue him.
Instead, Linda wrapped her arms around his waist and practically carried him up to the presidential suite he had booked.
She gently laid him on the bed and solicitously handed him a glass of water and a pill to help him sober up.
Elijah swallowed it down. Almost instantly, the heavy fog of alcohol vanished from his brain.
Wait, this feeling was the exact enhancement pill he and I used to use to spice things up in the bedroom.
He scrambled to pull out his phone and checked the security cameras at home.
I wasn't there. His heart leaped as he was convinced that I must have been terrified he was going to sleep with Linda, so I flew out here in the middle of the night to be with him.
He assumed the pill was my doing, a calculated move to make up for the intimacy we had been lacking lately.
Thrilled by the thought, Elijah let the drug take hold and eagerly rushed into the bathroom to shower.
When he stepped out, all the main lights in the suite had been turned off. Only the bedside lamp cast a dim, seductive glow across the room.
He estimated the travel time and decided I had only just arrived.
He tiptoed to the edge of the bed, gazing affectionately at the slender silhouette curled up under the duvet.
His heart swelled. He leaned down and pressed a tender kiss against the figure.
"Honey, I swear, Linda and I are completely innocent. Besides that one little accident, I have never physically betrayed you," he murmured. "Please don't be mad at me anymore. I just want you to go back to being obsessed with me..."
The woman under the blankets began to tremble violently.
Sensing something was wrong, Elijah yanked the duvet back and rolled her over.
He found himself staring straight into Linda's flushed, panicked face.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he gasped, instantly shoving her away as if she had burned him.
His voice was like ice, his eyes slicing through her with a terrifying, absolute rage.
Linda instinctively held her breath, too paralyzed by fear to even squeak.
"Tell me right now. Where did you get that pill?" he roared.
The drug was fully kicking in now. Elijah's mouth felt like sandpaper.
He shook his head aggressively, gripping the edge of the nightstand until his knuckles turned white just to stay on his feet.
Seeing him struggling, Linda's fear suddenly evaporated.
She intentionally let the strap of her dress slip off her shoulder and reached out, pretending to help him up.
But Elijah's lethal glare stopped her dead in her tracks.
"Do not touch me."
As the words ripped from his throat, he realized the terrifying truth. This wasn't just an enhancement pill.
He had taken those before, and they never made his legs feel like jelly or sapped the strength from his bones.
Did Linda slip him a roofie?
Before he could even voice the accusation, Linda started stammering, her voice shaking with terror.
"It... it was Mrs. Lopez. She gave me the pill. She told me to... to take really good care of you tonight."