Chapter 33 - CH 33 - The Break

The two words "I see." did not simply arrive on Amelia's phone; they detonated in the quiet sanctuary of her mind, the shockwave obliterating the fragile world she had been desperately trying to hold together. She had been in the library's deepest, most silent corner, a carrel surrounded by the comforting, dusty smell of old books, trying to anchor herself in the flowing, stream-of-consciousness prose of Virginia Woolf. For a few precious minutes, it had worked. The rhythmic, intricate sentences were a lifeline, pulling her away from the constant, gnawing worry, the aching absence, the terrifying silence from Adrian. Then, her phone, face-down on the wooden desk, had vibrated with a low, insistent hum. A text. From an unknown number.