Mistakenly Eaten

18. Investigating Althea's Disappearance

“Please! I can not do this anymore.”

Anthony cried, as him and Martha were presented with yet another creation from one of the fake participants.

“The last two dishes we ate, smelled like cold feet.”

He complained to his wife, who finished up an entire bottle of water, just in an attempt to cleanse her palette.

“At this point, I am going to cut off all ties with Nick.” Martha growled in disgust.

“I don’t even get it, why do we even have to taste them?” Anthony asked and Gigi pointed towards the cameras set up in front of them.

“For the show! We have to show that we have judges, who do taste the food. In case, Althea ever asks about it.”

“We are doing too much here. I am telling you. We are over complicating things.” Martha stated and Anthony nodded.

“You are telling me.” Gigi scoffed.

“We should just keep things simple. Like kidnap her family or something and force her to work as a chef.” Anthony proposed.

“Salva says, it wouldn’t work.” Gigi stuck his tongue out, making Anthony feel even more agitated.

Andrew presented another plate prepared by one of the house staff, who was probably just a poor cleaner and didn’t have much knowledge about cooking.

“Listen, we just have to take one shot of you guys taking a bite.” Carl told them, trying his best to motivate them.

Seeing the unappealing plate placed in front of her, Martha made a disgusted expression.

“Tony, I think we should call Selena and let her know where we have kept the will.”

Carl rolled his eyes, “You don’t have to swallow anything. We will edit the reel later on and…”

“This one is the most disgusting one so far.” Anthony announced, looking at the camera with a sarcastic smile and cutting through the raw chicken that bled as he passed the knife through it.

“Oh! Don’t forget to get that on camera.” Martha chuckled, making Carl shake his head.

“Can you guys be serious for once?” he complained.

“What do you think we are trying to do?” Martha yelled back at her.

“Guys! keep it low.” Salva entered the dining room, tensed to hear the loud voices booming out of the hall.

“Here comes the mastermind.” Anthony chimed, making Gigi snort out a laughter but the smirk on his face immediately disappeared as he saw Salva looking at him with a notorious look.

“What? The guy is funny.” Gigi complained moving out of the room.

“Why do we have to go through torture? And you announced Andrew to be the safe contestant this week. You can’t keep doing this every week.” Martha squinted her eyes at Salva who shrugged.

“We can name someone else but not Althea. She needs to keep cooking everyday so that we can feed Nicholas. The guy hit the gym this morning.” He told everyone, who jumped up in excitement.

“Well, her food better work for him or else, I will be poisoning that girl.” Martha mumbled, taking a bite of the food in front of her but immediately spit it out on her plate.

“Or better yet, I would make her eat this s**t! Who even cooked it? Must be killed for blasphemy.”

Salva couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I have had enough of this. I am hitting the pool.” Anthony stated, getting up from his seat.

“But we still have some more plates left for tasting.” Carl asked, to which Anthony and Martha both squinted their eyes with anger at him and he immediately shut up.

They stormed out of the room, leaving Carl sad.

“No one is taking it seriously.” He complained to Salva, who smirked, looking at his helpless state.

“Garry is.” Fiona’s voice cooed, making everyone turn to look at her.

She carried bags of groceries in her hands, as she helped the rest of the staff to move all the ingredients that Salva had ordered from the nearby town.

“The town ran out of ingredients. We have ordered some from Ibiza, they will be here by Monday.”

She told Salva, who nodded and walked after her, as the two exited the dining hall and entered the main foyer, leaving behind a saddened Carl, who wanted nothing but to fulfill his unachieved dream of becoming a film director and being the fake director of the fake show, gave him a slight sense of jest that he was somehow fulfilling his dream.

Inside the main foyer, Salva stopped Fiona from moving anywhere by pulling her braid.

She yelled out loud, holding out her braid as Salva pulled her back, making her turn back to look at him.

She fixated her glasses on her face and looked up at him with confusion and anger.

“What the hell?”

She asked with an agitated tone, as Salva finally let go off her braid and she immediately brought it to her front, not trusting the guy again.

Salva squinted his eyes back at Fiona and crossed his arms across his chest.

“The other day when Althea fell on Nicholas in the library. What the hell were you doing there? Why didn’t you stop Nicholas?”

Fiona bit the inside of her cheeks, twisting her lips.

“I just reached there when Nicholas was already yelling at her…” she lied straight away but Salva simply smirked, catching her lie right off.

Fiona always bit the insides of her cheeks and twisted her lips whenever she lied, something that everyone at the island knew, except for Fiona herself.

Salva shook his head, rolling his eyes gently, “You told her that I had asked her to get some books from the library, right?”

Fiona swallowed audibly, pressing her lips tightly in a thin line, another thing she did when she lied. And the more expressive she was trying to be to hide her lie, the more Salva was catching on to her lies.

“What? Why would I…?”

“Then, you also didn’t tell Garry at the same time that Gigi was calling for him at the monitoring station when he was going to go upstairs with Althea?”

Fiona shifted her gaze, moving her weight between her feet and it was the last straw with which Salva caught her right off.

“Admit it!”

He pressed and Fiona knew that there was no more escaping and her little trick was caught. Clearly, Salva had been spying for the past few days and was able to find out everything.

“Fine! yes, I sent that stupid Althea to the library and then told Nick that the girl that he interacted with from the night before was in the library. I heard you telling Martha and Anthony about how she and Nick ending up facing each other. So, I did what I had to do.”

“Just because Garry was being friendly towards her?” Salva proposed the possible reason and Fiona nodded, throwing her eyes down, slightly embarrassed with what she did.

“Are you actually that stupid? Do you have any idea how hard we are working to keep that girl here and hidden away from Nicholas? Do you even realize what would happen if Nicholas would find out who she really is. He never agreed to therapy and this is like hidden therapy. Do you even realize what you almost jeopardized?”

“She should’ve known to not to mess around with Garry.” Fiona complained like a child, making Salva grunt in aggression.

“Listen, first off! You are being stupidly childish, okay?”

Fiona opened up her mouth to defend her actions but Salva cut her off.

“No! you don’t get to say anything in your defense, after what you have done. Secondly, get over this whole Garry thing. You guys have been together on this island for the past ten years. Seriously, options here are quite f*****g limited. So, if he was interested in you, he would’ve approached you. I don’t know who will ever say this but you don’t have to act like a stupid teenage girl around him and mean girl other girls. Every one else on the island respect your choice about Garry and don’t hit on him because of Serena, who is overly protective of you. But, I will not tolerate this behavior. If you have a problem with Garry flirting with Althea, say that to Garry. If you try to do anything stupid like that again, you will be answering me and I will not ask you easy questions, like your headmaster did whom Serena bribed only to get you that fake high school diploma.”

Fiona gasped at Salva’s atrociously harsh words.

“How dare you?”

“Oh yeah! I know all about the little scam of yours and Serena and how you couldn’t even pass a simple English exam, so Serena bribed the headmaster to ask you to read out alphabets to him and that’s how you passed out from high school.”

“Serena promised me that she wouldn’t tell this to anyone.” Fiona complained.

“Oh she didn’t. the headmaster did.”

Salva quacked a mean laughter at Fiona and walked away, rendering the girl flabbergasted.

He climbed up the stairs and went directly, towards Althea’s room.

He knocked on the door and she immediately opened it up, finding Salva in front of her.

“Hi! There is still time for dinner.” She reminded him and he nodded.

“I know! I just came to let you know that you don’t have to stay inside your room all the time. You can hang out by the pool from time to time.”

Althea nodded at Salva with a soft smile, “Thanks! It was getting kind of stuffy in there. I mean, yeah the room is bigger than my entire house but still, I get bored and I still haven’t gotten my phone back as well.”

Salva felt slightly bewildered that Althea mentioned her phone. He couldn’t afford to have her contact anyone from her family or go online and find out where the real competition was being held, since the real participants of the real Chef Hunters’ Society were posting updates about the competition.

“Actually this year, we have certain frequency issues because of which we are avoiding using any mobile phones on the island. So, that’s why we can not get you a phone right now.”

“Oh! That sucks. I really miss my family and friends back home.”

Salva felt slightly bad that he was intentionally keeping the girl out of touch from her family but he held the solitude in his heart that if she did help Nick recover, he was going to pay her half a million euro, which was the price money of the competition.

“Well, see you at dinner time.” He told Althea and was about to move away when she called him out.

“Actually, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

“The director of the society, what is his name?”

Salva felt slightly hinged, wondering why Althea was asking about Nicholas.

“Umm, Nicholas. Why’d you ask?”

“I wanted to apologize to him.”

“Apologize him? but didn’t he yell at you the other day and even threw you down on the floor?”

Althea snorted a small laughter. “He actually saved me from falling down. Yes, he was a bit rude but I guess he acts so because he looks like he’s going through something.”

Salva rose his eyebrows at Althea’s words.

“You can tell when someone is going through something?” he asked in amusement, wondering how was Althea able to tell is Nicholas was going through a tough time.

“Well, the way his beard is grown and the way he stays grumpy all the time, looking like a ghost.” She scoffed mindlessly. “My point is that I think I have said somethings that I shouldn’t have and he is still kind enough to not to fire me from the competition, which means that he is not a bad person, just stuck in a bad phase of his life. So, I guess I should apologize to him.”

“Wow! You do have a gift! You can read people.” Salva laughed lightly and Althea shrugged.

“My mom believes that it’s a curse and a gift at the same time.”

“You seem to be quite close to your Mom.” Salva commented and Althea nodded.

“We still sleep in the same bed and between you and me, I am her favorite daughter and just so you know, she only have two children. Me and my younger sister. And I don’t blame my mom for liking me more, my sister, Irene, she can be a bit pain in the ass. I only wonder, how mom must be dealing with her.”

Althea laughed out loud making Salva chuckle along with her but he immediately snapped out of his trance, realizing that he was involuntarily, forming a bond with Althea.

The biggest rule in his life was to never form a bond with any woman. Well obviously except for his mother, cousins and sister.

He never had any female friends because of this very reason. He never formed any attachments with any woman ever.

He was a man full of life, who believed that he could get laid at any given second and for that, he would like to use any woman available to him. having friendships and bonds, could restrict that movement of his.

He immediately stepped away from Althea and cleared his throat.

“Umm, I have to go.”

Saying that, he abruptly dashed out of the hallway, leaving Althea confused. She simply shrugged and went back inside her room, rethinking her words that she said to Salva.

She definitely missed her family and that’s why, any second that she got the chance or begin any conversation with anyone around the house, she would bring up her family and friends.

She really missed those crazy whacks, who made her life tolerable and more comfortable, despite of the hell that she had to go through by working at her condescending and demeaning uncle and cousin’s restaurant.

She sighed, slumping down by the edge of her bed.

She felt unfortunate that she had lost her phone as well and couldn’t even see her family and friends’ pictures that she had saved on her phone.

She wondered if they were all excited for her and were actually missing her.

Althea’s thoughts were far away from reality as her mother and sister sat inside their little living room, not remembering clearly the last time they had left their houses, whilst Seb paced the living room with sheer impatience.

“Luna said that she will be here with the cops any minute. She texted that at least ten minutes ago. Where the f**k is she gone?” Seb complained, feeling anxious about what conclusion the police had driven from their investigation about Althea’s disappearance.

It had been five days since she had gone missing and at first, while Irene argued that she had ran away to avoid paying off her debts and Monique believed that Althea had actually gone off to the competition, since everyone at the restaurant also confirmed that two men came and took her with them and Althea willingly left the note to be given to her family, Seb finally revealed that Althea had gotten rejected from the competition and they had disposed off her rejection letter with their own hands.

A knock on the door startled everyone, making Monique jump up on her toes, who was extremely anxious about her daughter’s situation.

She hadn’t eaten anything in the past five days and her tears had ran dry, gasping with fear and horror, wondering what condition her daughter might be in.

Seb opened up the door to the house and Lur walked in, with the female detective walking inside the house right after her.

“Detective Lana, any news about my daughter?”

The chubby detective, fixated the waist of her pants, taking a seat in the living room, adjacent to where Irene sat.

Even she was getting worried about Althea after Seb revealed that she could not possibly go to the secret chef hunters’ society, since she had already gotten rejected from there. So, someone had lured her by acting as imposters from the society and most probably kidnapped her.

“I know I already asked this, but you guys can not think about anyone who might want to hurt Althea?” the inspector asked once again and Monique shook her head.

“I already told you about her ex boyfriend, right? Angelo? Did you have him investigate?”

“Oh we did! We beat the crap out of him. we found a video in his phone that he had secretly recorded of Althea cooking in her uncle’s restaurant. Some of the staff there at first refused to cooperate but some of them came later on by the station and told us a few things, like her uncle didn’t allow her to cook at the restaurant? Any specific reason for that?”

Monique shook her head, “He always told her that he had hired her as a waitress and knew that she enjoyed cooking so I guess, he just wanted to punish her for simply being too proud and not taking money from him and instead offered to work to pay off the debt.”

“What debt? Did she take money from Uncle and Romano before as well.”

The inspector looked between Monique and then back at Irene, understanding the fact that the family might have some issues to work out on.

“Didn’t you know why your sister was working for your uncle?” she asked Irene, who simply shrugged.

“Because she is an uneducated woman, who simply is a loser.” Irene suggested, making the inspector’s eyes go wide.

“I was told that she took debt from your uncle so that she could pay for your college tuition and now I would not be surprised if the poor girl ran away on her own. I also learned that she took some more loan for your wedding.”

“What?” Irene squeaked, looking between her mother and her sister’s friends, who all stood anxious and confused.

“Wait! I knew about the wedding loan and I was going to ask her to give that back. It wouldn’t be needed but my college fee? I got a scholarship! Althea had nothing to do with it.” Irene tried to rub the rushing surge of guilt away from her.

“I am guessing you guys have something clear out.” The inspector said to Monique, who nodded.

“That can be taken care of later on. What did you find from Angelo, is he involved in Althea’s kidnapping.”

“As much as I wanted to believe that he might be behind the girl’s disappearance, I don’t think he is.”

“How can you say that? There are literal evidences and statements from eye witnesses who can prove that the guy was stalking Althea and had tried to harm her as well.” Seb intervened and the inspector sadly bobbed her head.

“I know! That’s why, we also beat the crap out of the guy, so that he wouldn’t do it with any other girl but turns out, he actually had an alibi for the time Althea left.”

“Where was he?” Seb demanded.

“He was at the local barber shop. They had the CCTV footage and all to prove it.”

Everyone in the room grunted with agitation.

“What about any street surveillance footage?” Lur intercepted, putting in some of her own intellect.

The inspector sadly shook her head, “What is weird is that all of the street surveillance from that day has been erased.”

“What?” everyone asked in unison, confused over how much of a big network could be involved to kidnap Althea.

“Yeah! that’s even more suspicious. I would’ve thought that the girl had ran away on her own but it turns out that someone from the dark web hacked in to the local security system and had all of the footage deleted, even from the backup surveillance.”

“Seriously?” Irene interjected, “Okay! Now, I am actually scared. First the debt thing for my college and now this. You guys, I think Althea might be on to something. It was always suspicious that she was working as a lousy waitress but all of this. I am pretty sure that she was involved with some gang or s**t or who else would do all of this?”

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Seb scolded her, earning a scoffing look from Irene.

“What? Everything just sounds so suspicious and…”

“Inspector, please don’t stop your investigation.” Monique butted in, finally bringing attention to the main point.

“Whoever those two men were that took my daughter, please find them out and find my daughter as well. You have heard about Althea. The entire town knows that she is a kind girl, who doesn’t know much street tricks. She is very plain and simple. I am pretty sure that the letter that she left was written by her and since she didn’t know about her rejection from the society someone could have sent two men, just to lure her out of the town. Please don’t let go off Angelo. I still have my doubts.”

“Yes! We are still conducting a thorough research on his contact history. Don’t worry, we don’t plan on releasing him from the investigation soon. We will also have your brother and his son investigated.”

With that the detective got up from the sofa and walked towards the door to exit but stopped when she saw pasta placed in a pot over the stove.

“Althea was a nice cook, right?” the detective inquired and Monique and Seb stepped ahead, nodding in agreement.

“Hmm…”

The detective simply hummed, jotting that piece of information somewhere in the back of her mind, as she finally exited the house.

“Guys! I am actually scared of Althea now.” Irene cooed. “I mean, first I got a little scared for her but I just think that things are getting quite loopy here. Don’t you guys think?”

She asked shamelessly having zero care about her elder sister.

Monique held back her urge to scream at her daughter and simply heaved in exhaustion, walking in to the kitchen and filling herself with a glass of water.

Seb and Lur simply gave Irene a disappointed look, before moving to join Monique in the kitchen and patted the poor woman’s back, trying their best to help her calm down.

“My poor baby, I don’t know what condition she might be in.”

“Your poor baby went in to that condition on her own. I am telling you guys. this all is just so suspicious and…” Irene stood defending her stance but Seb couldn’t take her words anymore.

“Oh my God! Will you just shut up Irene.” He yelled out loud at Irene, who was obviously offended by his loud tone.

“Don’t you ask me shut up. You guys are overly affectionate towards her that’s why you guys don’t understand how she is a big liar. She lied to you guys about the debt for my college fee and…”

“Are you seriously that f*****g thick headed?” Lur scoffed at Irene’s words. “Will you seriously rather stay in denial, than to realize and see how much Althea have done for you and how much she cares about you? And when she might be in trouble because some people clearly were on her tail and tricked her in to believing that they were from the Secret stupid cooking society and probably voluntarily kidnapped her, you are still trying to play the cool kid. How could you even try to pin this on Althea and have zero remorse or guilt?”

“Guilt? Why should I feel guilty? I get it, Althea might have painted this picture that she is a victim and all but she wasn’t that nice. Besides, I never asked her to get any loan from anyone for me. It was simply my fate that I got to attend college and she didn’t. I never asked her to do anything for me.”

She shrugged shamelessly, making both Seb and Lur, stand back in utter shock. They couldn’t believe how thick skinned Irene had become in the past few years and how cold she had become towards Althea.

“You are right.” Monique finally spoke up, making everyone in the room look at her.

Irene was stunned to find her mother agreeing with her, since Monique was never in agreement to anything that Irene did and always opposed her ideas and only allowed her to do something or didn’t argue with her, when Althea would tell Monique to do so.

“She should’ve never taken the loan for you.” Monique spoke up, finally letting out her frustration that she had pent up inside her for the past many years.

She would always let go off Irene and her silly behavior only because Althea would ask her to let go off Irene but since Althea was not there to stop Monique and the girl who had sacrificed her life and dreams for her family was in trouble, Monique was in a completely distressed situation.

“What do you mean?” Irene asked in a fumbling tone.

“I mean exactly what I said. Althea should’ve never taken the loan for an ungrateful brat like you.” Monique lashed out, having nothing to hold her back, “That girl sacrificed her life and her dreams for you, for me and this family when she owed us nothing at all. She could’ve gone to Paris and studied culinary. She could’ve become a chef like she wanted to but instead, she killed herself and her dreams. I watched my daughter choose death, I watched her die every single day of her life. I watched her come home every day, wounded on the inside still keeping up a smile only to make me believe that she was fine. she acted as your father and brother and was the literal man of the house providing us with protection, keeping us free of any worry. She shouldn’t have done all of that for an ungrateful brat like you.”

Monique spat bitterly and fell down on her knees, crying out loud. Lur perched down next to Monique and held her shoulders, trying her best to console the broken soul.

“My poor baby! I never missed her father only because she was always there to look after me and this house. I don’t know what I will do now. I just wish that nothing happens to her and I just hope and pray that she is well and alive.”

“She is… I can feel it.” Seb also bent down and patted Monique’s face, “I can tell. I can feel it that she is alright. you know Althea, she is a fighter. She is a pure soul, there is no way that anyone would ever dare to hurt her. You believe in God, right? Then just pray from Him, that He keeps her in his protection. Althea will fight back and she will be stronger than ever.”

Even though, Seb tried his best to encourage Monique so that her mind wouldn’t think too negatively about Althea’s situation, even though he himself was quite worried about her.

“We have gathered everyone by the town’s square, people will help us spread word online about Althea’s disappearance and even spread it to other towns and cities.” Seb informed Monique, as he helped her up and walked her out of the house.

He left the house along with Monique but Lur stayed back, turning to glare at Irene one last time.

“We know you don’t care and honestly, we don’t care as well if you come with us or not but people around the town will talk if you didn’t show up at the gathering.”

With that she stepped out of the house, leaving Irene alone with her realizations and thoughts.

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What do you think about Irene?

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