Mistakenly Eaten

127. Who are you people?

“I checked the bedroom, she’s not there.” Salva announced, as he entered the kitchen and everyone anxiously turned to look at the watch clock, to notice that it was already seven, time for the cook off to begin and Althea still had not come inside the kitchen.

“So, where could she be?” Selena c****d, fixing one of the cameras on a tripod.

“Maybe in the garden?” Martha suggested and Nicholas, who stood by the window of the kitchen that looked over to the beach, behind the house, shook his head.

“It’s about to rain. Althea would never go out in a weather like that.” he announced turning towards everyone else.

“You know, she was quite strangely quiet today when we went and came back from the town.” Selena informed everyone and Anthony looked at his wife and then at his daughter.

“You guys, took her to the town?” he asked and Selena shrugged.

“She stayed with us throughout the whole time but she was silent.”

Andrew who was standing ready with his utensils and ingredients on his station, heard the conversation and felt a ting of guilt panging his heart.

“Really, she was silent? How and why?” Anthony asked his daughter and who remained unfazed.

“I didn’t know why but she was just unusually quiet.”

“Did she stay with you all the time?” Nick enquired this time and Selena nodded.

“Yeah! Except for this one time when Mom and I were shopping for shirts and she was buying some vegetables but we were together and with her, all the time.”

“Well, we did send our Gigi as well in the surveillance room to see where she could be.” Salva told everyone and at the same time, Andrew decided to reveal the truth, scared that Althea’s absence and her obvious silence throughout the day might be alarming and may be linked to what had happened the night before.

“Guys, I think there is something that all of you should know.” He finally spoke up, gulping down hard and swallowing the guilt in his heart.

“What is it?” Nicholas asked, taking a step towards him, as perplexity took over his mind and Andrew’s apprehensive expressions told him that something awry had happened regarding Althea.

“Last night, when I went to visit Fiona, Garry was out on the beach with Geneveve and Lilia.” He revealed the first half of the secret that burdened his chest, but remained smart enough to begin with the part that wouldn’t set off alarms in everyone’s mind.

“What happened then?” Salva pressed on the matter.

Andrew took in a deep breath, as he finally revealed the entire event.

“Geneveve and Lilia went to get some drinks and I entered the bushed forest to go and meet Fiona when Garry noticed that Althea was out, roaming late at night on the island and then she saw me and started following me in to the woods…”

“f**k!”

The soft gasp escaped Salva’s mouth and at the same time, Nicholas closed his eyes, as anger pumped up in his veins and he shook his head in complete and utter disappointment.

“What happened after that?” Anthony asked, just as curious as everyone else.

“Garry rushed to warn me and Fiona and we did hide in the bushes but Geneveve and Lilia, they got spotted by Althea, who was standing in the clearing in the middle of the forest.”

“s**t!” Nicholas grunted, as he realized that his worst fear had become true and Althea may have found out the truth before he got the opportunity to explain things to her.

“But then I came and I distracted her and Garry and Fiona took the two girls away at the same time, we handled the situation pretty well and nicely and…”

As Andrew tried to throw a bucket of water which her his poorly compensating words, over the entire house that burned with fire, which was the messed up the situation at the moment, the door to the kitchen opened up and Gigi rushed in.

“Nick! Salva, Althea… she is in Nick’s office.”

He yelled at the two, who immediately looked at each other and sprinted right out of the kitchen, rushing down the hallway.

“I saw it in the cameras that when she walked down, she first turned towards the kitchen but then she went towards his office. She looked distorted and lost.” He told the two who rushed towards the office and pushed open the door, only to find Althea standing at Nicholas’s desk, with his iPad in her hands.

Tears spring down her cheeks, as her hands shook in sheer bewilderment and astonishment over what she had just discovered.

Her mind was in totally lost and her body seemed paralyzed.

When the door of the office opened up, she didn’t even hear it opening up. Her senses seemed to have lost track of anything at all.

Nicholas ran towards her and was about to snatch the iPad away from her but paused when he saw that she had the transfer papers for the Secret Chef Hunters’ Society opened up on the iPad screen and she had read everything.

Her breaths quivered and her mind was clouded with a number of thoughts.

A mixture of emotions rushed through her veins as she stumbled back but grabbed the desk in front of her for support.

Everything that she had ever known for the past three months was a lie.

The clouds right outside the mansion, added more to her misery, as they clashed together and rumbled with loud thunders, with gushes of strong winds blowing through the windows of the house, that were flown inside, hitting against the walls on both sides, with their glasses breaking away and falling down on the ground.

Martha who stood by the ground, held her hand over her chest, scared at the sight of the window glass breaking but little did she know that it only mirrored and personified, the sound of Althea’s heart breaking.

The iPad fell down from her hands, as she heard the thunders going off in the background but she wasn’t scared anymore.

The pain that she fell at that moment, was immense and more than any fear that she had ever felt.

“Why…?” she asked, between her sobs, as her heart pained and ached in sheer resentment and sorrow.

She kept her head low and her gaze turned down towards the ground, still keeping her hands over her desk, for support. Her knees and legs feeling extremely weak to even support her weight of her body.

Her body felt lifeless and her soul felt shattered. Her will to stand seemed non existent and she felt losing her mind in schism.

The prevarication that she had experienced and just discovered the real side to, had blown her mind off.

“How can any of this be possible?”

She wondered as she looked over to her side and found Nicholas standing in front of her, with nothing but pure guilt written all over her face.

Everything started to make sense in her mind.

From Salva’s first lie, that looking back at from that moment, seemed like a desperate lie and being just as desperate for a chance to make it big and escape her tumultuous life, Althea ate his lie up, right through his fingers, not even leaving behind any crumbs.

Their constant lies about the change in different rules of the society, each time she would bring one up. It only made her realize in that moment that, they didn’t even know anything about the society and only followed and molded the truth according to what she would inform them, she was aware of.

The food that she tasted from the organizers’ cook off, where Nicholas prepared a poorly cooked dish and then his lie about attending a chef school.

And then, Geneveve and Lilia’s presence on the island, was also not just a hallucination. Everything was true and she was made believe that her mind was just exhausted.

“How could you lie so much?” she asked, looking up at Nicholas, who gulped hard.

He knew that there was no return from the point, where he stood and what Althea had seen.

Althea had finally realized and known the truth after she saw the transfer papers. She wasn’t dealing with some regular people. Someone rich, took her, played with her mind and made her believe that she was actually on the real Chef Hunters’ Society.

They went and beyond for some twisted reason and staged the entire thing, only to manipulate with her mind. Everyone else on the island knew each other and they were all involved with one another in this sick game that they played with Althea.

She looked at Nicholas and then towards the door, where all of her culprits stood together, looking at her pitiful condition.

“Who are you people?”

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Whelps! Althea found the truth.

What do you think will happen now?

Thank you for always reading and supporting my work <3