Entangled

Chaper 1

BattleAngelAnita0827 sent Rock_Li her last message yesterday at 3:46 a.m.

The owner of this account is dead.

The glow of the white words was too harsh for her stinging eyes. Liatta thought dark mode stopped your eyes from hurting. It wasn't working at all.

Her mind escaped into these sorts of useless thoughts as her body sat there too still. Frozen in the moment just before she broke down in tears. She was split into two one half stunned unable to react to anything. The other half, awake and eager to focus on anything but those glowing white words that bluntly told her that her other half was gone.

She had sat like this since yesterday at 3:47 a.m. The glow from behind her curtains had appeared three maybe four hours ago. Liatta heard her uncle getting ready to go to work thirty minutes ago. Ten minutes ago, he slipped her breakfast through her bedroom door flap. It might still be warm. She knew her Uncle Robert worked hard to make her food every morning. She didn't want to waste it.

But she didn't move.

~℘~

She spent hours just sitting there until finally her computer went to sleep. There was no warning. One moment the screen was on, relentlessly flashing those white letters, refusing to let her escape from the reality they described, then nothing. The screen's light just disappeared. It was like not just those words but every word that she and BattleAngelAnita0827 had ever exchanged were swallowed in an instant. Every promise. The thought shattered whatever spell had been holding her body in place. Before she even realized it, Liatta's hands were moving across her keyboard.

She opened her browser and typed BattleAngelAnita0827's real name into the search bar. The results were not surprising but still overwhelming. An endless list of article after article still growing as reporters fell over themselves to be the first to report on the death of the infamous shut-in heiress of Arach incorporated, Anita Arach.

Liatta read through each and every one. She forced herself not to skip over even the most lurid and disrespectful articles, the ones that took Anita's death as a chance to push the same wild theories that she was somehow a murderer/ murdered/ an imposter that they had since Anita's parents were killed. Liatta needed to find even a hint about where the funeral would be held. She wasn't naïve, she knew that the funeral wouldn't be open to the public. But if she explained who she was- who Anita was to her, they would understand. They had to.

She had made a promise to Anita. That one day they would meet in person. It was a hazy promise that they always left on the horizon because they were both cowardly to risk leaving their sanctuaries, but that promise was the last connection Liatta had to her.

So Liatta scrolled through article after article while constantly refreshing the search engine page for new information. Until finally the Arach family published a press release, which triggered another media firestorm. The funeral would be a private service held in two days in the family's Lyre City residence.

Liatta breathed a sigh of relief. The funeral would be in her city. She knew that the main Arach estate was in Lyre City, but she didn't know for sure that the funeral would be held there.

"It's close," She pressed her lips together to distract herself from her turning stomach. She could make it. Liatta just hoped the Arach family would understand.

She said the Arach family but really, now that Anita was gone, there was only one member left. A decade ago, Harold and Vivian Arach were brutally murdered in their villa off the coast Italy, sparking a media firestorm. Countless articles documentaries and movies 'inspired by true events' had been created after the tragedy naming anyone from jilted mistresses, the mafia to their orphaned children as the culprit.