Rot Beneath

Rot Beneath

Sue didn’t plan it.
At least, that’s what she kept telling herself.
The USB sat on her desk like a ticking bomb—small, innocent-looking, but deadly in all the ways that mattered. Inside were scanned pages of Michelle’s diary, the ones Sue found tucked behind the bookshelf weeks ago. The ones she definitely should’ve thrown away.
The ones she definitely shouldn’t be sending to anyone.
But here she was.
In her room.
Lights off.
Laptop casting a cold glow against her face.
Her heart hammered in her chest as she hovered over the file folder labeled:
“NOT FOR ANYONE.”
God, the irony.
She swallowed hard.
Her finger trembled above the trackpad.
“Just send it… and it’s done,” she whispered.
“No one will know. No one will know it’s me.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Because deep down, Sue wasn’t doing this for justice.
Not out of loyalty.
Not because she cared about Cole or Michelle’s mess.
She was doing it because she was scared.
Scared of Michelle—
of how unhinged she was becoming,
of the obsession scribbled across those pages,
of what she might do next.
But also scared of Laura.
Scared of how Laura always ended up in the center of everything, even when she didn’t want to be.
Scared of how people kept choosing her—
even Cole.
Sue clenched her jaw, forcing herself to breathe.
“No. This isn’t about her,” she lied to herself again.
She clicked open the email draft she’d been staring at for nearly an hour. It was blank except for the address:
coleatk12@
An anonymous sender.
No name.
No trace.
No hint.
Just pure exposure.
Sue attached the ZIP file.
The little bar spun… spun… then blinked green.
Uploaded.
Her heart dropped to her stomach.
The subject line burned at her:
“You need to see what she wrote.”
Simple.
Cold.
No signature.
Her finger hovered over SEND.
Sue closed her eyes.
In her mind, she saw Laura and Michelle—two different storms, each dangerous in their own way. And then she saw Cole, always in the wrong place, always in the middle of consequences he didn’t ask for.
Her chest tightened.
“This is the right thing,” she whispered.
“This will protect him.”
“This will… I don’t know. It will fix something.”
Lie after lie piling in her throat.
But whatever this was, she was already too deep.
She pressed SEND.
The email shot out of her outbox with a soft ping.
Sue’s breath hitched—
a mix of relief and a cold wave of regret crawling up her spine.
It was done.
No turning back.
She shut the laptop fast, almost slamming it, as if closing it would erase the guilt. She pressed her hands to her face, fingers tangling in her hair.
“God…” she whispered, shaking.
“What… did I just do?”
The room felt smaller.
No—tighter.
As if the walls were inching closer, silently judging her.
She curled up on her bed, knees to her chest, trying to convince herself she hadn’t just started a fire.
But deep down, she felt it—
Something had shifted.
Something irreversible.
And tomorrow…
someone’s world would burn for it.

COLE’S 1ST POV

I don’t know what I expected when I opened that anonymous email.
A prank.
Some dumb rumor.
Maybe even another blurry hallway picture of Faye and me that people kept pretending wasn’t obvious.
But not this.
Not scanned pages of a diary I shouldn’t be reading.
Not Michelle’s handwriting—small, sharp, obsessively neat—spilling paranoia and delusion line after line.
I sat there in my room, the glow of my laptop the only light, pages flipping as fast as my trembling fingers could scroll.
At first… I thought it was some sick joke.
Then I saw my own name.
“If Cole comes back to me, I’ll tell him everything.
If he doesn’t…
I’ll make him stay.”
My stomach dropped.
What the hell does that mean?
I kept reading.
More entries.
More scribbles crossing out previous scribbles.
Whole paragraphs rambling about Edward.
Plans.
Threats.
Fixations.
And then—
“If it comes to it… I can fake a miscarriage.
Pain is temporary.
Losing him forever is not.”
My breath froze in my chest.
I read that line again.
Again.
And again.
By the fourth time, my hands were already shaking.
Michelle.
Pregnant Michelle.
Hysterical Michelle.
Crying-in-the-hallway Michelle.
Fake a miscarriage?
Why would she even…
Why would she write something like that?
I leaned back in my chair, choking on air, trying to swallow a truth I didn’t want.
Is she…
Is she even pregnant?
Or—
Is she using it?
As a weapon?
As a leash?
My pulse hammered violently against my ribs, a painful, ugly rhythm.
God.
I should’ve seen it.
I should’ve known something was off the moment she announced it like a performance, like she wanted the whole school to gasp on cue.
But this—
This was different.
Darker.
Calculated.
I scrubbed a hand down my face and pushed away from the desk, pacing my room because sitting still felt impossible.
Every memory of her for the past month flashed through my head like a shattered slideshow—
Her tears.
Her sudden mood swings.
The way she cornered Faye.
The way she kept stalking my dad.
None of it fit together before.
Now it did.
Too perfectly.
I stopped in the middle of the room, pressing my palms against my skull as if I could physically push the panic out.
If she’s lying—
If she’s faking—
Faye might be in more danger than any of us realized.
I exhaled shakily, staring at the dark window like the night could give me answers.
She wrote about me.
Wrote about Edward.
Wrote about Faye like she was… some obstacle, a stain she needed to scrub out.
And that line—
that damn line about miscarriage—
kept replaying in my head like a bomb waiting to detonate.
I clenched my jaw until it hurt.
Michelle wasn’t just spiraling.
She was planning.
She was capable of anything.
And now…
I had to figure out who sent me this and what the hell they expected me to do next.
Because whatever this is—
whatever she’s doing—
It’s not just a lie.
It’s a lie inside a lie.
And it’s about to explode.

I sat on the edge of my bed long after the diary pages stopped scrolling, the screen dimming every few minutes like even my laptop was trying to get me to breathe.
But I couldn’t.
Not properly.
Because every new thought sharpened into another blade pointed at the same place—
Edward.
My father.
The man I grew up calling the smartest person I knew.
The man I trusted because… well, he was my dad.
And dads weren’t supposed to be dangerous.
But then I remembered the PI report Faye received.
The way she didn’t want to talk about it yet.
The way she looked at me that night—
like she was holding something that scared her.
I thought it was about her mom.
Now…
God.
What if it wasn’t only that?
I pushed my palms against my knees, grounding myself, but the dizziness kept creeping in. My room felt too small, the air too thin, like the walls were closing in around the things I didn’t want to admit.
The diary had a few pages with Edward’s name circled.
Not just mentioned—
circled.
Underlined.
Starred.
Obsession?
Maybe.
But there were entries that weren’t written like a girl obsessed with a man.
They were written like a girl who held secrets.
Secrets she shouldn’t know.
Secrets she shouldn’t have access to.
One line hit me like a fist when I reread it:
“He thinks he can get rid of me like he did with the others.”
Others?
My blood turned cold.
Others who what?
Others who got involved?
Others who got pregnant?
Others who threatened him?
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to rationalize—
trying to cling to the version of my father I knew.
Edward, the charming businessman.
Edward, the man who buys me the same breakfast sandwich every Saturday morning.
Edward, the man who avoided arguments like they were beneath him.
But then there were the things I never let myself question—
The money that never made sense.
The late-night calls.
The women he talked to behind closed doors.
Michelle.
My mother crying alone in the kitchen the night she found out.
And now Michelle’s diary…
I swallowed the bitter taste rising in my throat.
What if my father isn’t just a man who cheated?
What if he’s something worse?
Worse than I ever imagined.
I stood and walked toward the window, staring at the quiet neighborhood below—calm, peaceful, like the world wasn’t unraveling inches from me.
I pressed my forehead against the glass.
A painful thought crawled into my mind, slow and poisonous:
What if Michelle isn’t lying about everything?
What if she’s lying about the pregnancy—
but telling the truth about my father?
The weight of it almost buckled my knees.
I let out a shaky breath.
No.
No, I can’t ignore this.
I can’t pretend I didn’t read that.
Because if Edward did something—
if he hurt anyone—
if he’s hiding something behind that perfect smile…
Then Faye…
My Faye…
She’s standing right in the crossfire without even knowing it.
The room suddenly felt colder.
My fists tightened until my knuckles turned white.
I didn’t want this.
I didn’t want to suspect my own father.
But something ugly and familiar stirred in my gut—
the truth rarely stays buried.
Not forever.
And now…
I was terrified of what I’d find if I kept digging.
Terrified of what would crumble if I didn’t.

I didn’t realize I was shaking until my nails dug crescents into my palms.
Not from fear anymore—
not exactly.
It was something hotter.
Sharper.
Like every thought inside my head was rubbing against sandpaper.
Doubt.
Rage.
Doubt again.
They kept cycling like I was losing my mind.
I sank into my chair, elbows on my knees, hands pressed into my hair. My pulse pounded in my ears so loudly I could barely hear anything else.
How long had I been ignoring the signs?
How long had I been pretending Edward was just “complicated,” not corrupt?
My stomach twisted at the memory of Michelle’s diary page—
the one where she wrote:
“He’s not scared of hurting people.
Only of being caught.”
I wanted to believe she was lying.
God, I wanted to.
But if she was lying…
then why did it feel like parts of me recognized the truth?
I choked out a short, humorless laugh.
Great.
Now I’m thinking like Faye.
A private investigator, Michelle’s diary, hidden threats—
what’s next?
But then my jaw clenched tight enough to ache.
Because Michelle wasn’t the only one who hinted at something darker.
There were moments growing up…
little flashes I buried because I didn’t want to look too closely.
Like the night I heard Edward yelling at someone on the phone—
his voice cold, dangerous, almost unrecognizable.
Or when he told me,
“People only get away with things when they’re smart about who they cross.”
Or when he came home with a split knuckle and said he “slipped,”
but the bruise on his jaw looked more like a punch he definitely threw back.
I told myself he was just stressed.
Just human.
Just imperfect.
But what if “imperfect” was the prettiest lie?
My chest tightened, anger spreading like wildfire burning everything it touched.
How dare he drag me into this.
How dare he drag Faye into this.
How dare he pretend he was clean—
when he might be the dirtiest of all.
I slammed my fist into my desk.
The pain shot through my knuckles, grounding me, anchoring me, but not calming me.
Nothing could calm me.
Because if Michelle’s pregnancy was fake—
a tool, a weapon—
then someone taught her how to use it.
Who else but Edward?
My breathing faltered.
“You son of a…”
I didn’t even finish.
The words dissolved into raw heat.
I hated this.
I hated feeling like I needed to look over my shoulder inside my own house.
I hated that Faye—
sweet, stubborn, hurting Faye—
was tangled in the same web, and she didn’t even know it.
And I hated—
God, I hated—
that a part of me wasn’t even surprised.
The truth tasted metallic on my tongue:
I don’t trust him.
Not anymore.
Maybe I never truly did.
The realization made my hands tremble.
Because once doubt takes root…
it never stays small.
It grows.
It spreads.
It crushes everything under it.
And right now, that doubt was screaming one thing louder than anything else:
If Edward is involved in something twisted…
Faye might be in more danger than she realizes.
And I might be the only one who can protect her—
even if the threat is my own father.