CHAPTER 26
BEFORE THE CALL
I did not know it yet.
But my body already did.
There are moments when suspicion does not arrive as a thought, but as a physical state — a weight behind the breastbone, dulled hearing in a room where nothing has changed, the sense that there is one molecule too many in the air.
This was that kind of morning.
I sat in the kitchen, drank coffee and looked out of the window, but saw nothing specific. Sight worked, interpretation did not. The brain had shifted into another mode.
Not observation.
Modelling.
The phone was silent.
Too silent.
No messages from Ella. No anger. No reproaches. Not even a chaotic “you still have my keys”.
Silence after a break-up usually means only one thing:
something is happening outside the field of view.
Neuroscientists call it predictive threat processing — the brain begins to draw scenarios without evidence, because emptiness is more dangerous than bad news.
(Clark, A. – Surfing Uncertainty, 2018)
I remembered my email.
The password.
The old password.
Simple. Functional. The sort I had meant to change.
Later.
Ella was angry. Jealous. And she had time.
That was enough.
I did not feel fear.
Fear requires imagination.
I felt a shift in structure.
As if someone had quietly moved a piece of furniture in a room you have lived in for years, and you do not notice at once, but your body already knows — you will have to correct your step as you walk.
At the same time Ella was sitting at her computer.
I did not know that.
But I could reconstruct it.
She was one of those people who turn anger into method. Not an explosion. An algorithm.
My email opened without resistance.
I had left the door ajar.
Not out of negligence.
Because most of the time no one comes in.
She did not read everything.
She looked for words.
Jolanta.
Gunda.
Fragments.
Times.
Incomplete sentences.
“How are you.”
“To meet without a purpose.”
“I liked the walk.”
From those three elements you can build any reality.
The brain is an excellent screenwriter when it is given incomplete information.
(Kahneman, D. – Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011)
Ella did it quickly.
Without doubt.
A message to Jolanta:
“I don’t know what he tells you, but you definitely aren’t the only one. He always has several at the same time. I just wanted you to know before it’s too late.”
Truth?
Interpretation?
Defence?
It does not matter.
Only the effect matters.
Then — Gunda.
A name with structure.
An official format. An institutional scent. Without traces of emotion.
The message was short:
“If you really know Vito, you might want to look in his house or his car. There may be things there that he wouldn’t want anyone to see.”
A seed.
Not an accusation.
A suggestion.
I, at that time, was driving to work.
The road was familiar. The car — the same.
And yet I looked towards the glove compartment more often than necessary.
Unconsciously.
My hands held the steering wheel more steadily than usual.
Low affect.
High control.
In psychology this combination is considered “cold vigilance” — a state in which emotion does not interfere with analysis.
(Damasio, A. – The Feeling of What Happens, 1999)
I did not open the compartment.
The phone vibrated.
An advert.
I exhaled.
Maybe I’m overthinking, I thought.
Maybe Ella simply left.
Maybe this is only the body’s old habit of searching for threat where there isn’t any.
But alongside those thoughts another layer was already working.
Not consciousness.
An architect.
I began to build a story.
Not an excuse.
Not an alibi.
A story.
Who met whom.
Who misunderstood what.
Who was emotional.
Who was unstable.
Who exaggerated.
Because if she really had seen what I thought…
then this was no longer a question about truth.
It was a question about sequence.
Which story would be told first.
And which would sound calmer.
Research shows: people trust not the most accurate narrative, but the most structured one.
(Pennebaker, J. – Opening Up, 1997)
I had known that intuitively long before I read books.
The car kept moving.
The city did too.
And I still did not suspect that this time my audience would not be one woman.
But a system.
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© 2026 Vito Vilks