10: Elise

ACCORDING to rumors, the woman was older than Gian by about five years.
The relationship itself started way back in high school, but before then, they were playmates among kids in the neighborhood, so they already knew each other that long and well before the relationship.
Her name, again, was Trina Cheng.
Like Gian, she came from a wealthy background… and they said she really was so beautiful, and that they looked perfect together.
They also seemed perfectly happy and in love from the beginning.
But apparently, the relationship wasn’t as perfect under the surface as everyone thought it was.
Trina started going out with a wild group in senior high, and she got hooked on drugs. That was the alleged reason for the breakup. That it might have been sudden, but to those close to the two, it was seen coming.
The Verrazzanos sent Gian and his younger brother, Paulo, to the UK to continue their studies there. Madam Soniah went with them to personally supervise her boys.
Trina was said to be on the verge of self-destruction when they left. Before they even left, she was already into scandalous shenanigans so she could see Gian. That she was in meltdowns all over the place.
Sounds familiar? Yes. It’s a classic case of you-know-who.
So anyway, while in the UK, Trina’s addiction to opioids got worse. She dropped out of school. When her parents first tried to get her to rehab, she ran away and went with the wild rich brats she had become friends with.
And not long after that, sex videos of her and a bunch of guys went viral on the net.
Like, orgy-type of sex videos.
Like, torture type.
Like, rape fantasy BDSM kind of stuff.
I gulped, as I was remembering Shiela’s weird expression when Gian was very angry at her.
I again felt suspicious that his anger turned her on, even though it froze us all up in the office, as he looked like he was going to commit violence on someone, which we had never seen him look like before.
Oh. My. God.
My spine went rigid on the seat.
Gian could be into… the same like, when… Trina Cheng…
Of course not.
Why not?
What I knew was Gian didn’t have a clue about what was happening to Trina while he was in the UK.
That was what I heard from my parents that afternoon years ago.
Madam Soniah was watching her sons like a hawk—more Gian, really—to protect him from any news that might reach him from home.
Every correspondence went through her, and she filtered it. They were not allowed to answer phones or open their own emails.
Gian, especially, couldn't even talk or chat with his friends and their social media accounts were all deactivated.
He was studying—he was always a top student. That didn’t seem to change after he left for abroad and his grades did not seem affected by his break up with Trina, even though he had shown depression at some point.
But there were also whispers that Gian was good friends with the same students and members of the group with Trina in the videos.
That one was a little too much to even think about. Or believe.
Based on what I already heard, Trina was just as insane as Shiela was.
The kind of crazy that was self-destructive.
The car suddenly felt suffocating because of the resentment I felt for that woman.
No wonder his parents took measures to make sure he was far away from her influence as much as they were able, or that they established no contact even with his friends from home.
After the first school year away, mother and sons flew home for a short vacation.
Trina somehow found out about it and managed to escape from the high-end rehab where she was confined after her family recovered her from her friends with the aid of the police. She somehow was able to contact Gian.
Again, sounding familiar. Crafty as shit.
And after hearing from her, Gian slipped away from his house and guards to meet up with her.
And the two were together in his car when it crashed on the drive back to her folks.
Trina died on the spot.
Gian had to recover in the hospital for a few weeks.
From what Gian said when he could talk, he promised Trina he would elope with her to convince her to go with him.
He planned to bring her back to her parents so they could return her back to her treatments in the rehab.
He said she was much worse than he had ever seen her, or that he could imagine, and there was a part there when he thought he should have brought adults, but it was too late.
Trina fell asleep on the drive but woke up before they reached their destination, and as soon as she saw they were inside her subdivision and on the way to her house, she went wild and started to wrestle the wheel out of his control.
That was when they crashed into a big tree just a few blocks away from her house.
The families tried to keep things as private as possible, but they couldn’t prevent speculation from circulating around.
Janet, her secretary, even said Trina’s exploits had gained a cult following on social media.
The followers were convinced she bore no accountability for most of what she’d done when she was alive.
That she was a free spirit who was more alive than most, and she transcended all that moral hoopla.
Most of them held Gian responsible for her death.
Most prevalent of the accusations was that Gian was so jealous of the other males in the scandalous videos that he bitterly quarreled with Trina in the car without a care that they could crash, despite his spotless reputation for being a responsible student and a son, and that his plan to bring Trina back to her parents was more logical of what he would do if you truly knew his character.
And then, there were the loonies who publicly declared they had forgiven him for killing Trina because the woman loved him, and then they got obsessed with him Gian in turn.
And then there was this other rumor.