“She said if I disappeared, everything would end quietly. But if I stayed…” Her voice trembled. “…I would pay the price for it.”
“What price?”
Lena closed her eyes as if reliving a nightmare she had spent years trying to escape.
“She said she had enough money, enough influence, and enough power to make the entire world believe I was the villain.”
Silence swallowed the room.
“What could a frightened twenty-year-old girl do against that, Grant?”
Her voice finally broke.
“I only wanted our daughter to be born free.”
Grant felt his throat tighten.
“What about the phone call? You called me that morning.”
Lena looked up.
“Yes. I did.”
Grant’s heart skipped.
“But you never answered.”
She took a slow breath.
“Your mother answered the call.”
Sofia tightened her grip around her mother’s hand.
“She told me you already knew everything.”
Grant could feel his pulse pounding in his ears.
“And she also said…”
For the first time in ten years, Lena looked directly into his eyes.
“…that you believed we were nothing more than a burden you wanted to leave behind.”
Grant stood motionless.
Ten years of searching.
Ten years of resentment.
Ten years spent believing a story that had never been true.
Slowly, he rose to his feet.
The look in his eyes belonged to a man who had just lost everything… and somehow found it all again.
“We are leaving this place today.”
Lena shook her head in fear.
“Grant… you don’t understand what she is capable of.”
Grant looked toward the darkness beyond the window.
Then he spoke softly.
“Then perhaps it’s time she learns… what I’m capable of.”
