“It’s your mother.”
The words cracked through the vault like a whip.
Selene didn’t breathe.
The air vanished from her lungs, sucked out by the sudden implosion of everything she thought she knew. The Hydra soldiers didn’t move. Adrian didn’t blink. Even Dahlia, tied and bloodied, stopped laughing through the gag.
Her mother.
Vincent’s voice buzzed again over the intercom, low and uneven. “She made the call, Selene. She’s been feeding Lazarus intel for years. The DEA, your shipment routes, even Darius.” There was a pause, then quieter: “I’m sorry.”
Selene’s throat clenched so tight she couldn’t swallow.
“No,” she said out loud. But her voice didn’t even sound like hers—it was brittle, foreign, the rasp of a child discovering monsters were real. “You’re wrong.”
Adrian stepped in, hi
