CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The word “Mother” hung in the air like smoke after the explosion, heavier than the toxin that had nearly killed them.
Elena stared at the phone lying in the river mud, Victoria’s elegant face glowing on the cracked screen under the faint light of a distant security lamp.
The yacht in the background looked expensive and anonymous, somewhere warm and far away from the burning mill and the freezing riverbank.
Jax picked up the phone with shaking fingers, zooming in on the photo. “That’s really her. The scar on her left collarbone… I saw it in old files. She’s alive. And she just called herself your mother.”
Elena’s newly restored strength suddenly felt fragile again.
The antidote had chased away the paralysis, but it couldn’t touch the ice spreading through her chest.
