Chapter 30 Cursed Inheritance #2
“Then she’s connected to him somehow. Family, maybe.
Or she inherited it from someone who was.
” The pieces swirl in my mind, but they don’t quite fit together yet.
“But that doesn’t make sense. She’s been trying to keep us away from campus, remember?
After my parents’ trial and my testimony during the Queen’s, she practically begged me to consider taking a leave of absence. ”
Max nods slowly. “That’s not the behavior of someone who wants us under surveillance. If she were part of the network, wouldn’t she want us close where she could monitor us?”
“Unless…” I trail off as a more disturbing possibility takes shape. “Unless she was trying to protect us. Or protect the school from us.”
“What do you mean?”
I think about that conversation outside Pemberton Hall, about Mrs. Harpsons' genuine-seeming concern for my well-being.
About how she emphasized that the university would support me, but suggested, I might be happier elsewhere.
Not the words of someone hunting me, but of someone who knew danger was coming and wanted me safely away from it.
“Max, what if she knows about the network but isn’t part of it? What if that ring connects her to someone who was, but she’s been trying to distance herself and the school from whatever’s coming?”
“Or,” Max says grimly, “what if she knows exactly what’s at Shark Bay and was trying to protect us from it?”
The implications make my head spin. If Mrs. Harpsons has been aware of the network’s connection to the university, if she’s been trying to shield students from something larger and more dangerous…
“We need to go back,” I say, the words surprising me as they emerge. “Max, everything we’ve been searching for, all the answers about who’s really pulling the strings—they’re at Shark Bay. They’ve always been at Shark Bay.”
“That could be exactly what they want us to think,” Max warns. “What if this photograph, this connection, is designed to draw us back to campus where they can control the situation?”
“Then they’ve underestimated what we’re capable of now.
” I close the laptop with hands that have stopped shaking, my mind already racing through possibilities.
“Think about it—if Mrs. Harpsons was trying to keep us away, and someone else wants us back, then returning might put us right in the middle of a conflict we didn’t know existed. ”
Max stands, pacing the small confines of the motel room. “A conflict between different factions of the network, maybe. Those who want to complete whatever ritual was interrupted, and those who think it’s too dangerous to continue.”
“Which gives us an opportunity.” I realize, feeling something that might be hope kindle in my chest. “We don’t have to fight the entire network at once. We find the fault lines, exploit the divisions, turn them against each other.”
“Belle, that’s incredibly dangerous. If we’re wrong about Mrs. Harpsons, if she’s more involved than we think…”
“Then we’ll be walking into a trap. But if we’re right, if she’s been trying to protect the school from the very forces that created us…” I think about my grandmother’s letter, about thirty years of carefully gathered intelligence. “Maybe we’re not as alone as we thought.”
Max stops pacing, his expression shifting from fear to something more calculating. “You’re talking about returning to campus not as fugitives, but as students who’ve decided to stop running and finish our education.”
“I’m talking about walking back into the heart of whatever’s been orchestrating our lives and finding out who’s really in control.
” I stand, moving to the window where morning light reveals an empty parking lot stretching toward possibilities I can’t yet imagine.
“My grandmother spent decades gathering intelligence about this network. She knew something big was coming, something that would require her granddaughter to choose between running and fighting.”
“And you’ve chosen to fight.”
“I’ve chosen to end this.” I turn back to him, seeing my determination reflected in his dark eyes.
“Max, we have resources now. Money, contacts, information they don’t know exists.
We can return to Shark Bay not as victims, but as investigators with the tools to expose whatever’s been hidden there. ”
“We’ll need Luna and Erik,” Max says, his voice carrying the same resolve I feel building in my chest. “And we’ll need to be very careful about how we approach this. If there are competing factions within the network…”
“Then we figure out who’s on which side before we make our move.
” I think about Mrs. Harpsons' ring, about the way she looked at me during that morning conversation—not with the predatory assessment I’ve learned to recognize, but with something that might have been genuine concern.
“Starting with finding out exactly how that ring ended up on our school director’s finger. ”
As Max begins planning our return to the place where this nightmare began, I feel the final pieces of my transformation clicking into place.
Not from victim to survivor, but from survivor to investigator.
Someone with the resources and determination to uncover truths that have been buried for generations.
The Gothic towers of Shark Bay University have watched over decades of carefully orchestrated horrors, their ancient stones bearing witness to crimes that span generations.
But those same stones are about to face something the network never anticipated: one of their very own creations, armed with her grandmother’s intelligence and absolutely nothing left to lose.
They forged me in their fires, shaped me with their cruelty, trained me to be their perfect weapon.
Now they’re about to learn what happens when that weapon finds the target.