55. Chapter 55
Chapter fifty-five
Lina
For a brief moment, my brain refuses to catch up to what my eyes are seeing.
Elinor Allister. In my bakery. With a gun pointed at me.
I don’t scream. I don’t run. I don’t even move. I stand there, frozen in disbelief, as my brain decides this is another file to be stored away—another trauma to be cataloged later.
She steps closer and says calmly, “You’re going to walk out that door with me.”
Her voice is polite. Almost bored.
I nod, because nodding costs less energy than arguing. Then I dust my hands on my apron before rounding the stainless-steel prep table and heading for the door with her.
My heart isn’t racing. My hands aren’t shaking. That probably isn’t normal. I make a mental note to ask my therapist about it later, if there is a later.
I pass the counter, moving toward her. She grabs my arm, tight, and squeezes.
“You have been quite the problem, Lina,” she says.
I don’t answer. But I’m not going to stay quiet.
“Did you kill David?” I ask.
She laughs, like I’ve told her a joke.
“Oh sweetie, you sent him to me on a rampage. I haven’t seen him that angry in an exceptionally long time.” She says, clicking her tongue. “His death is on your hands.”
I turn toward her, anger cutting through the numbness.
“You have no right to put that on me.”
Her palm cracks across my cheek. White-hot pain explodes through my skull, snapping my head to the side
“Shut up. Before I spread your brains across this pretty little bookshop.”
Then…the back door flies open.
Elinor hears it the same time I do. Her body goes rigid, the gun no longer a suggestion—it’s pressed hard against my head. Cold. Metallic. Real.
I can tell it’s Alex without turning around. I feel him before I see him.
When I do turn to look, he’s what I expected—cool, calm, terrifyingly composed. Like this is a chess match, not a hostage situation. Before he even gets a word out, she shoots towards him.
My heart skips a beat. I nearly fall to the ground in panic, but her aim is way off.
Alex comes out from behind the wall and speaks to her the way someone speaks when they already know how this ends.
And I watch something change in her.
The gun starts to shake. Just enough to tell me she didn’t expect this. She didn’t expect him.
I’m not as scared as I should be. It honestly feels like déjà vu. Like my nervous system has been here before and decided panic is inefficient.
So Alex talks. To distract her. To hold her where she is—anchored in conversation, suspended between choices. Every word he offers her is measured, deliberate—engaging enough to keep her answering instead of acting.
Alex is buying time. I know it. Reese is already moving pieces somewhere I can’t see.
So I help.
“Why?” I ask, breaking the tension to throw her off tempo. “Why me? Why any of it?”
Her grip tightens, forcing the cold barrel deeper against my temple until the steel bites into my skin.
“What did I ever do to you?” I continue, my voice steadier than I feel. “I loved your son. I stood by him when I should have walked away sooner. I was going to have your grandchild.”
Her laugh is sudden.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she says sharply. “Cole means nothing to me. And neither do you—or the child you carried.”
The words strike deeper than her palm ever did.
She exhales through her nose, shaking her head as if I’m the one who doesn’t understand the rules of this world.
“You think this was about you?” she says. “About Cole?” Her eyes travel over me, studying. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to look in a mirror?”
My stomach tightens.
Her eyes narrow—not cruelly. Something like recognition flickers there instead.
“You came from nothing,” she says. “I did too,” she continues. “Nothing handed to me. No safety net. No one waiting to catch me if I fall.” Her mouth twists. “So when a man like David comes along—money, power, promises—I persuaded myself it was love. Anything to escape the hell-hole I was in.”
A humorless laugh slips out. “It wasn’t. It was another cage, only dressed up like freedom.”
She shifts, the gun dipping slightly, as if the weight of the memory pulls it down.
“I loved a man who made sure I never forgot how disposable I was,” she continues, her voice tightening enough to betray the years she pretends didn’t leave scars.
“Every time I tried to leave because I couldn’t endure another minute with that son-of-a-bitch,” she says, “he reminded me what I’d lose. He made sure I understood I would walk out with nothing and no one and he would make my life miserable for leaving him.”
Her eyes harden. “And that was no threat. I know my husband. That was a promise.”
Silence hangs heavy.
“I stayed because I was afraid,” she says, adding. “At first, I told myself things would get better. Then I told myself I was staying for the children. Before I knew it, thirty years had passed.”
A bitter laugh escapes her.
“One day I looked around and realized I don’t recognize my life. I spent three decades in a marriage without love, convincing myself that surviving was enough.” Her gaze drops to her hand holding the gun.
“My daughters barely speak to me.” She swallows hard. “They say I’m cruel. That I demanded perfection and never let them simply be my children.” Her gaze drops to her manicured nails. “Maybe they’re right.”
Her jaw tightens.
“And my son...”
“My son looks and acts so much like his father it hurts. Same arrogance. Same entitlement. Same way of making me feel small with a single sentence.” The stillness stretches between us.
“I gave everything I had to my family,” she says. “And somehow it was never enough.” Her voice cracks.
“So I stopped trying to escape, stopped being defiant every chance I got,” she says. “I started planning.”
My stomach tightens.
“And Virginia,” she adds, bitterness flaring. “She knew what I was capable of.” Her lips curl. “She never gave me grace or empathy. Not once.”
“From the moment she met me,” she continues. “She saw who I was underneath the smiles and charity luncheons.” Her eyes narrow. “She never liked me. And I despised her for it.”
She doesn’t soften. Doesn’t flinch. Then her gaze snaps back to me.
“But you…she adored.”
“You walked away so damn easily,” she says, sounding wounded. “You didn’t beg. You didn’t bargain. You didn’t stay and rot like I did.” Her jaw tightens. “And she gave you what she never gave me. Freedom.”
Understanding washes through me. She was envious I escaped the same life she continued living.
“She defended you,” Elinor continues. “Listened to you. Protected you.” Her voice sharpens. “To her, you were worth saving.”
The gun rises again, steady now. Pushing into my skull. Her eyes red with fury.
“She thought you were enough,“ she says, voice low, “but not me.”
Her mouth twists. “And you…you got everything that was supposed to be mine.”
Her voice drops. “And I hated you for it.”
“I loved my son until he became just like his father,” she says flatly.
Something in her expression hardens, resentment calcifying into something colder as she drives the barrel harder into my temple.
I momentarily avert my gaze, shoving the pain of the metal against my head, down.
“So don’t stand there and talk to me about loving Cole,” she snaps. “You loved him. I endured him and his fucking father.“ She scoffs, dismissing him entirely now.
Then, her eyes glint with something close to pride. “I planned to run off more than once,” she continues. “Disappear. Start over. But every time I got close, Virginia was right there. Watching and digging. Asking questions she had no damn business asking.”
The gun pushes harder into my head.
“So I realized something,” she says softly. “If I want security, if I want out, she has to go.”
My stomach churns.
“She was already fragile,” she goes on. “Medication. Caregivers. No one questions a slow decline when it fits the narrative.” She shrugs. “I paid the right people under the table. Adjusted dosages. A little here. A little there. Nothing obvious.”
Her calm is terrifying.
“By the time anyone could notice,” she says, “it was too late.”
She tilts her head toward me. “Poison doesn’t have to be fast to be effective.”
Nausea slams into me.
My inner sense told me she played a part in Virginia’s demise. Now it’s confirmed.
“As for my grandchild…” she says then, her mouth curling as if she’s tasting something sour.
I don’t answer. I can’t.
“Oh honey,” she sighs, almost indulgent. “You were about to bring another male Allister into this world. That child would have grown into the same thing his father became and his grandfather before him.”
She studies me, utterly unrepentant. “I did you a favor,” she whispers in my ear.
The words are light. Casual. Like she’s talking about returning a defective purchase.
My stomach twists violently.
No. No, no, no—