56. Chapter 56
Chapter fifty-six
Lina
Please. Please tell me this isn’t possible. Please, God...tell me she didn’t have something to do with my child’s death.
The thought rips through me like shattered glass.
My stomach knots so violently I have to press a hand against it. Nausea surges up my throat, my mouth flooding with saliva as I fight the urge to be sick.
No. No, she couldn’t.
Could she?
“The dinner,” she continues, “that big, beautiful family dinner. Everyone laughing. Toasting. Pretending.”
I see it—crystal chandeliers, white linen, the long table gleaming with silver and wineglasses. The Allister estate dressed up like a magazine spread.
She lets out a short, amused laugh.
“I was careful,” she says. “Everyone had a glass in front of them. No one was watching. They never do at those kinds of ridiculous dinners that David insisted on having for show.”
My chest tightens.
“I slipped something into Cole’s drink,” she continues. “Nothing too concentrated. Just enough.” She shrugs. “I knew he’d drive you home. He always did. He hated waiting for drivers. Hated being told what to do.”
Then her eyes flick back to me. “And yours,” she adds lightly. “I didn’t forget about you,” she whispers.
The room rocks around me, slow and unsteady, as though the ground itself has given up trying to hold me.
“Different mixture,” she explains, almost instructional. “Subtle. Something that wouldn’t show up right away. Something doctors could chalk up to stress. Or trauma.” Her mouth curves. “Or a tragic accident.”
Oh God.
My stomach plummets. Heat drains from my face as my vision tunnels, the world narrowing until all I can focus on is the impossible scene in front of me. I blink, willing the room to steady, but it only sways harder.
“I didn’t need you dead,” she says calmly. “Just empty-handed.”
“Cassie was all too willing to help me with your drink. That’s why she sat next to you that night. She wanted the one thing that tied you to Cole gone as much as I did.”
She watches me carefully, gauging whether the truth has landed yet.
“One drink to make sure he wouldn’t make it home,“ she continues. “And one to make sure the pregnancy didn’t survive.”
Her voice doesn’t waver. “Efficient,” she adds. “Don’t you think?”
Tears blur my vision until the room dissolves into indistinct shapes.
I can’t breathe.
The walls appear to constrict me, the ground losing its firmness. My chest tightens until every breath becomes a battle, a sharp ache blooming beneath my ribs and spreading through every part of me.
No. No. No—
The word echoes uselessly through my mind, as if denying it long enough might somehow make it untrue.
A high-pitched ringing fills my ears, drowning out everything else. The sounds around me fades into muffled fragments as my heartbeat pounds so violently it’s in my throat.
Too fast. Far too fast.
Grief crashes over me in relentless waves.
Not just for what I lost. For what was taken.
For every birthday I’ll never celebrate. Every scraped knee I’ll never kiss. Every laugh I’ll never hear. Every memory that was stolen prior to its existence.
My knees give way.
Strength drains from my body so completely it’s as though the ground has vanished beneath me. I reach for something—anything—to steady myself.
There’s nothing.
Nothing except the crushing weight of a truth I never wanted to know.
“I wanted it clean,” she goes on. “Simple. A tragedy.” Her eyes light up—not with grief, but with satisfaction. “Me, the poor mother who lost her son. The devastated grandmother who never even got to hold her grandchild.” A laugh bubbles up from her chest, shrill and ugly.
“Two birds with one stone,” she says. “Cole and the baby. But he decided to wear a seatbelt that night. He never does. He should have died that day too,” she says, as though it was an inconvenience.
I can’t hold it back anymore.
A sob tears free from somewhere deep inside me as hot tears spill down my cheeks.
My baby. My Danny.
I clutch at my chest, desperate to ease the ache threatening to split me in two, but it only grows heavier. Every memory crashes over me at once—his tiny fingers wrapped around mine, the dreams I’d carried for him, the life he’d never get to live.
My sweet boy. I’m so sorry.
“I didn’t know the trust only required you to get pregnant,” she adds, irritation flashing across her face like I’m the one who tricked her.
“I thought the money was tied to the actual live birth. So I did what I had to do to make sure you walked away with nothing. Cassie was all too easy to convince, easy to pay off. After all, she’s only after the money.
At least she’s up front about it. She was even up front about her child not being Cole’s.
I can at least admire her honesty and determination,” she says, laughing, like it’s all one big joke.
Suddenly, her expression hardens into annoyance. “Turns out I simply misunderstood the trust. I should have made sure you all died that day.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. I’m sure my stunned face says it all.
This woman who once kissed my cheek and asked how the baby was doing, who placed her hand on my stomach and smiled, as if she cared, murdered my child. My innocent little Danny. Her grandchild.
What she doesn’t realize is a part of me did die that day. The day Danny took his last breath. The day I woke up to a future that no longer existed with him in it.
I remember the magnitude of that loss. The hollow ache that settled inside me and never truly left. The way I kept reaching for a life that had already slipped through my fingers.
And now she stands here, pinning me with a stare as though the real tragedy is that I survived it. As though losing my child wasn’t enough.
The anger seeps into my bones, and I wipe my last tear away.
“Oh, get it together, Lina,” she says, spitting my name.
Terrifyingly—I understand something. This is who I could have become. If I had stayed. If I had believed the threats. If I had let fear keep me trapped the way it trapped her. Bitter. Hollow. Rotting from the inside out.
I think of the day I left Cole. How I walked away with nothing. And I would rather have lost everything than become this.
I left because I wanted to live. She stayed because she wanted to win.
This woman destroyed more than one life, all for money.
I hear Alex shift slightly behind me—and I know that if she pulls the trigger, she won’t live another second. But I will be gone.
The thought should terrify me. Instead, something unexpected happens. The panic recedes. Just the right amount for me to breathe—to remember where I am.
The sound of my heartbeat thrumming in my ears begins to fade. The tunnel vision eases. The floor feels solid beneath my feet again.
Alex hasn’t said a word. He doesn’t need to. His presence wraps around me like an anchor. Solid and unmoving.
Since this nightmare began, I’m not alone. And somehow that changes everything.
The fear that has ruled so much of my life loosens its grip.
Alex may be here, ready to save me. But I can save my damn self.
My shoulders straighten and my breathing steadies. The shaking in my hands subsides.
Alex stands behind me, his strength and quiet confidence at my back. His absolute certainty that I’m capable of more than I think settles into my bones. I’m not afraid anymore. I’m done.
I didn’t stay. I didn’t rot. I didn’t become her. And she hates me for it. But she doesn’t get to take anything else from me.
The heaviness of the gun makes her hand shake, and now that she sees the rage in me, so does she.
Krav Maga taught me one thing above all else—hesitation is an opening.
Slow at first. Controlled. Don’t rush. Don’t panic. Move.
So I move.
I turn into her, knocking the barrel off-line as I step inside her space, the way Alex taught me—redirect first, control the weapon, close the distance. My hand clamps down on her wrist, twisting hard, using bone against joint, leverage over strength. She screams.
It gives, and the gun clatters to the floor before she even understands what’s happened.
She gasps, then stumbles.
I don’t stop. Alex’s voice echoes in my head. You don’t disengage until you’re safe.
I sweep her legs out from under her and drive her down, my knee pinning her shoulder, my forearm pressed across her back—pressure where it counts, where balance and breath fail in unison.
She moans from the pain, but it’s useless now.
“Don’t move,” I say, voice steady. “You’re done.”
She struggles, but she’s weak. Smaller than I realized. All that power reduced to shaking breath beneath me.
I look up and meet Alex’s eyes.
There’s pride there. Relief. And something fierce and unwavering. He always knew I’d get here.
Sirens are close now.
I hold her down until help arrives, until hands pull her away, until the weight of what I did catches up with me.
I didn’t survive this life of mine to die quietly at the hands of someone who thought I was disposable. I fought back. And I fucking won.