57. Chapter 57
Chapter fifty-seven
Lina
We stand outside the bakery doors and watch as officers finish cuffing Elinor before guiding her toward a waiting patrol car. Around back, the coroner’s team loads the bodies of her men into waiting vehicles.
The click of metal around Elinor’s wrists echoes across the parking lot.
For a moment, I simply stare.
This woman has spent years destroying lives without a second thought. Manipulating, lying, and hiding behind money and influence. Now she’s standing in the glow of police lights wearing handcuffs.
She doesn’t look at me. Her chin stays high, her expression pinched with irritation rather than remorse, already rehearsing the lies she’ll tell to save herself.
Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.
Women like Elinor never think they’re the villain of the story. Even when they’re caught.
The detective confirmed that Blake, the Allister family accountant, will also face criminal charges for his involvement in the years-long financial fraud.
He also confirmed that Cassie will be investigated and will probably face prison time for her role in my child’s death.
Even hearing the words feels surreal.
For years, I’ve carried that loss like a wound that never fully healed.
Some days it ached into oblivion. Other days it consumed me, tearing me from the inside out.
But no matter how much it hurt, I always believed it was a tragedy.
A horrible, heartbreaking tragedy. Not a conspiracy or betrayal.
Not something orchestrated by people who smiled to my face and moved through my life as though they belonged there.
I force the lump in my throat back down.
The thought of Cassie being involved still doesn’t feel real.
I trusted her. Maybe not with my deepest secrets, but enough. Enough to never imagine she could play a role in something so monstrous. And now every memory feels tainted. Every conversation and smile. Every moment I spent wondering why my life seemed cursed.
The worst part isn’t the anger. It’s knowing my child didn’t die because the universe was cruel. My child died because people made choices. Selfish, calculated, unforgivable choices.
I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand how someone reaches that point. How they see an innocent child and decide their own wants matter more. Some things are too ugly to make sense of.
Thankfully, every word Elinor confessed was captured by the security cameras throughout the shop. For all of Elinor’s intelligence, her understanding of technology was clearly not one of her strengths.
I don’t know what she expected to happen after she killed me. Maybe she thought she could disappear—outrun the truth.
From what the detective told us, she was planning to leave the country once she was finished with me.
What she failed to realize was that the moment she started talking, she gave us everything we needed.
She spent years believing she was the smartest person in the room. In the end, her own arrogance was what destroyed her.
I’m lost in thought, watching the red and blue lights wash over the storefront, reflecting off the windows, the sidewalk, the familiar sign that feels like a backdrop for my life.
Police. EMTs. Firefighters. And phones. So many phones.
I sigh, already knowing what comes next. With this many lights and this much commotion, there’s no way there won’t be IG reels and TikTok videos by morning. Probably already are. Small town. Word travels faster than facts.
I pull my phone out and call Val. She answers on the second ring. “Lina?”
I don’t sugarcoat it. I give her the rundown—quick, clipped, honest. Elinor. The gun. The arrest.
There’s a pause on the other end. Then, “What the actual fuck?”
“I know,” I say.
Another beat passes. Longer this time. When she speaks again, her voice is different—no bite, no fire. Just disbelief.
“She…oh God. I can’t believe it?” Val says. “Lina, tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”
My throat tightens. “She planned it. All of it. Cole. The baby. Virginia. David. The money.”
I can hear Val breathing. Uneven. Like she’s trying to get her bearings in a room that tilted sideways.
“Oh, my God,” she whispers. “Oh, my God.”
The fight drains out of her voice, replaced by something raw and shattered.
“That woman,” she says, like the words hurt coming out, “was your mother-in-law.”
I stare into the night, allowing her time to grasp the situation.
“I don’t even know where to start with this,” Val continues, her voice cracking now. “I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how anyone does.”
She lets out a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry, Lina.”
I can hear her sniffling, trying to stop herself from bursting into tears. Then…
“Fuck the socials,” she says. “Fuck TikTok and IG. Fuck the narrative.” Her voice breaks. “This isn’t damage control, Lina. This is—this is your life.”
Tears sting my eyes, relief and grief tangled together.
“I know,” I say. “I don’t think we can handle this alone.”
There’s a pause.
Then I add, carefully, “I think we need to hire someone. PR. Crisis management. Someone who knows how to handle something this big.”
Val doesn’t answer right away.
When she does, her voice is thick. “Yeah,” she says, swallowing hard. “Yeah. You’re right.”
She exhales, long and shaky.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I’m so fucking sorry you had to hear all of that. That you had to live it.”
Her voice breaks completely then, and I hear her cry—quiet, angry tears, the kind she never lets herself have.
“I’m here,” she adds quickly, like she needs me to know it. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I press my lips together, nodding even though she can’t see me.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“We’ll deal with the world later,” Val says, her voice steadier now, resolute beneath the grief.
“Okay,” I say, meaning it more than she knows.
“I love you,” she whispers.
“I love you too,” I reply.
I hang up and return my phone to my pocket, my hands shaking.
The noise of the sirens fades, and I take in a deep breath.
Alex steps closer. He’s been quiet, watchful—making sure I’m steady before worrying about anything else.
“I heard,” he says. “Reese can help too. He can manage the feeds, suppress the worst of it, keep things from spiraling.”
I nod. “That would help. Thank you.”
He pulls me close to him and hugs me. Being in his arms after all that feels so good, so…safe. And that word still surprises me.
I rest my forehead against his chest and let myself breathe for a moment. Just one. My body is tired in a way sleep won’t fix—holding a weight it didn’t even know it was carrying.
Learning the truth hurt. More than I expected. Because it was corroborative. Because it took years of confusion and stitched it into something coherent.
There’s relief in that, even if it’s prickly around the edges. Because knowing means I’m no longer trapped inside guesses and self-doubt. It means I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t failing to understand something everyone else seemed to grasp.
I was being manipulated. Conditioned. Groomed to accept what never should’ve been mine to carry. That truth hurts. But it also sets me free.
There’s a part of me—small, reluctant—that still feels something for Cole. It’s not forgiveness or grace. Just…complexity.
I blamed Cole for a long time. For the baby. For the accident. For the loss that hollowed me out and rewrote the shape of my life.
Blame was easier than truth. Because the truth is…I knew better.
I knew the moment my hand touched the car door that night of the accident and getting in was wrong. I felt it in my gut, piercing and insistent, the same instinct that had tried to warn me so many times before. But I told myself it would be fine. And then it wasn’t.
Owning that means admitting I made a choice. One that came with consequences I will carry forever. And that kind of accountability is brutal when you’re already drowning.
But it doesn’t stop there. I didn’t only choose to get into the car. I chose to stay all those years.
Yes, he manipulated me. Groomed me. Bent reality until up seemed like down. He trained me to doubt my instincts, to distrust my own clarity, to believe that leaving would cost more than staying. But somewhere beneath all of that, I still knew.
I knew the way you know a flame will burn you even as you reach toward it. I knew the wrongness that sat in my chest like a held breath. And I stayed anyway—out of fear, out of hope, out of the quiet belief that endurance counted as loyalty.
I can only be a victim for so long before survival asks something harder of me. It’s not blame or punishment. It’s responsibility.
Responsibility for what I accepted. For the periods I experienced the truth and chose to turn away from it.
And living with that knowledge is painful—but it’s also the first honest step toward never betraying myself like that again. Still.
Knowing now that Elinor set everything in motion long before the crash finished the job—gives me a strange, guilty sliver of fucked-up relief.
It doesn’t erase what happened or absolve anyone, including myself.
The relief comes from knowing it wasn’t a situation that was fully ours to prevent. It was out of our control.
That realization doesn’t heal anything. It doesn’t undo the loss. But it loosens something tight in my chest—a knot I’ve been punishing myself with for years. It’s not peace. It’s not closure. It’s permission to stop blaming myself for living.
This is something therapy will have to untangle. Layers of grief stacked on top of guilt, stacked on top of years of manipulation, stacked on top of responsibility to myself. I don’t pretend this moment fixes it. But it cracks the door open.
Part of me wonders—briefly, bitterly—if I’m some kind of real-life version of Murphy’s Law. If disaster just…finds me. If everything that can go wrong, inevitably does.
But even in all of it—in the wreckage, the lies, the loss—I found myself. I found my voice. My work. My truth.
I built something real with my hands and my heart. I learned how to stand upright amid chaos. And against all odds—I found love too.
I tighten my arms around Alex, grounding myself in the solid, steady presence of him.
He doesn’t try to fix me or rush me forward. He holds me like he understands that surviving something doesn’t mean you’re done carrying it.
“I’m still here,” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
His arms tighten a fraction.
And for the first time in a long time, I feel I’m not enduring; I’m living.
The next few days are chaos.
Calls. Emails. Meetings stacked back-to-back with the PR team we hired. Every detail examined, every word weighed. By day two after being closed, an official statement is released—measured with care, factual.
After that, Val and I do what feels right.
We sit side-by-side in the bakery before opening—no performance, only us. Flour still dusts the counters behind us. The space looks as it usually does. Warm. Familiar.
We record a video.
We tell our followers and customers that there was another incident.
That someone has been arrested. That everyone is okay.
We acknowledge what many are already wondering—that this is the second incident in a short span of time and, yes, they are connected.
But we’re clear about the limits of what we can share.
There’s an open investigation, and details aren’t ours to disclose.
What we do say matters. That the people responsible are being held accountable.
That law enforcement has been involved every step of the way.
That there is no ongoing threat. That the bakery is safe.
And we thank them—for the messages, the concern, the patience, the way this community showed up for us when things seemed frightening and uncertain.
We keep it short. Clear, calm, and grounded. No speculation or unnecessary details. Just enough truth to steady the noise without feeding it.
Because this isn’t about drama. It’s about letting the people who love this place know that we’re still here. And we’re not going anywhere.
“This story is honestly so wild,” I say near the end of the video, managing a small smile, “I might have to write a book about it someday.”
Val snorts beside me, and that tiny bit of normalcy feels like oxygen.
We post it. We breathe, and we keep going. Because that’s what I’ve always done. I’m not bracing for what comes next; I’m living for the next day.
And whatever comes next—whatever the internet says, whatever the world thinks—I’m not disappearing from myself ever again.