Godmother To His Son Then I Took His Kingdom Chapter 09
After the cocktail party, I went back to my apartment, didn’t even turn on the lights, and fell into a heavy, alcohol-tinged sleep.
In my dream, I was eighteen again.
Evelyn pressed my college acceptance letter into my hands, her smile warm. “Mara, you deserve a better life. Leave the tuition to me.”
The scene shifted. It was the rainy night after my parents’ funeral. Graham held me, his voice a steady anchor. “You still have me.”
Those moments of kindness felt terrifyingly real.
Then, in the next instant, Evelyn’s smile twisted into a cruel smirk. She stood before an empty memorial niche and said lightly, “The ashes of laundromat owners never should have been in the Whitmore family’s sight.”
The warmth in Graham’s hand vanished. The arm that had once held me shoved me away. At the foot of the museum stairs, he glared down at me. “Evelyn’s child went missing. Why did you have to make trouble?”
My foot slipped, and blood bloomed beneath the hem of my dress.
I jerked awake, drenched in sweat, one hand clamped over my now-flat stomach.
The sky outside was still dark.
I hated them.
But I couldn’t deny the truth: Evelyn had paid for my education, and Graham had once been my rock when I had no one else.
Because that goodness had been real, the betrayal that followed was a dull knife, sawing through me again and again.
But gratitude is not a pardon.
What they had given me, I would remember. What they owed me would be counted. Only by separating the debts of kindness from the debts of harm could I stop being dragged back into the past.
My phone suddenly rang. It was my lawyer in Boston.
“Mara, there’s an urgent issue. Graham’s legal team is using every means at their disposal to locate you, claiming there’s an ‘urgent family matter’ that must be discussed in person.”
I sat up. “What family matter?”
“They refuse to disclose it.”
He paused, his voice turning graver.
“Ten minutes ago, they filed an emergency motion with the court to obtain your current address.”