Chapter 196

Lauren's POV

My eyes snapped up to Sophia’s face. No. Not this time. Not after everything. The memory of Elena’s empty room, the hollow stillness that followed, still haunted me, but it no longer had the power to crush me the way it once did. I cared too much now, too many people depended on me. Tessa believed in me. Roman stood by me. And Aria… Aria’s tiny hands wrapped around my finger in the dark had become the reason I dragged myself up every morning. I would not let that love be wasted tearing me down.

“You should have just stayed out of the country,” Sophia spat, the words like acid, “because now that you’ve come back here, I’m going to send you to see Elena one last time forever. And after that, your boyfriend and your daughter will join you.”

Her threat should have sent me back into the darkness and should have seeded that old, paralysing grief but instead something else swelled in me: a hard, hot ember of defiance. Tears that had been gath