The Twin Sisters Taunting Eliana.

The line was still open but silent, as if no one was on the line.

Eliana hadn’t hung up. It was as if she were listening to them.

The realization settled over the room like a suffocating fog.

Cassie stared down at the phone in her trembling hand, her chest tight, her heartbeat loud in her ears. She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath until her lungs burned.

Across the room, Camilla went very, very still.

The kind of stillness that didn’t come from shock or fear, but from restrained fury.

Her lips curved slowly, deliberately, into a smile that had nothing warm about it. It was the kind of smile that preceded violence, the kind that had once made grown men back away without understanding why.

She reached out for the phone.

Cassie hesitated only a second before placing the phone into Camilla’s waiting palm.

Camilla’s fingers wrapped around it, her grip firm but relaxed, like she was holding a glass of wine instead of a direct line to a woman who had just tried to mu