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CHAPTER 89 - The Gathering

ผู้เขียน: Flasky
last update วันที่เผยแพร่: 2026-05-08 03:53:35

Eliza's POV

The names kept coming.

Every week, a new letter. Every month, a new face at the garden gate. The journal had opened a door none of us had expected, and on the other side were dozens of strangers who shared our mother's blood.

Some came with hope. Some came with anger. Some came with nothing but questions and the hollow look of people who'd spent their whole lives wondering where they came from.

I met them all. We met the
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    Eliza's POV The plane touched down at JFK at noon. New York was gray, cold, the sky pressing down like a weight. Adam sat beside me, his hand on my knee. Across the aisle, Marcus stared out the window, his reflection tense. Reyes had stayed behind to handle Vera's interrogation, but she'd sent two agents to meet us at the bank. The vault was in a building on Wall Street. Old stone, brass doors, the kind of place where wealth had been hiding for centuries. I stood on the sidewalk, the key in my pocket, and tried to remember how to breathe. "You don't have to do this," Adam said. "I do." He took my hand. "Then let's go." The Bank The lobby was marble and silence. A woman in a tailored suit met us at the desk. "Ms. Sterling. We've been expecting you. Please follow me." She led us through a series of doors, each one heavier than the last.

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    Eliza's POV The first name dropped three days later. Senator Elizabeth Crane, a fifty-year-old grandmother from Ohio, was arrested at her home. The charges: bribery, conspiracy, and accessory to human trafficking. The evidence from the vault had been enough to hold her without bail. I watched the news on the kitchen television, Clara beside me, Adam standing in the doorway. The senator's face was pale, her eyes hollow. She didn't look like a monster. She looked like someone's mother. "Are you okay?" Clara asked. "I don't know." "You did the right thing." "I know." But knowing didn't make it easier. The Calls My phone started ringing immediately. Reporters, lawyers, strangers who'd somehow gotten my number. Reyes had warned me this would happen. "The names in that vault are connected to powerful people. They'll come after you

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    Eliza's POVThe cemetery was quiet.We came at dusk, when the shadows were long and the gates were about to close. Adam drove. Marcus sat in the back, silent. Reyes had a team hidden in the trees, watching for anyone who might be following.I hadn't been here since my mother's funeral. The headstone was simple, weathered by decades of rain and wind.Clara Sterling. Beloved mother. Rest in peace.I knelt in front of it. Touched the cold stone."I'm sorry," I whispered. "I should have come sooner."Marcus stood behind me. "The key is buried beneath the headstone. My father dug a small compartment. He said it was the only place the Collective would never look."Adam brought a small shovel. I didn't let him dig. This was my mother. My penance. I took the shovel and started to dig.The earth was soft. The work was hard. My hands blistered, but I didn't stop.Ruth watched from the car, her daughter a

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    Eliza's POVThe gate didn't creak anymore.Adam had fixed it years ago, replaced the old hinges, reinforced the latch. But I still heard it sometimes. A ghost sound. A reminder of all the people who'd walked through, hesitant and hopeful, afraid to believe they belonged.Clara stood beside me now, her hand on the wood."You're sure about this?" I asked."I've never been more sure."She pushed the gate open.On the other side, a woman waited. Young, maybe twenty five. A baby on her hip. A suitcase at her feet."Clara Sterling?" the woman asked."Clara Thorne now. But yes."The woman's eyes filled. "I'm Lydia. I think I'm your cousin. My mother she was one of the lost ones. She died before she could find this place."Clara stepped forward. "You're not lost anymore."Lydia stepped through the gate.The garden was full of light.The New GenerationI watc

  • IN LOVE WITH HIS ENEMY   Chapter 100 - The Beginning

    Eliza's POVThe garden was full.Ninety three siblings. Their children. Their partners. Clara with Marcus. Adam beside me. Eleanor in her chair beneath the tree. Chloe at the edge of the crowd, laughing at something Sarah had said.We'd gathered to mark the day. Not an anniversary. Not a birthday. Just a day the day when the last lost sibling had come home. The day when the circle had finally closed.I stood at the plaque on the wall, my mother's photograph in my hands."Thank you," I said. "All of you. For coming. For staying. For believing that a dead woman's dream could be real."The garden was quiet."My mother wrote in her journal that she hoped for a place where all her children could come home. She didn't live to see it. But I did. Because of you."I looked at Daniel. At Sarah. At James. At Rebecca. At Michael. At Thomas. At Maria. At Elena. At Samuel. At every face that had appeared at the gate over the

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    Eliza's POVSamuel arrived on a Sunday.The garden was quiet. The women were at brunch. Clara was folding cranes at the kitchen table. Adam was reading on the porch. I was standing at the gate, watching the road, waiting for a brother I'd never met.His car appeared at noon.Small, blue, dust covered from the long drive across the country. It pulled to a stop at the gate. The engine cut. The door opened.He was younger than I expected. Thirty-eight. Dark hair like Daniel's, eyes like my mother's. He stood beside the car, looking at the garden, the tree, the plaque on the wall."Samuel.""Eliza.""You came.""I've been driving for three days. I couldn't stop."I opened the gate. "You don't have to stop. You just have to come in."He stepped through.The TreeI walked him to the bench beneath Clara's tree.He sat slowly, like someone who'd been holding his brea

  • IN LOVE WITH HIS ENEMY   CHAPTER 78

    Eliza's POVFive years later.Clara's House had grown.What started as a small shelter in my mother's memory had become a network—safe houses across three states, a legal fund for women fighting for custody, a job training program that had placed hundreds of surviv

  • IN LOVE WITH HIS ENEMY   CHAPTER 77

    One year later.The garden at Clara's House was in full bloom. Roses my aunt had planted. Lavender Eleanor had started from seed. A tree Clara had helped put in the ground, her small hands patting down the dirt while Adam held the trunk straight.I stood at the edge of

  • IN LOVE WITH HIS ENEMY   CHAPTER 76

    Eliza's POVThe fifth address was a farmhouse in the hills.By the time we reached it, the sky was turning gray. I'd given four men the same choice: walk away or be destroyed. Four men had chosen to run. Four families had been dismantled before dawn.But the fifth

  • IN LOVE WITH HIS ENEMY   CHAPTER 75

    Eliza's POVThe Beverly Hills house sat behind gates that cost more than most people's homes.White walls. Palm trees. Security cameras on every corner. The kind of place where money went to hide from the world. I sat in the passenger seat of Adam's car, the address on my p

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