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**CHAPTER 52: ARE YOU MY MOM**
publish date:
2026-09-07 19:28:28
Latest chapter
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 CHAPTER 57 — RUNNING
POV: LaurabethI didn’t wait for the elevator.The service stairwell was faster. Concrete steps blurred under my shoes as I took them two at a time, coat flying open, phone already in my hand. The hospital security app loaded in three seconds. I had clearance. I had designed half the access protocols myself under the name Elena Voss. Now those same systems were going to help me take my son back.Vinicio stayed right beside me. He didn’t ask where we were going. He didn’t slow down. His breathing stayed controlled, jaw locked, eyes fixed forward. Ten years apart and we still moved like we had never stopped running together.The app pulled the camera grid. East service corridor. Laundry wing. Loading dock approach. I scrubbed backward through the timestamps with my thumb while my feet kept pounding down the stairs.8:41 p.m.The first alarm—the one Teresa had staged—flashed across every feed. Staff scattered exactly the way they were supposed to. Toward the pediatric ward. Away from the
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 CHAPTER 56: HER TERMS
POV: VinicioThe black screen of the phone still reflected my face when Laurabeth lowered it. One hour. That was the window Vanessa had given us. One hour to decide whether to hand her everything or watch our son pay the price.I took the phone from Laurabeth’s hand before she could tighten her grip further. My thumb hovered over the recent calls. The unknown number was still there, waiting.“Call her back,” Laurabeth said.“I am.”The video request went through on the second ring. Vanessa answered immediately, as if she had been staring at her own screen the entire time. The same concrete room. The same single bulb. Thomas still bound to the chair behind her, eyes locked on the camera the moment it connected.Vanessa’s smile was softer this time. Almost intimate.“I knew you’d call back, Vinicio. You never could stand being given an order without answering it.”I kept my voice level. “Put the camera on Thomas. I want to see that he’s unharmed.”She angled the phone without argument.
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 **CHAPTER 55: MISSING**
**POV: Laurabeth**The loading dock door still swung gently on its hinges, letting in the cold night air and the fading growl of an engine. The unmarked van was already gone. Taillights had vanished around the corner before either of us could reach the fence.Thomas was gone.The knowledge hit me like a physical blow. My knees threatened to give out, but I locked them and forced myself to keep standing. Panic was a luxury I could not afford. Not when my son’s life depended on the next decisions I made.Vinicio stood beside me, gun still raised toward the empty street, breathing hard. The muscle in his jaw ticked once, twice. When he finally lowered the weapon, his voice was pure ice.“Alex. Full lockdown on every exit. Pull every camera feed from the last fifteen minutes. East service corridor, laundry dock, parking structure. Now.”Alex’s voice came through the earpiece, strained and bloody. “Already on it, boss. Head’s ringing but I’m functional. Pulling footage now.”I turned back
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 **CHAPTER 54: SYRINGE**
**POV: Vinicio**The second alarm was sharper than the first. Closer. Wrong.I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. Teresa stood ten feet in front of us with an uncapped syringe and a sleeping child who was not ours, and every instinct I had screamed that this was the opening move, not the endgame.“Drop it,” I said.My voice came out flat. The kind of flat that used to make men empty their pockets before I finished the sentence. Two hospital security officers flanked the doorway, weapons drawn but uncertain. This was a children’s ward. No one wanted to fire.Teresa didn’t drop it.She looked at the little girl in the bed, then at me, then at Laurabeth, and her expression softened into something almost pious.“I came to make amends,” she said. “I know what I took from you. I know what the fire cost. I thought if I offered myself first, perhaps God—or whatever is left of this family—might consider it payment.”Laurabeth stepped forward before I could stop her. “Get away from that child.”Tere
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 **CHAPTER 53 — COLLISION**
**POV: Vinicio**The words hit me like a physical blow.“She’s my mom! Dr. Voss is my mom! She just told me! She’s been alive this whole time and she’s my *mom*!”Thomas stood in the middle of the office, chest heaving, one small finger still pointed at Laurabeth as if the truth needed a witness. The door hadn’t even finished swinging shut behind her. She stood three steps inside the room, face pale, lips parted, looking like she had been chasing a storm she could no longer control.I didn’t move.The phone was still in my hand. Teresa’s name had just disappeared from the screen. I had hung up on her mid-sentence because something in her voice had sounded too pleased, too certain. Now that thought evaporated. Everything evaporated.Ten years collapsed into a single, brutal second.The fire. The twin graves. The locket I still carried. The nights I sat beside Thomas’s crib inventing stories about a mother who smelled like rain and irises. The way I had rebuilt an empire around a hole s
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 **CHAPTER 52: ARE YOU MY MOM**
**POV: Laurabeth**The question hung in the air like a live wire.Thomas stood in the doorway of the supply closet in his hospital socks, small hands clenched at his sides, hazel eyes locked on mine with an intensity that belonged to someone far older than ten. Behind me, Vanessa had gone completely still. I could feel her calculating, weighing how much damage she could still do.I had spent ten years preparing for every possible threat. I had never prepared for this."Thomas," I said, my voice barely steady. "You shouldn't be out of bed."He didn't move. "Are you my mom?"The words were soft, almost careful, but they carried the weight of every night he had spent asking questions no one would answer. I saw the hope and the fear tangled together in his face. I saw the boy who had grown up with a ghost for a mother and a father who still wore the empty place on his ring finger.I could have lied. I had lied to Vinicio only yesterday. I had practiced the denial so many times it should h
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 CHAPTER 4: THE PRICE OF SILENCE
VINICIO POV“Are you alright?” I finally broke the tension immediately we got to the car. I knew how to handle boardrooms and blood-feuds, and a part of me wanted to simply crush whatever was eating her up so I could have my wife back to her normal self.“Yes-”“No. You’re not coming out of this ca
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 CHAPTER 3: CONTROL
VINICIO POVI knew striking a deal with this delicate young girl was a bad idea but she was fiery, as expected, as her father warned me two years back, in a party at her house, I guess she doesn’t recognize me. However, I was out of time and options; I needed to be able to access my inheritance and
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 CHAPTER 2: WEDDING NIGHT
LAURABETHThe moment he shut the door with his foot, he dropped me like frilled lace onto the bed; carefully, as though I were fragile. My thoughts were interrupted by the beige coloration of the room. It made the dim light from the window reflect effortlessly against a large portrait of Vinicio ha
OWNED AT 18, CLAIMED BY 28 CHAPTER 1: WEDDING
ELARA“Do you take Vinicio Teo Rossini as your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health?”I stared wordlessly at the priest, lost in thought. How did I get here?I felt my heart burst in pain when I found our belongings piled outside the doorpost; my mother clinging t
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