CHAPTER 15

THE STEPMOTHER’S EYES

She arrived without warning.

I was in the main conference room going over the revised logistics numbers with two managers when the door opened and Chloe’s mother walked in. Elena. Perfect posture. Pearl earrings. The same calm, elegant presence she had always used to make every room rearrange itself around her.

The managers stood automatically. I stayed seated.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Elena said, smiling. “I only came to see my daughter. They told me she was on this floor.”

Chloe wasn’t on this floor. Chloe was across the city at a lunch I had already confirmed she would attend.

Elena knew that.

She had come for me.

I dismissed the managers with a short nod. They left quickly, closing the door behind them. The conference room suddenly felt too large.

Elena walked to the opposite side of the table but didn’t sit. She simply looked at me.

The silence stretched.

“You’ve lost weight,” she said finally.

“I’ve been busy.”

“So I hear.” Her gaze moved over my face, my hands, the open documents in front of me. “Your father says you’ve taken a stronger interest in the company’s smaller holdings. That’s new for you.”

“People change.”

“Do they?”

She said it lightly, but her eyes didn’t match her tone. They were steady. Measuring. The same eyes that had watched me for years while she played the role of the gracious stepmother who never overstepped.

In the original future those eyes had watched me lose everything without once looking surprised.

Elena pulled out a chair and sat down slowly. She folded her hands on the table. The movement was graceful, deliberate.

“Chloe is worried about you,” she said. “She says you’ve become distant. Suspicious. Harder to reach.”

“Chloe worries about many things.”

“She worries about her sister.” Elena tilted her head slightly. “And I worry about my husband. He doesn’t need tension in the house. Not at his age. Not with the board watching every shift in the family.”

There it was.

The soft warning dressed as concern for my father.

I met her eyes and held them. “Then Chloe should stop spreading stories about my mental state. That would lower the tension considerably.”

Elena’s expression didn’t change. But something behind her eyes sharpened.

“Stories,” she repeated. “Is that what you’re calling them?”

“Yes.”

She studied me for a long moment. The kind of look that peeled back layers. I forced myself to stay still under it. Breathing even. Hands relaxed on the table. No blinking too fast. No looking away.

In the original timeline I had always broken first under that stare. I had filled the silence with explanations. Apologies. Soft defenses that only made me look weaker.

This time I let the silence work for me.

Elena was the first to speak again.

“You’re different,” she said quietly.

“Am I?”

“Yes.” She leaned back in the chair. “The girl I knew would have already started explaining herself. She would have asked if she’d done something wrong. She would have tried to smooth things over.”

“Maybe that girl got tired.”

Elena’s mouth curved slightly. Not a smile. Something closer to interest.

“Chloe thinks the hospital changed you,” she said. “I think it’s something else.”

My pulse stayed steady, but only because I forced it to.

She couldn’t know.

There was no version of events where Elena Laurent knew about the future I had seen. She was calculating, not supernatural. Whatever she sensed, it was instinct. Observation. The same cold talent she had always used to stay three steps ahead of everyone in the family.

Still, the way she looked at me made the skin along my arms tighten.

“I should go,” I said, closing the folder in front of me. “I have another meeting.”

Elena stood when I did.

For a second we were the same height across the table. Her perfume was the same expensive scent she had worn for years — clean, floral, impossible to forget.

“Be careful, Ariana,” she said softly. “Girls who change too quickly make people nervous. And nervous people become dangerous.”

I held her gaze. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

She watched me gather the documents. Her eyes never left my hands.

At the door I paused and looked back.

“Give Chloe my regards,” I said. “I heard her lunch was canceled. I’m sure she’ll be free to see you now.”

A very small flicker moved through Elena’s expression.

Then it was gone.

I left the conference room and walked straight to the elevators without looking back.

Only when the doors closed and the elevator started moving did I let my shoulders drop half an inch.

Elena had always been the more dangerous of the two.

Chloe was emotion. Impulse. Hunger.

Elena was patience.

And patience had just looked at me like it was already revising its plans.