CHAPTER 44: Elena

POV: Selene Castellano

She read the message four times.

The person who really sent those files to TechCrunch about Elena? It wasn’t Richard, nor was it Marcus. You will have to dig deeper.

Four times and it refused to make sense.

Because it had to be one of them, that was the story she’d constructed — carefully, over weeks — the story that gave the cruelty a shape she could live with. Richard had Elena’s birth certificate. He’d admitted standing in that hospital corridor while she fell apart, watching from a careful distance like she was something to be studied. Marcus had the resources, the connections, the motivation and the complete absence of conscience required.

One of them had done it, that story made sense except apparently it was wrong.

“We don’t know if they’re telling the truth,” Avalon said. Carefully. The specific careful way he spoke when he was managing his own alarm. “This person could be—”

“Then why Elena specifically?” Her voice came out flat. Strange to her own ears. “They gave us Patricia. The evidence was real — Carol Sung certified it, the accounts existed, the money moved. So why tell us one true thing and then lie about this?”

Avalon was quiet because there wasn’t one that made the message untrue.

She set the phone face down on the windowsill. Outside the city glittered the way it always did — relentless, indifferent, utterly unbothered by the fact that somewhere out there someone had looked at the worst day of her life and decided it was ammunition.

“Who knew?” she asked. Her voice is very quiet now.

“About Elena?”

“About all of it.” She turned to face him. “Think carefully.”

She watched him work through it. The particular stillness he got when he was being methodical even when emotion was happening underneath but he was managing it.

“Richard,” he said. “Marcus had the birth certificate Richard gave him.” A pause. “Hospital staff, the journalist obviously.” Another pause, longer. “Catherine knew, at least she threatened you because you were pregnant.”

The name settled in the room like weather.

“She said she didn’t know about the miscarriage,” Selene said.

“And you believe that?”

It wasn’t quite a question.

“I think—” He stopped. Pressed his fingers against his eyes briefly. “I don’t want it to be her, you know, with all the therapy, apologising and coming to the hospital after you were shot, sitting in that waiting room for four hours—” His voice carried something she recognised as grief. The specific grief of wanting to believe something. “But she’s also one of the only people who knew you were pregnant.

“There’s also one more person,” she said.

Avalon looked at her.

“Maya knew I’d been pregnant. Not Elena’s name tho but she knew I’d lost a baby.” She held up a hand before he could speak. “I know she didn’t do this but the helper said dig deeper. That means not protecting anyone just because loving them feels like proof.”

“What if this is what they want?” he said finally. “Whoever sent that message wants us turning on everyone around us, pulling apart every relationship until we’re completely alone.”

“That’s a maybe, what if they want us to find the truth?“

“Maybe both.” He looked at her directly. “Can you live with that? By looking at people we love and asking if they did this?”

Her abdomen ached with a low persistent pull — it did that when she was stressed, when her body remembered what her mind tried to manage. She pressed her hand against it briefly.

“I need to know who did this,” she said. “Not for the company or lawsuit.” Her throat tightened. “Someone took Elena and made her useful making strangers on the internet have opinions about my daughter.” She felt her eyes burn but didn't blink it away this time. “I need to know who.”

Avalon crossed to her. He didn’t say it would be okay or try to make any promise he couldn’t keep.

He just put his hand against her face.

“Then we find out,” he said.

Avalon went under eventually, pulled down by weeks of accumulating exhaustion. She lay beside him and listened to him breathe and let herself go somewhere she usually kept locked.

That hospital room.

The specific quality of that silence.

She’d been twenty-two years old and alone and the doctor had said words she already knew were coming because she’d felt it — the terrible specific stillness inside her — hours before anyone confirmed it.

Elena Rose Castellano. She’d written the name on the form with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. The nurse had offered to help and Selene had said no because writing it herself felt like the only thing she could do. The only thing that was hers.

Born and gone in the same breath.

She’d carried that name alone for ten years. Through March anniversaries she spent in bed claiming headaches. Through moments in grocery stores when she’d see a small girl and feel something move through her like a fault line shifting.

And then a headline.

PIERCE HOLDINGS HEIR’S SHOCKING PAST: HIDDEN PREGNANCY, LOST CHILD—

She’d read the comments even when she knew better but read them anyway.

That’s manipulation not trauma.

What else is she hiding?

She’d absorbed every word like penance and now someone was telling her the person who handed Elena’s records to a journalist wasn’t Richard or Marcus.

She got up at three AM.

The movement pulled at her wound and she stood still for a moment, hand pressed to her side, waiting for it to settle. She made tea she didn't drink while standing at the kitchen counter in the dark.

She stared at her phone……Catherine Pierce. She stood there for a long time before she dialled.

The call rang up to four times and as she was already rehearsing hanging up…she picked up.

“Selene?” Groggy. Then immediately became more awake. “What’s wrong? Is it, Avalon—”

“Elena’s medical records were leaked to TechCrunch six weeks ago.” Selene kept her voice even. The way she’d learned to speak when she needed control. “Someone gave them to a journalist and framed it as evidence of fraud, do you know about that before the article was published?”

“I saw the article,” Catherine said carefully. “Yes.”

“Before it was published, Catherine. Did you know before?”

“Why are you asking me this at three in the morning?” Her voice wasn’t defensive. It was frightened. Subtly but clearly frightened.

“Because someone just told me it wasn’t Richard or Marcus who leaked them and you are one of the only people alive who knew I was pregnant.” Selene’s hand tightened on the phone. “So I’m asking you directly. Did you know about that leak?”

The silence this time was different, it was longer.

“No,” Catherine said finally.

“You took a long time to answer.”

“Because I’m sitting in my bedroom at three in the morning being asked if I weaponised my grandchild’s death.” Her voice cracked. “And I needed a moment before I could speak.”

Selene said nothing.

“I’ve done terrible things,” Catherine said. “I’ve threatened people I should have protected. Manipulated situations I should have stayed out of. Of course, I gave you every reason to suspect me and I know that. I know.” A shaky breath. “But Elena—” She stopped. When she came back her voice was different. Stripped of its usual composure. “I found out she existed the same time everyone else did when the article was published and I sat in my kitchen and I wept. Not for what I’d done to you — though I should have. I wept for her a child who never had a chance, one who deserved better than being used as a headline.” Her voice steadied. “I didn’t do this, Selene. I swear to you I didn’t.”

Selene stood in her dark kitchen listening to Catherine breathe, trying to hear the lie in it if there was one.

“Okay,” she said finally.

“Selene. I need you to believe—”

“I heard you. Thank you for answering.” She paused. “I’m sorry for the hour.”

She hung up and stood there for a long time.

When she finally turned around Avalon was leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching her. He’d been awake, for how long? That she doesn't know.

“She said no,” Selene told him.

“Do you believe her?”

“I don’t know.” She set the phone on the counter. “She was frightened, angry, then something else — something that didn’t feel performed.” She looked at him. “But I’ve been wrong about people before.”

Avalon pushed off the doorframe.

“So what do we do?”

“We go to the person who actually received the records,” she said. “The journalist. Jessica Mendoza.”

Jessica Mendoza agreed to meet them the following morning at a coffee shop in the Mission, small but loud enough that conversations stayed private.

She was already there when they arrived.

“We’re not here about your source protection,” Selene said, settling into her chair. The wound pulled when she sat and she kept her expression clear. “We just need context about how the records came to you.”

Jessica’s hands circled her cup. “I can’t give you a name.”

“I’m not asking for one. I’m asking about the method, approach or manner in which it happened — email, phone, in person?”

“Email,” Jessica said. “It was encrypted and sent to my work address.”

“With a message?”

“A short one.” She chose her next words carefully. “It framed the records as evidence of marital fraud. Said the pregnancy had been concealed specifically to create sympathy during a legal case.”

Selene felt something shift. That framing — precise, legally fluent, stripped of emotion.

“The tone,” she said. “Was it angry? Urgent? Did it feel personal?”

Jessica actually thought about it. “No. That’s the thing that stayed with me afterwards. It was — efficient. Like someone who knew exactly what information I needed and gave me only that. There was nothing extra, no anger or agenda I could feel.”

“Could you tell if it was a man or a woman?”

“Nop, there wasn't a signature or identifiers at all.”

Selene glanced at Avalon. He was watching Jessica with the quiet focus he brought to negotiations. 

“The email address it came from,” Selene said carefully. “Do you still have it?”

Jessica hesitated. This was the line, Selene could see her standing at it.

“I know you didn’t do anything wrong,” Selene said quietly. “You received information and you reported it. That’s your job but Elena was my daughter. She was born and she died on the same day and I carried that alone for ten years.” She kept her voice even. “I’m not asking you to betray a source, I am only asking you to help me understand who decided her life was a headline.”

The coffee shop hummed around them.

Jessica picked up her phone. Scrolled for a long moment.

Turned it to face Selene.

A G***l address and letters and numbers designed to be untraceable, then three characters before the @ symbol.

Selene looked at them.

Felt the air leave the room.

She turned the phone to Avalon.

Watched his face do something complicated and careful and painful all at once.

Three letters.

They both knew exactly whose initials those were.

Someone who’d had access to their legal strategy from the very beginning, who understood the timeline of the depositions perfectly — and would have known precisely when those records would land with the most devastating impact.

Someone they had trusted without question.

Selene handed the phone back to Jessica. “Thank you,” she said. Her voice was remarkably steady she was almost impressed by it.

Outside on the pavement, the morning was cold and ordinary….people walked past with coffee and dogs and no idea.

Avalon stood beside her.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

“I don’t want to be right about this,” he said finally. Low. Almost like he was talking to himself.

“I know.”

“If we’re right—”

“I know.”

He looked at her. She looked at him.

All those months of surviving together. The depositions, board battles, warehouse floor and choosing each other through all of it.

And now this?

“We have to,” she said.

He exhaled slowly. Nodded once.

They walked.