บททั้งหมดของ Bound by Deception : บทที่ 81 - บทที่ 89

Dakota did not expect the call. She had been in Elias’s study, the soft light of late afternoon pooling across the dark wood table, reviewing a proposal from one of the junior teams at the company. She was halfway through a note when her phone vibrated, the sharp, insistent buzz immediately carving a ripple through her calm. Unknown number. She stared at it for a moment, debating whether to let it ring out. She had become cautious, too many reporters had come sniffing around since Helen’s arrest, too many anonymous calls asking for statements she had no intention of giving. But something in her chest nudged her thumb toward the screen. “Hello?” A female voice answered immediately. Firm. Clipped. Official. “Mrs. Dakota Persson?” Her stomach tightened. “Yes… this is she.” “This is Officer Keller, calling from the Rikers Island medical unit. Your sister, Diana Stone, has given birth earlier today. She requested to see you.” The pen slipped out of Dakota’s fingers and

Dakota didn’t expect preparing for someone else’s baby to feel this heavy. The next three days moved in a strange blur. Equal parts quiet panic, tenderness, hesitation, and a silent kind of bravery she didn’t even know she possessed. She had spent her whole life fighting to prove that she deserved love… but now she was preparing to give love to a child who wasn’t hers. A child whose mother had caused her more pain than half the world combined. And yet, whenever she pictured that tiny baby, the fear always softened into something warm… something she didn’t have a name for yet. Elias was the steady center of everything. He didn’t complain when she paced the living room at midnight reading long articles about newborn sleep cycles. He didn’t tease her when she ordered too many onesies because she was terrified of “not having enough.” He didn’t even roll his eyes when she stress-cried in the aisle of an upscale baby store because diapers apparently had too many confusing size optio

The decision did not come all at once. It came in fragments, in the quiet moments Dakota did not expect to be heavy. It came while she was rocking Wren at dawn, when the baby’s cries softened into sleepy whimpers and her tiny fingers curled instinctively around Dakota’s thumb. It came while she watched Elias sleep on the couch because neither of them had the energy to argue about who deserved the bed more. It came when she folded impossibly small clothes and wondered how a life could be so fragile and yet demand so much responsibility. And it came, most of all, in the silence. Dakota had learned that silence was dangerous. Silence allowed lies to grow roots. Silence allowed people like Helen to rewrite reality and convince everyone else to live inside it. She had lived too much of her life inside someone else’s silence. She was not going to do that again. Telling Diana the truth terrified her, even though she told herself she had no reason to be afraid. Diana had hurt her in wa

Life did not pause after the gavel struck wood in the courtroom. Dakota had expected something dramatic after the sentencing, some sharp shift in the air, some undeniable sense of finality. She thought she would wake up one morning and feel lighter, as if the weight of everything that had happened would simply lift because justice had finally been served. Instead, life continued in its quiet, relentless way. Mornings still came too early. Nights still felt too long. And grief, she learned, did not vanish just because the people who caused it were finally paying for their crimes. The house felt fuller now. Not louder exactly, but fuller in a way that settled into her bones. Wren’s presence had changed everything. The tiny sounds she made in her sleep, the soft breaths that rose and fell from her chest, the way her fingers curled instinctively around Dakota’s finger as if she already understood what safety meant. Dakota had not expected to love her the way she did. She had told h