All Chapters of The Surrogate Virgin : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The night after my mother’s death pressed down on me like a storm cloud that would never break, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even close my eyes without hearing the gunshot echo, seeing her crumple in front of me like a marionette whose strings had been cut. My throat still ached from the scream I had swallowed, the scream that had ripped my chest apart and left me raw and hollow.We were back in the house, but it didn’t feel like home. The walls seemed tighter, the air thinner. Everything smelled like fear and blood. Even though I knew I had scrubbed my hands raw, I could still feel it, my mother’s life clinging to me.I sat on the couch with my knees pulled to my chest, the dim lamp flickering like it couldn’t decide whether to stay alive or not. The documents, the medical record fragments lay in a stack on the coffee table. I couldn’t look at them, but I couldn’t move them either. They sat there like a ticking bomb, a reminder of everything Vivienne had stolen and everything she sti

Desmond looked like a ghost, not in the way Vivienne had, polished and terrible, but hollowed out, his hair longer, clothes disheveled, his eyes ringed with sleeplessness.For a second, I thought I was imagining him. The last time I’d seen Desmond was the night Catherine pulled the trigger on me. He had vanished into the smoke and blood, and in the weeks since, I’d convinced myself he was either dead or worse working alongside them but here he was at our door.Noah’s hand tightened on the edge of the frame. His voice was low, dangerous. “You’ve got nerve showing up here.”Desmond didn’t flinch. His gaze flicked from Noah to me and back again. “I know how it looks but I didn’t come here to fight you. I came because… if you want to bring Vivienne down, you’re going to need me.”My stomach twisted. “You disappeared.” The accusation scraped raw out of me. “You left us.”He swallowed, guilt flashing across his face. “I know and I regret it every damn day. Catherine…” His voice cracked, his

The first sound wasn’t the footsteps, it was the crash. Glass shattering somewhere in the back of the house, quick and sharp, like a gunshot splintering the night, my whole body jolted. The papers on the table jumped with me, scattering as if they knew what was coming.“Noah!” I hissed, my hand clamping around his arm.He was already moving, his body blocking mine, eyes cutting toward the hallway. “Stay low.”Another crash followed, the kitchen window this time, and I knew it from the direction, from the way the sound seemed to sink into my bones.Then voices, low male confident voices.Boots thudded across broken glass.“They’re inside,” I whispered, the words tasting like blood.Desmond swore under his breath and grabbed the edge of the table like he could steady the room itself. His face was ashen, but his voice was grim. “She’s not waiting anymore, she wants to end this tonight.”Noah snatched the envelope with the documents and shoved it into his jacket, his movements precise, co

We didn’t stop driving until the headlights in the rearview mirror thinned into nothing but memory.Even then, Noah kept going. Mile after mile of dark highway blurred past, broken only by the green glow of exit signs and the occasional hollow clatter of a semi thundering the other way. My knuckles ached around the steering wheel, but I didn’t dare loosen my grip. Every pair of headlights in the distance felt like a trap waiting to unfold.When Noah finally said, “Here,” my body sagged with relief and dread at the same time.He guided me off the road, down a cracked stretch of pavement that ended at a sagging neon sign: Timberline Motel. Most of the letters were burnt out, leaving only “TIME” flickering weakly against the night.Time, the one thing we didn’t have.The parking lot was empty except for a single truck coated in dust. Noah was out of the car before I could even shift into park, scanning the shadows with that soldier-sharp precision that made me both grateful and sick with

I sat on the edge of the bed, gripping the folder Desmond had brought us, the pages wrinkling under my fists. I couldn’t bring myself to read them again. Every word in there was poison, every line proof of Vivienne’s reach, of what she and Catherine had been building. The silence felt like a fourth person in the room, louder than any of us.Finally, Noah stopped pacing. He planted himself in front of the window, blinds drawn tight, and spoke without turning around.“We can’t just keep staying here.”The words were simple, flat, but they cut through me like a blade.Desmond gave a low laugh, dark and broken. “Where do you expect us to go? You think Vivienne doesn’t already have half the county wired into her pocket? Every cop, every road camera, every safe house you thought was hidden, she’s already touched them.”Noah turned then, his gaze sharp enough to make even Desmond falter. “So what? We keep running until she boxes us in? Until she takes Grace too?”The sound of my name jolted