Semua Bab SILENT BETWEEN TWO HEARTS: Bab 41 - Bab 50

Helen waited until the entire ward slipped into the quiet rhythm of midnight, nurses exchanging shifts, patients drifting into the heavy stillness of sleep. The moment felt fragile, like a thin sheet of glass she could shatter with one wrong step. But she had done far more difficult things in her life. This was nothing compared to the secrets she carried.She eased herself out of the hospital bed, careful not to disturb a single hinge or sheet. Her injuries protested, but pain was an inconvenience she had long learned to silence. Wrapped in the dim cloak of the hallway lights, she moved with practiced caution, her steps light, her breath controlled. She looked like someone simply going for a late-night walk, yet her mind calculated every corner and security camera.The hospital was familiar territory to her now. She knew which hallways stayed empty, which doors were rarely used, and most importantly, when Dr. Hollister tended to fall asleep in his office chair after a long day. She ha

On the other side of everything, beyond Harry’s confusion, beyond Naomi’s fragile hope, beyond the tension coiling around the hospital walls. Elena Rivera waited.Patiently. Quietly.But never blindly.She sat at her small workstation in the back office of her new fond place, La Rivera, now partly renovated, partly alive again, her fingers tapping restlessly against the wooden desk. The lamp cast a warm circle of light, barely touching the stacks of files and photographs spread across the table, each one part of a puzzle she desperately needed to solve.Her phone lay beside her, screen dark, silent.No call yet.No message.No update from the private investigator.The investigator she had hired secretly.The one no one knew about.Not even Harry.Especially not Naomi.Because something was changing in that girl, something delicate and far too vulnerable to disturb. Naomi had begun warming up to the woman claiming to be her mother. She watched Helen with hesitant acceptance, as though

Harry sat behind the wheel of his car, the DNA envelope resting on the passenger seat like a living thing. His heart was pounding, but not from fear this time, something closer to hope. For the first time in years, he felt as if the world was giving him back something it had stolen.Maria.Alive.Back in his life.He imagined Naomi’s face when he told her. The stunned silence. The tears. Maybe even a shaky smile. She had always wished her mother were alive, even when she was too angry to admit it.He imagined Elena’s face too… and that was where everything inside him tangled.He trusted Elena.He relied on her.He cared about her far more than he should more than he ever intended.And now he didn’t know how she would take this. Would she pull away? Would she think he was abandoning the life they were building? Would she feel replaced?Would she approve?Would she be hurt?His stomach tightened.He shouldn’t be thinking about any of this, he told himself. The right thing was obvious: N

The Crystal Harbor Mall was always buzzing on weekends, but today the energy felt different, charged, restless, as if the building itself sensed something out of place. Harry and Elena stepped through the glass entrance with a shared determination, scanning the crowd for anything that might lead them closer to the truth.Helen was here somewhere. Helen, who should have been in a hospital bed. Helen, who had walked out without clearance. Helen, who now appeared in town claiming to be Naomi’s mother, had requested to take her mother to the mall. Dr hollister had approved, suggesting it might help her remember some things in her past, something that made Naomi glow with hope and confusion, but made Elena’s stomach twist with unease.Helen had already done the impossible, escaping a guarded ward, inserting herself into Naomi’s life, and manipulating old memories. What else was she capable of?They approached the directory, glancing over at the levels. Too many places to hide the test. Too

Harry and Naomi were convinced, so convinced that Elena felt like she was living in a different reality from them. The questions that mattered, the ones they had repeated countless times over the past weeks. Where had Maria been? Who was buried? How did the mix-up happen? Suddenly didn’t matter to them anymore.The moment Helen sang that familiar lullaby, it was as if every doubt they had melted away.Every doubt except Elena’s.She stood apart, watching the two people she cared for drift deeper into Helen’s orbit. Naomi clung to Helen’s side now, asking her questions, laughing at familiar stories Helen recited with suspicious accuracy. Harry hovered protectively, studying Helen with a mixture of awe and disbelief, as though he had been waiting years for this moment.Elena watched all of it with a sinking feeling.She could see it, not just sense it, but truly see it. Behind Helen’s practiced warmth was calculation. Behind her soft tone was a steady awareness of every reaction, every