All Chapters of FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Elena"You do not have to rush," Martha said through the phone, her voice tired but steady from her hospital bed. "The doctor is not doing rounds until later, baby. Take your time finding the blue cardigan, not the gray one. The gray one makes this room feel colder than it already is.""I know which one you mean," I said, tucking the phone between my shoulder and ear as I pulled her closet door open. "Blue cardigan, the soft one with the buttons that never quite match.""That is the one and bring my good slippers too, if you can find them. The ones the hospital gave me feel like walking on cardboard.""I will find everything. Stop worrying about slippers and rest.""I am always going to worry, Elena. That is simply what mothers do." A pause, warm and familiar. "Call me back once you have everything so I know you are not still tearing my closet apart an hour from now.""I promise."She hung up, and I set the phone down on her dresser, turning back to the closet with its familiar, co

Elena"Say it plainly," I said, gripping the phone so hard my knuckles ached. "Are you telling me Victoria's mother might still be alive somewhere right now?""I do not know for certain," Naomi said. "That is the truth, Elena, not an evasion. I left that delivery room believing she was stable. I was never told what happened to her afterward, and I never asked, because asking would have meant admitting to myself how deep I had already let myself get pulled into something I did not fully understand.""You processed a switch that involved a woman who might still be out there somewhere, and you never once tried to find out what happened to her?""I was terrified," Naomi said, her voice cracking. "Terrified of Marcus, terrified of the Cross Pack contact who found me three years later, terrified of what asking questions might cost me if the wrong person heard I was asking them. I am not proud of that fear, Elena. I have lived with it every single day since.""I need to go," I said again, th

Elena"Say her name," I said, my voice shaking as badly as my hands were now. "The woman living thirty miles from us. Say her actual name, Martha, because I cannot keep circling around a truth this enormous without something solid to hold onto.""I do not know if I should," Martha said, reaching for the broken pieces of her teacup scattered across the floor, gathering them into her palm like the small, careful task might steady her enough to keep talking. "Naomi made me promise, Elena. Twenty-one years of keeping that promise, and some habits do not simply break because the timing has finally run out.""The timing already ran out the second you told me she is alive. Please, Martha. I need the whole truth now, not another careful fragment."Martha set the broken porcelain down on the table between us, gently, like even shattered pieces of a teacup suddenly carried more weight than they should have, and folded her hands together instead, steadying herself."Her name is Eleanor," she sa

Elena"Whoever searched that archive tonight," I said as I stared at Naomi's message glowing on the screen, "do you think they already found what I found. About Eleanor. About all of it.""I do not know," Naomi said, her voice tight through the phone. "But Elena, I think it means we no longer have the luxury of taking this slowly. If someone else is racing toward the same truth, we need to get there first, and we need actual proof, not fragments and photographs pulled from a shoebox.""What kind of proof would even satisfy the Council at this point?""The original file," Naomi said. "The one I processed myself twenty-one years ago, before it was ever supposed to be sealed permanently. If it still exists somewhere in that archive system, buried under whatever administrative code the Cross Pack originally used to arrange the reopening of Ridgemont Memorial, it would confirm everything in a way nobody could argue with.""Where would I even start looking for something like that?""I can g

ElenaRyder drove. Aiden sat in the back seat, phone pressed to his ear, trying and failing to reach his father, the dial tone ringing out again and again into the dark car."He is not answering," Aiden said, lowering the phone. "He never ignores my calls. Not like this.""How far ahead of us is he," I asked, my hands gripping the door handle so tight my knuckles had gone white."An hour, maybe more," Aiden said. "I do not know exactly when he left.""Then we might already be too late," Ryder said, his jaw tight, foot pressing harder against the gas as the streetlights thinned out and the road curved toward the dark shape of the mountains ahead."Do not say that," I said. "We are not too late. We cannot be."Naomi's voice came through the speaker, still connected from the call none of us had bothered to end. "Elena, I called Marcus the second you left your apartment. He is sending his own security team to the cabin, but they are coming from the estate, which puts them even further beh