-Zade Collins:
I'd thought I'd seen my mother's cruelty before. I'd thought I'd grown immune to it—her smirks, her venom dressed up as sophistication, the way she turned rooms into courts and people into pawns. But nothing… nothing compared to the silence that fell after she opened her mouth this time.
The words still echoed, slick and poisonous: Ainsley left it all to me.
I felt the air drain from the room. I stared at her like she'd grown horns, my stomach twisting, and before I could even process it, Blake's voice cut through the suffocating quiet.
"Rina—what are you talking about?"
His voice was raw, cracked with disbelief, and something in me jolted—like a shield slamming into place. He wasn't looking at me, wasn't even looking at anyone else. His eyes were locked on her.
My mother.
I hated her in that moment more than I thought I ever could.
