For several seconds, I forgot how to breathe.
My mother stood in the doorway, a gun held steadily in her right hand. Her dark hair was shorter than I remembered from the photographs, and a thin scar crossed her cheek. But her eyes were unmistakable.
My eyes.
"Elena," she whispered.
The sound of my name coming from her lips nearly broke me.
I took one hesitant step forward. "Mom?"
Her expression crumpled for a fraction of a second before she raised her weapon again.
"Don't come any closer."
I stopped.
Behind me, Adrian moved slightly, positioning himself between me and the open vault.
My mother noticed immediately.
"Adrian Moretti," she said coldly. "Of course you're here."
He raised his hands, keeping them away from his gun. "Mrs. Reed."
"Don't call me that."
"Then tell us what we should call you."
She ignored him, her attention fixed on me.
"You shouldn't have come here."
I laughed, although there was nothing funny about the situation. "That's your opening line? You disappear for my entire life, turn up with a gun, and tell me I shouldn't have come?"
Pain flashed across her face.
"You don't understand."
"Then explain it to me!"
The words burst from my mouth before I could stop them.
"Where were you? Why did Dad tell me you were gone? Why did everyone let me believe you abandoned me?"
My mother lowered her weapon slightly.
"Your father didn't want you to know what happened."
"Convenient."
"Elena—"
"No. You don't get to say my name like you have any right to comfort me."
Silence filled the vault.
For the first time, her gun began to tremble.
"I never abandoned you," she whispered. "I stayed away because the people who killed your father were looking for you. If they believed I was dead, they would stop searching for both of us."
"And you thought leaving me alone was protecting me?"
"I thought it was the only way to keep you alive."
I shook my head. "Everyone keeps saying that. Adrian said it. My father wrote it. Now you say it. Apparently, the only way to love me is to lie to me."
Adrian looked down.
My mother closed her eyes briefly.
"You have every right to hate me."
"Good. At least we agree on something."
A distant explosion shook the warehouse.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
Lucian hurried toward the entrance. "We need to leave. The countdown must have triggered another mechanism."
My mother immediately pointed her gun at him.
"Stay where you are."
Lucian froze.
"Who activated the explosives?" Adrian demanded.
My mother looked at him. "Marcus."
"Marcus is outside?"
"He's been watching this place from the beginning."
Adrian swore and moved toward the doorway.
My mother fired a shot into the floor in front of him.
"Don't move!"
He stopped, his expression murderous.
"You've got about three seconds to explain why I shouldn't put a bullet through your shoulder."
"Because Marcus has your brother's blood on his hands, and he's about to make sure you join him."
A second explosion thundered overhead.
The lights flickered.
My mother turned to me.
"There's a tunnel behind the filing cabinets. It leads to the docks. Take Adrian and Lucian and get out."
I stared at her. "What about you?"
"I have something to finish."
"No."
Her eyes widened.
I stepped toward her despite the weapon in her hand.
"You don't get to disappear again. Not after everything."
For a moment, she looked like she might cry.
Then she reached into her coat and pulled out a small silver object.
My pendant.
She tossed it toward me.
I caught it instinctively.
"The key inside that pendant opens a second compartment in the vault," she said. "Your father left something there specifically for you."
I looked down at the necklace.
"What is it?"
"The truth about who ordered his death."
Adrian went completely still.
My mother turned toward him.
"And the truth about what your father did before he died."
His face hardened. "What does that mean?"
She looked at him with an expression I couldn't decipher.
"Anthony Moretti wasn't innocent, Adrian."
Before he could respond, gunfire erupted outside the vault.
A man's voice shouted through the smoke.
"Find the girl! Marcus wants her alive!"
My mother raised her gun and fired toward the doorway.
"Go!" she shouted.
Adrian seized my hand while Lucian pulled open the hidden passage behind the cabinets.
I resisted for one desperate second.
"Mom!"
She looked at me.
There were a thousand questions between us. A thousand years of hurt that couldn't be repaired in a single conversation.
But she smiled anyway.
A small, heartbreaking smile.
"I'm sorry I missed your life, sweetheart."
Then she turned toward the gunfire.
Adrian dragged me into the tunnel just as another explosion rocked the vault.
The passage swallowed us in darkness.
I stumbled behind him, clutching my pendant so tightly its edges cut into my palm.
After several minutes, we reached a metal door overlooking the harbor. Lucian pushed it open, and cold night air rushed into the narrow passage.
We were alive.
For now.
Adrian turned toward me, his face pale beneath the harbor lights.
"Your mother said my father wasn't innocent."
I looked at him.
"And your father said mine wasn't the only person who died that night."
Neither of us spoke.
Then I noticed a tiny inscription on the back of the pendant.
Three words.
OPEN IT ALONE.
My heart sank.
Whatever my father had left for me, he had intended me to discover it without Adrian.
Without Lucian.
Without anyone from the Moretti family.
I closed my fingers around the pendant.
For the first time since this nightmare began, I had something that belonged only to me.
And I had a terrible feeling that when I finally opened it, the man I loved might become the man I could never forgive.