Rise Of A Shattered Luna (Natalie) by Kave Derry novel Chapter 88

Chapter 88 The Collapse

Baron’s POV

I held her steady against my side, my hand splayed across her waist.

Natalie didn’t look away from him.

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“Finn,” she said finally. “Even if Phantom hadn’t gone to protect me… even if she had stayed by your side and ignored every order Baron gave… do you really think they would have spared her?”

I could feel his guilt because deep down, Finn knew the answer.

They wouldn’t have spared her.

Natalie saw the flicker of realization in his eyes as his lie deteriorated.

She knew he understood.

I exhaled slowly, a moment of relief passing through me. I had been ready to tear Finn’s throat out to protect her, but Natalie had used a far better weapon: the truth.

I looked at her, marveling at her composure even as I felt the weight of exhaustion passing her frame.

I needed to end this before she collapsed.

I clapped my hands once, the sound echoed through the room.

The heavy steel door groaned open as Shauna stepped inside, her face filled with anger I’ve only seen twice.

At the sight of her, Finn’s entire body went blank.

He scrambled back, his eyes wide with a new kind of shock. “You… Shauna? Weren’t you detained? The police… I saw them take you.”

“That was just to fool you, Finn,” Shauna said, her voice heavy with sorrow mixed with anger. “We needed to see who you would reach out to when you thought the perimeter was compromised.”

She walked toward him, her gaze fixed on him. “Finn… after everything we’ve gone through… The blood we’ve spilled together… We took you as family. How could you-” Her voice broke, the words dying in her throat.

Shauna had been standing in the observation corridor; she had heard every word Natalie spoke.

As an orphan herself, one who had clawed her way out of the same dirt as Finn, she understood the pain that had nearly drowned him when he found his parents.

We had all lived bitterly, barely surviving without anyone but each other.

Shauna’s eyes glistened with unshed tears as she reached into her tactical vest and handed him a thin, black folder. “Look at this, Finn. Look at the value of your ‘one task.“”

Fear coiled in Finn’s gut–I could smell the sharp scent of terror radiating off him.

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10:32 am

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Chapter 88 The Collapse

His hands moved as if controlled by a puppeteer, reached out and took it.

Slowly, his fingers trembling so violently the paper rattled, he opened it.

Photographs and grainy surveillance documents spilled onto the blood–slicked floor.

The images were brutal.

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They showed a man and a woman – his parents – butchered like animals in a dingy apartment, their blood stained the floor in a pattern that looked so terrifying that Natalie had to look away.

Finn’s vision blurred.

Even with all the hatred he felt for their neglect, he had never wished them dead.

And now… after the betrayal… and he had dragged Phantom and their unborn child into a nameless grave.

The timestamps were undeniable.

The very day after Finn had agreed to betray the pack for the enemy, his parents had already been killed.

They were dead before Natalie ever set foot in the pack… they were dead before Phantom ever took her final post.

His sacrifice had all been for absolutely nothing.

He had been protecting ghosts.

“How… how could they?!” Finn’s voice, a high–pitched sound echoed through the room again.

His laughter and sobs tangled together in a sickening sound as he beat his fists against the floor, howling at the ceiling.

I instinctively stepped in front of Natalie, pulling her back and shielding her from his total mental breakdown.

I could feel her chest tightening against my

back.

I knew she was processing the scale of the horror – Yvonne, Phantom, the unborn child, the murdered parents… She had clearly only wanted to see Yvonne’s body, to say a final goodbye, and had instead stumbled into whatever nightmare she had just walked

into.

Now she finally understood the root of Finn’s hatred.

Still, even through my protection, I knew Finn’s accusations were echoing inside her head.

He had called her my weakness.

I could feel her uncertainty radiating off her like heat.

Why? she must be wondering

Why would a man like me be so bound to a woman who remembers nothing of him?

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