The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 71

Hackett Lehman leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Every word Clarissa Sherwood spoke was like a meticulously coded program—clear, clinical, and striking straight at the heart of the matter.

He had to admit, based on their current situation, this was the best and only way out.

"What if... what if Annelise makes a scene?" he asked, still feeling uneasy.

The Annelise Sargent he had faced today gave him an unprecedented, unfamiliar sense of dread.

On the other end of the line, Clarissa suddenly laughed.

It was a light sound, but it carried the cruel, triumphant edge of someone who already held the winning hand.

"Make a scene?"

"What could she possibly do?"

"Don't forget, Hackett. The Annelise of today has absolutely no one to rely on in the Lehman family."

"Her own family is gone; the so-called support system she came from is nothing but an empty shell now."

"Aside from you, and me—her 'best friend'—she doesn't even have a single person she can call to cry to."

Clarissa paused, speaking as if she were mentioning the most trivial thing in the world, her tone laced with a faint, almost imperceptible sliver of pride.

"The most successful thing I've done over these past four years is thoroughly scrub all those irrelevant friends from her life, one by one."

"Right now, she is a deserted island, Hackett."

"An island that simply cannot survive without you."

For some reason, a fleeting, intensely uncomfortable sensation washed over Hackett's heart.

But he quickly brushed it off, chalking it up to the very last lingering traces of guilt he felt toward Annelise.

Clarissa was right.

Annelise couldn't leave him.

After hanging up the phone, Hackett sat in the darkness, enveloped in a long silence.

He slid that specific file out and tucked it into the inner pocket of his suit jacket.

Then, he gathered everything else, walked over to the paper shredder in the corner of his study, and turned it on.

One by one, he fed the pieces of paper that held all his and Clarissa's past secrets into the cold, rotating blades of the machine.

Watching the shredded remnants fall like snow from the other side, the heavy stone that had been suspended in his chest finally seemed to drop.

What he didn't know, however, was this.

While Clarissa was smugly patting herself on the back for scrubbing Annelise's life of all her friends, she had missed one—someone she knew nothing about and had never once considered a threat.

Annelise's college roommate, Vivian Lincoln.

The fierce, uncompromising woman who had moved to an out-of-state hospital right after graduation and almost never appeared in Annelise's social circles.

And it was precisely this overlooked, seemingly insignificant "variable"...

That would soon become the sharpest, most lethal weapon Annelise could ever wield to strike back.