The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 142

The Heiress He Underestimated

Chapter 142 Five Years Too Late

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Finished

The memory hit Elera like a freight train. She’d forgotten, or maybe her brain had buried it and was protecting her from it. But now it was coming back in flashes.

The party and the noise. Seeing her father in a back room where he shouldn’t be. Going to confront him, asking what he was doing there. Him handing her a drink, his smile too wide and too fake, so fake. “You look thirsty, sweetheart. Drink this.”

And she had. She’d been eighteen and stupid and she’d drunk whatever he gave her. And then everything got fuzzy. She remembered him walking her to her car. Remembered him saying something about how she needed to get home, needed to rest, needed to forget what she’d seen. Remembered driving home somehow, though she shouldn’t have been behind a wheel. Remembered waking up the next morning with a splitting headache and gaps in her memory.

She’d thought she’d just been tired. Stressed about exams. But no. He’d drugged her. Her own father had drugged her to keep her quiet about what she’d seen.

“I think,” Jennifer continued, “that he was going to use you as a backup scapegoat if the Sarah plan didn’t work. If the police didn’t buy that Sarah had been driving drunk, he could say you’d been there, you’d been drinking, maybe you were the one driving. He had options. He always has options.”

Elera was going to be sick. Actually physically sick. She stood up abruptly, mumbling something about the bathroom, and stumbled toward it. Clara started to follow but Elera waved her off.

In the bathroom, she gripped the sink and stared at her reflection. The woman looking back at her was pale, shaking. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. And in a way, she had. The ghost of the girl she’d been, the girl who’d trusted her father, who’d thought she was safe.

She splashed cold water on her face, trying to ground herself. Her father was a murderer. He’d killed two people for a business deal. He’d framed a teenage girl. He’d drugged his own daughter to keep her quiet. And he’d gotten away with it for five years.

The bathroom door opened and Drakonius slipped in, ignoring the “Women’s Room” sign.

“You’re in the ladies room,” Elera said automatically.

“I don’t care. Are you okay?”

“No. I’m really, really not okay.”

He pulled her into his arms and she let herself collapse against him for a moment, just a moment of weakness. His heart was beating steadily under her ear, solid and real and alive.

“We’re going to handle this,” he said quietly. “We’re going to make him pay for what he did.”

“How? He’s got money and lawyers and apparently, people who kill for him. How do we fight that?”

“The same way you’ve been fighting everything else. Smart, strategic and with people who have your back.” He pulled away slightly to look at her face. “You’re not alone in this, Elera. Not anymore.”

She nodded, wiping her eyes before any tears could fall. Crying would have to wait. Right now, she has

11:58 sm pppp.

Quapter 149 Five Years Too Late

work to do,

Relched

When they go back to the booth, Jennifer was showing Clara something on her phone. I key corpjes, the was waying “The organ undic camera foxenge was destroyed, but I made a copy before can I kept it as

*****, the men came back. It’s no yea quality, but you can see everything, You can ve Kieran Nethys moving, Sarutle body, arranging, the soone

”

“Can we use this! Dera asted, diding back into the boot. In cont

Tryally, it’s completed. The chain of custody is broken, 1 obrated it through questionable mom, and the original has been destroyed. Pen it’s colidence and it’s also prod had with my testimony and with the other people who were at that panty coming forward, major we can build a cast

“The detective who was killed Drakonius said, “Was there a family? Someone who might have his notes?

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