The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 99

Chapter 99 The Turning

Miles away, in a sterile apartment that smelled of antiseptic and old rage, Sarah Lyros woke up from her

ap on Xan’s yacht. The gentle rocking had stopped. They must have docked.

he sat up slowly, her head fuzzy from the medication she’d taken earlier. The dreams had been bad tonight. They often were. Flames and screaming and the sound of metal crunching. Her parents‘ faces, frozen in shock and terror in that final moment.

They’d killed them. She knew that. The police had said so. The doctors had said so. Everyone had said so. He’d gotten behind the wheel drunk and stupid and young, and she’d wrapped their car around a tree, nd they’d died while she’d walked away with barely a scratch. xcept.

Except there were pieces missing. Gaps in her memory that no amount of therapy or medication or hypnosis had been able to fill. The moments right before the crash were just blank, a void where her consciousness should have been.

he remembered the party. Remembered Elera Nethys being there, looking perfect and untouchable as always. Remembered drinking, yes, but not that much. Not enough to black out. Not enough to not remember getting in a car or starting the engine or any of it.

nd then nothing. And then waking up in a hospital bed with police officers asking her questions she couldn’t answer. And then the trial. The institution. Five years of her life gone, stolen, erased.

and it was all Elera’s fault. It had to be. Because if it wasn’t Elera’s fault, if the story Sarah had been telling herself for five years wasn’t true, then what was she? What had she become?

Sarah walked to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Pale skin. Hollow eyes. The face of a woman who’d been broken and never quite put back together right. The face of a victim.

But what if she wasn’t a victim? What if she was something worse?

The thought slithered through her mind like a snake, cold and poisonous. What if the gaps in her memory weren’t because of alcohol? What if they were because her mind couldn’t handle what she’d done! What if she’d killed her parents on purpose and her brain had just deleted the evidence to protect itself?

No. No, that was crazy. That was the sort of thing the therapists in the institution had suggested when they were trying to break her, trying to make her admit to things she didn’t do.

It was Elera. It had always been Elera. The rich, spoiled girl who’d probably drugged her drink as a prank not knowing it would end in death. That made sense. That fit. That gave Sarali’s suffering meaning

She splashed cold water on her face and took another pill from the boule in her purse. The anxiety was creeping in again, the panic that said nothing was real, nothing was stable, everything could shatter at any moment.

The pill would help. It always did. It made the world soft and manageable and quiet.

She found Xan in the main cabin, standing at the bar and staring at his phone with an expression she couldn’t quite read.

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