The Rise Of The Betrayed Luna (Amorah and Holmes) novel Chapter 200

Chapter 200

Three days.

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Lena knew it was three days because she had been counting the meals. Two trays a day, slid under the door without a word. Bread mostly. Water. Something that might have been rice once. She had forced herself to eat, forced Monica to eat, because staying alive meant staying strong and staying strong meant getting home.

The basement had stopped feeling temporary somewhere around the second day. That was the thing that scared her more than the dark, more than the cold, more than the ropes that had rubbed her wrists raw. The way it had started to feel like the whole world.

Monica was curled against her side, her knees drawn up, her breathing uneven. She’d been crying on and off for hours but she’d gone quiet now, which was worse. Lena pressed closer to her.

“Talk to me,” Lena said.

Monica’s voice came out hollow. “About what?”

“Anything. Tell me what you’re going to do first when we get home.”

A long pause. “Sleep in my own bed.”

“What else.”

“Eat Mom’s cooking.” Monica’s voice cracked slightly on the word Mom. “Sit in the kitchen with everyone and eat something warm.”

Lena held those images carefully in her mind. The kitchen at Riverside Manor. The smell of food. Lucas stealing from everyone’s plates. Ria pretending to be annoyed. Their mother laughing with her whole face. Her father standing at the counter with his reading glasses pushed up on his head, looking for his reading glasses.

She missed him so much it sat in her chest like something solid.

She thought about the last morning before the mall. She’d hugged Lucia in the kitchen but she’d only waved at her father from the door because she was running late. Just waved. Like she’d see him in an hour. Like there was no version of the world where she wouldn’t.

When she got home she was going to stand in that doorway and not move until she’d held him long enough.

When. Not if. She would not allow herself that word.

“Lena.” Monica’s voice came out very small.

“I’m here.”

“I keep thinking about the art supplies.” A sound came from Monica that was almost a laugh and almost not. “They grabbed me before I even paid for the pencils. I was still holding the box.

“So the first thing we do when we get home is go back and pay for those pencils.”

“And buy the forty–eight colour set while we’re there.”

“Dennitely the forty–eight colour set.”

Monica went quiet for a while. The basement settled into its usual sounds. Water dripping somewhere in the far corner.

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12:31 pm P P P C

Chapter 200-…

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Something shifting in the walls. The distant, indifferent noise of the world continuing above them without knowing they

were there.

“My wrists hurt,” Monica said,

“I know. Mine too.”

“Do you think they’re going to hurt us?”

Lena had turned that question over for three days. The man who’d come down on the first day had not touched them. Had not stepped close. He’d told them they were there because someone had been offended, then walked back up the stairs like they were a problem that had been filed and set aside.

Which meant someone wanted them alive.

Which meant they were leverage.

Which meant their family was out there trying to meet whatever demand would bring them home.

“No,” Lena said. “That’s not the plan.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if it was, they wouldn’t be waiting.” Lena kept her voice even. “Someone wants something from Dad. When he gives it to them, we come home.”

“What if he can’t give them what they want?”

“Dad can give anyone anything.” The certainty in her voice was real. It came from somewhere below logic. “There is no version of this where he stops looking.”

Monica was quiet after that. Her breathing slowly steadied. Lena felt her own exhaustion pressing down, three nights of half- sleep and too much fear and not enough food. She didn’t fully let herself go under. She hadn’t since the first night. Someone had to stay watching.

“I want to finish the family portrait,” Monica said. “I keep thinking about it. I had the whole composition in my head.”

“Tell me.”

to de

“Mom in the center. She’s always the center even when she doesn’t try to be. Dad just behind her with his hand on her shoulder. Lucas on the left looking like he’s about to say something stupid. Ria on the right looking dramatic about it.” Monica’s voice was getting warmer. “You and me on the ends. Bookends.”

r

“Bookends,” Lena repeated quietly.

“Late afternoon light. The way the back garden goes golden around five o’clock.” Monica paused. “I’m going to finish it. I just need to get home first.”

“You’ll finish it,” Lena said. “And we’re hanging it in the main hallway.”

Monica made a small sound against her shoulder. The closest she’d come to a laugh in three days.

Then the footsteps started.

Both of them went rigid at exactly the same moment. But these were different from the heavy boots of the men who brought the food. These were lighter. More careful. Moving slowly across the floor directly above their heads with a deliberateness that felt considered, like someone who knew the layout and wasn’t in a hurry.

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12:31 pm PPP

Chapter 200–

Lena Monica’s whisper barely existed.

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“I hear it. Leita pressed her back against the wall, pulling Monica with her, positioning herself slightly forward. Her heart was slamming against her rib

The footsteps stopped directly above,

A lock turned. Slow and deliberate.

The basement door opened and light poured down the wooden stairs, harsh and sudden after so much darkness. Lena forced her eyes to stay open against it. After three days of not knowing, she needed to see.

One step at a time. Unhurried.

Shoes appeared first on the stairs. Not boots. Clean, expensive shoes that had no business in a basement. A hand on the banister with manicured nails and a thin gold bracelet catching the light from above.

Monica made a sound. Small and sharp. Like something pressing on a bruise.

The figure descended slowly into the dim light of the basement and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Lena looked at her properly. A woman. Slim. Blonde hair falling neat around her shoulders. A coat that cost more than most people earned in a month. She held her bag against her body like she was standing in a hotel lobby, not a concrete room where two teenagers had been tied up for three days.

Lena had seen this woman once before. Briefly. Across a crowded space. She hadn’t known her name at the time. Hadn’t needed to. But the image had stayed somewhere in her memory the way certain things did, and now it surfaced with cold clarity.

Monica recognised her the same moment Lena did.

The shaking started instantly, deep and total, moving through Monica’s whole body from somewhere at her core. She pressed herself against Lena’s side and then behind her, pushing her way behind Lena’s back, using Lena’s body as the only barrier available to her, her bound hands clutching at whatever fabric she could reach.

“No.” Monica’s voice came out as barely a breath. “No. Not her. Please not her.”

Lena felt Monica’s forehead press between her shoulder blades. Felt her shaking against her spine. She understood then, from the specific quality of Monica’s terror, that whatever this woman had done to her sister before had left marks tha therapy had spent months trying to reach.

Lena planted her feet on the concrete floor and stayed exactly where she was, a wall between Monica and the woman at the bottom of the stairs.

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