The Sickened Luna's Last Chance novel Chapter 485

Chapter 485

“She’ll be okay,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “Your mom is strong. And besides, even your father isn’t crazy enough to bring any harm to her. He’ll probably release her and send her home with a warning.”

“We don’t know that for certain.” Ella curled up in my lap like a cat. She felt so small, so fragile in my arms. I held her closer, smoothing my hand over her hair. “What if my father won’t let her go? Or what if… What if he finally snaps?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. So I just held her and waited.

The hours dragged by interminably. Ella couldn’t seem to sit still for more than a couple of minutes at a time. She paced the conference room, then moved to my office, then back to the conference room. I tried to get her to eat something, but she refused. I tried to get her to rest, but she just shook her head.

Finally, just as the sun was starting to rise, we heard a car pull up outside. A moment later, the front door opened. We both rushed into the foyer to find Jane standing there with a grim expression on her face. Lilith wasn’t with her.

“What happened?” Ella hurried over to her. “Is my mom okay?”

Jane glanced at me, then at Ella. “Richard gave me something to show you. He said… he said it should be… motivational.” She pulled out her phone, tapped on the screen a few times, then hesitated. I realized, then, that her hand was trembling. “You two might want to sit down for this.”

“Just fucking show me,” Ella snarled.

Jane nodded and held her phone out. Ella snatched it away, and I looked over her shoulder. My stomach dropped. Ella cried out, hand flying to slap over her mouth. The image on the screen was so… disgusting that it took a moment for my brain to even process it.

Lilith was in the center of it, chained to a chair in what looked like a basement. Her face was bruised and swollen. Blood dripped from a cut above her eye. Her shirt was torn, and her head was lolling.

She’d been tortured. Beaten.

This fucking monster was abusing a sixty–some year old woman.

“Mom…” Ella’s voice was small., like a child She began trembling violently. Tears were already rolling down her cheeks, and the hand that was holding the phone suddenly went slack.

I quickly took the phone away and handed it back to Jane, not wanting Ella to look at that horrifying image a moment longer than necessary. Not that it mattered, anyway; the damage had been done. Ella shrank against me, shaking and sobbing. I held her close and tried to remain calm and level–headed despite the rage that shot through me like an arrow made of ice.

That fucker would pay. I would make sure of it.

“Richard said he’s willing to negotiate,” Jane said quietly, slipping her phone back into her pocket. “But he has conditions.”

“What conditions?” I barked.

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Jane took a breath. “He’s offering two options. The first is that you pay him fifty million dollars for Lilith’s release”

“Fifty million?” Ella jerked her head up. “That’s insane! We don’t even have that much money!”

“What’s the second option?” I asked through clenched teeth.

Jane looked me straight in the eye. “He wants you to break up with Ella. Publicly. Denounce her as a fraud, claiming that she was never really the dead Ella but rather an imposter. Ella must then return to Stormhollow and take a position as an Omega servant. If you do that, he’ll release Lilith immediately.”

The room went silent.

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