Chapter 84: Unbelievable!
He didn’t sleep that night. Not even for a second. Just lay there in the heavy dark, waiting for the sun to rise like it might bring her back.
But morning came cold and hollow.
By six-thirty, Stefan was showered and dressed in black slacks and a charcoal sweater—he’d picked up before leaving— simple but clean. His face in the mirror looked unfamiliar—haunted. He hadn’t shaved. His eyes were bloodshot, jaw tight. But he didn’t care.
He wasn’t going for a reunion.
He was going to face the woman who’d orchestrated the beginning of this collapse.
His mother. Elizabeth Winters.
The woman who had smiled and said she loved him while helping replace his bride with another. The woman who had knowingly allowed Ruby to carry the burden, thinking she was protecting him. The same woman who had welcomed Ivy back like a prodigal daughter while the real woman who had held Stefan’s heart walked out the door with tears in her eyes and a life growing inside her.
He slammed the door of the hotel room behind him without hesitation and once he got into his car, he drove off.
The streets of Zeden blurred around him, and he barely felt the weight of the steering wheel beneath his hands. His thoughts were on fire. His heart was a drum of fury.
You don’t get to call it love if it’s built on silence and betrayal. How could his mother ever do something like that? He didn’t need to think much since he’d be getting the answers straight from her any moment. He told himself as he focused on the road and soon he arrived at his mother’s place.
As he pulled into the driveway of his family’s estate, the gates opened without resistance. Familiar. Automatic.
But he wasn’t the same son returning home.