Chapter 14: Under Her Control
The suite was silent.
Cambria stood frozen before the blank screen, her pulse roaring in her ears. The image of her sister bound, gagged, terrified was already seared into her memory. But it wasn’t just the horror of the threat that stunned her.
It was the realization that she had underestimated Elena Thorne.
Again.
"Turn everything off," Elara said sharply, snapping into motion. She yanked cords, shut laptops, killed power to the monitors. "She’s in the system. We’re compromised."
Cambria didn’t move.
Elara gripped her arm. "Cam, we need to go. Now."
But Cambria’s mind was spiraling back to childhood. Back to the days when she and her sister, Seraphina, used to share secrets under their mother’s staircase. Seraphina had always been the quiet one, the kind one. She’d stayed behind when Cambria left their small hometown, refusing to be dragged into the storm that followed her sister’s rise and fall.
And now she was collateral.
"I should’ve told her to run," Cambria whispered.
"She didn’t even know what you were doing," Elara said, her voice gentler now. "That was the point. You kept her out of this."