Chapter 8 - The Betrayal
Margaret looked up at Nora, tears streaming down her bruised, weathered cheeks. "I'm sorry, Nora... I'm so sorry..."
"What truth?" Nora demanded, her eyes flicking between her mother and Carlo.
"She didn't fake her death to protect you, Nora," Carlo revealed, his voice filled with venomous amusement. "She faked her death because she was working for me all along. She was my primary archivist, my accountant, my partner. The eighty-four thousand dollars in medical debt? It wasn't cancer bills, my dear. It was her commission fee for selling the stolen genetic embryos to the highest bidder."
Nora felt as though the floor beneath her feet had collapsed into an endless void. "What?" she whispered.
"No, Nora! That's not true!" Margaret sobbed. "I tried to buy you out! I took the money so I could send you away from Boston! I wanted you to have a life!"
"By selling my DNA?!" Nora screamed, her voice breaking into a agonized cry. "By letting me work twenty-hour shifts in a diner thinking you were dying of cancer?!"
"She didn't care about you, Nora," Carlo mocked. "You were just a bloodline vessel to her. And now, the twins will come home to me, where they belong."
Alessio's eyes narrowed. "They belong with someone who won't turn them into monsters, Carlo."
In one fluid motion, before Carlo could pull his trigger, Alessio fired through his coat pocket. The shot struck Carlo in the shoulder, knocking him backward against the glass window.
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Margaret screamed as Carlo fell, firing his silver revolver wildly into the ceiling. The glass dome shattered overhead, rain pouring into the lantern room in a torrential cascade.
Alessio lunged forward, tackling Carlo to the floor. The two men wrestled in the darkness, the storm roaring around them, while Nora stood paralyzed, her gun raised, unable to process who was the monster and who was the savior.
