Page 149 of Stolen Fate

I should have been prepared for what I saw, considering I knew who that voice belonged to before I consciously put a face to it.

All conversation halted when I opened the door and took in Jace standing close to a woman in her mid-forties. She hadn’t changed much since the last time I saw her. Still as poised and as cold and as intimidating as always. She stood with an air of importance that told anyone in presence that they would always be lacking in some way, somehow.

Marie Zanders turned to me the same time Jace did, and I knew her expression mirrored mine as she looked at me with horror in her eyes, all the blood draining from her face.

“What the fuck?” I said in a whisper, and I wondered if either one of them heard me.

“Evelyn, what are you doing out here? Please go back inside with Elliot.”

Marie gasped, and she stared between me and Jace. “Elliot? What is she doing with Elliot?”

Jace's eyes glinted cold as he looked back at her. “That is none of your business. Now, I already told my lawyers that I won’t be pressing charges against Camila as long as she checks herself into rehab and stays there for six months, but that is all I am willing to do. Whether she does it or not is up to her. Please leave.”

Marie ignored him and looked at me. “What are you doing with Elliot?” she asked me, and something about her voice gave me pause.

Why was she so concerned that I was in Elliot’s life?

Unless…

No. That wasn’t possible. What were the odds…

Fate’s cruelest joke, no doubt, because Elliot couldn’t possibly be…

But I knew, even if I wanted to deny it. Marie’s face gave her away, and…

I couldn’t breathe.

My vision tunneled and I turned quickly around so I wouldn’t lose it in front of Marie or Jace, and I ran back inside, upstairs to my room and straight into my bathroom, where I began to dry-heave into the toilet.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Elliot couldn’t be, could he?

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I stayed crouched by the toilet for a long while, not knowing what I could do.

What a fucking mess. And how the hell was I supposed to tell Jace anything now?

I closed my eyes and, for the first time in six long years, I thought back to the events that happened. To the first day my life changed drastically.

To the day I met Marie Zander.

---