Chapter 11 - THE ICE
The lake groaned beneath Serena’s heels.
Ethan cried against her shoulder.
“Don’t come closer,” Serena warned.
Victor stopped at the edge of the dock. “The ice won’t hold you.”
“Then give me a reason to care.”
Lily moved slowly from the side walkway, keeping her hands visible.
“Ethan knows my voice,” she said. “Let me take him. You can keep Victor.”
Serena laughed. “You think this is about a baby?”
“No,” Lily said. “I think it stopped being about Ethan the moment you realized he loved someone you couldn’t control.”
The words landed harder than a threat.
Serena’s face twisted. “He was supposed to call me Mama.”
“He was supposed to feel safe.”
A crack split the ice.
Serena looked down.
Victor lunged.
The surface broke beneath her. She shoved Ethan toward the dock by instinct as she fell. Victor caught the baby against his chest. Lily dropped flat and grabbed Serena’s wrist before the dark water pulled her under.
For one second, Serena stared up at the nanny she had kicked and threatened.
“Why are you helping me?” she gasped.
“Because I’m not you.”
Quinn and two officers dragged Serena onto the dock. She was handcuffed, wrapped in a thermal blanket, and taken to an ambulance.
Ethan clung to Lily with his good arm. His sobs slowed as she hummed the song she used at bedtime.
Victor knelt beside them, shaking from cold and something deeper.
“It’s over,” Lily whispered.
Detective Quinn’s phone rang.
Her expression changed as she listened.
“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”
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Damien had broken into Blackwood National’s data center.
And he was deleting the records that could prove every crime.
