Chapter 791:

While Seth guided her, Rylie—deep in the same trance—found herself entering Lucilla’s imagined downpour, feeling the rain on her own skin.

Seth’s tone remained gentle as he continued, “Where do you find yourself now?”

“I’m running. I just keep running,” Lucilla replied.

“And what are you running from?”

Through the thick reeds Lucilla ran, terror etched across her face, until the shadow of a crumbling house loomed before her. Breath ragged, her voice broke the night air in a desperate whisper. “Where is my daughter?”

Finding no trace of her daughter inside, Lucilla rushed back into the storm, her steps quick and unsteady as she pressed on with her frantic search.

Meanwhile, Rylie wrestled with the fragments of her own past, feeling them diverge from Lucilla’s. The harder she tried, the more they slipped beyond her grasp, making it impossible to connect her memories to Lucilla’s. She was reduced to nothing more than a spectator, a silent witness adrift within the visions drawn out by Lucilla’s hypnosis.

Seth, too, sensed that something was amiss. Lowering his eyes to the documents in his hand, he studied them with a deepening frown. “Have you seen your daughter? Where is she?”

“My daughter…” Lucilla stood motionless in the downpour, her mind clouded with confusion. For an instant, she seemed lost, suspended between reality and memory. Then, suddenly, her gaze snapped to Rylie. Terror flooded her eyes, stark and unrestrained.

“No!”

Rylie realized that Lucilla wasn’t truly looking at her. Her wide, stricken gaze was fixed instead on Patrick, who was hurling a woman’s lifeless body to the ground. Before him stood a couple, their voices swallowed by the pounding rain, yet the sight alone carved itself into the core of Lucilla’s most harrowing memories.

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Her eyes locked on the pair, terror and anguish colliding in their depths. With a piercing scream, she broke free from the hypnosis.

Rylie, jolted from the trance at the same time, immediately wrapped her arms around her, holding her tightly in a protective embrace.

Seth, quick to seize the moment, slipped a photograph from his file and pressed it before Lucilla’s eyes. “Do you know this face?”

Lucilla’s eyes burned with fury. She lunged forward, ripping the picture to shreds, the fragments scattering across the floor.

Seth understood at once. He did not draw Rylie back into hypnosis, but instead turned his focus fully to Lucilla, guiding her gently yet firmly into another trance. His aim was to reconstruct her memories in a way that allowed her to grasp her daughter’s hand once more, if only within her mind. Perhaps such an illusion could soften the raw edges of her grief.

Beside him, Brad noticed the strain on Rylie’s face. Reaching out, he brushed his fingers tenderly through her hair.

“Did you see it all clearly?” he asked.

Rylie’s gaze fell upon the shredded remains of the photograph scattered across the floor. Coupled with the haunting image of Patrick flinging a lifeless body at the feet of that elegantly dressed couple, the truth finally crystallized before her. Now she understood the full weight of Lucilla’s anguish.

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