Chapter 974:
Emani gazed out the window, her dim, weary eyes lost in the pale distance. She stayed silent for what felt like an eternity—so long that Rylie began to believe no words would ever come.
At last, Emani’s fragile chest rose and fell with uneven breaths, each one dragging something buried and painful up from the past. When she finally turned, her voice rasped with age, cracking between phrases.
“Rhoda is my only child. Maya, Carter’s wife, was never truly mine. I took her in when she was still a girl. She grew into my eldest, but she was not of my blood.”
Rhoda’s pupils widened rapidly, her eyes opening in stunned disbelief.
“Maya was diagnosed with cancer then,” Emani continued softly. “There was a drug abroad… still unapproved at the time. It could buy her a little time, slow what was consuming her, but it could never heal her.”
Her thin fingers pressed hard into the sides of her wheelchair.
“Carter and Rhoda tried to pull strings to get it. The price they had to pay for that medicine was… confidential information.”
She inhaled sharply, her voice trembling as light gathered in her eyes, though she refused to let the tears fall.
“I stopped them. Before I retired, I served in state security. I understood too well that one compromise invites another. The safety of this nation must always stand above a single life.”
Rylie felt the weight of those words sink deep into her chest.
“But Rhoda was raised in comfort, shielded from everything. She couldn’t understand. All she saw was her sister… dying.” Emani’s voice shook, carrying a sorrow so deep it seemed bottomless. “She came to despise me for it. She believed I was cold—that I could have saved Maya, but chose not to. She thought if she poisoned me, left me paralyzed, I wouldn’t be able to stop her or Carter from doing what they planned.”
Her eyelids fluttered shut, and at last, burning tears slipped down her worn cheeks.
“So I acted first. I blocked every path they could take. She only wanted to save her sister. That’s why… I can’t bring myself to hate any of it.”
Her throat tightened as the words tore out, raw and uneven.
“But why couldn’t she see… my heart was shattering, too. Maya was my child as well.”
Did they truly believe it was easy for her to stand by and watch her daughter fade away?
“Later, Carter discovered another option—a plan to take his wife overseas and use that machine abroad.” Her voice thinned, and all color drained from her face. “But Carter… he’d made too many enemies in service of this country. No one ever found out who leaked his plan. That day, he was meant to accompany her, but an urgent duty called him away. Someone had tampered with the private jet. It went down.”
Maya perished in the crash. Carter survived, but the man who lived on afterward was no longer the same.
Rylie stayed silent, the truth pressing heavily against her chest. “So that’s how it happened,” she murmured.
Emani turned her gaze toward Rylie. “I once thought I would spend the rest of my life lying here, as penance for what happened to Maya.”
Her breathing grew uneven as she went on. “But then I began to realize the entire family had fallen apart. My granddaughter became a sanctimonious executioner, and the younger ones… they all lost their way.”
.
.
.