Chapter 381: Nothing to Do With the Morrigans

“There was never any chip.”

I stared at him, the words not fully landing at first. “You lied to all of us?”

Vito didn’t answer right away. His gaze had already moved past me to where Whitney lay on the ground, her white dress soaked through with blood, the small diamonds sewn into the fabric catching the light like scattered stars. She looked untouchable even like this pure and ruined at the same time, like something precious that had been dropped from a great height.

His voice came out quieter than I had ever heard it. “How could I risk putting something that dangerous inside her?”

It made sense, once I let myself think it through. The chip was controlled by outside forces anyone with access could have used it to hurt her. Vito would never have handed them that kind of leverage over the one person he actually cared about.

He walked over slowly and lifted her from the ground with a gentleness that didn’t match the man I thought I knew. His hands were careful, almost reverent, like he was afraid of causing her one more moment of pain.

Watching him, something ached quietly in my chest.

I thought back to Yael’s birthday party hiding in that closet, barely breathing. Maybe Vito had known I was there the whole time. Maybe everything he did that night, every cold and cutting thing, had been designed to create an opening for me to slip away unseen. I thought about the funeral home, the deliberate distance he kept, the way he had made sure I saw only the worst version of him. The time Yael disguised me as a servant and Vito looked straight through me like I was a stranger.

Over and over, without ever saying a word, he had let me go.

I had spent so long running from him that I never stopped to consider what it cost him to keep choosing that. He was only a few years younger than Lewis still in his twenties, an age when most people were still figuring out who they wanted to be. Instead, he had grown up inside his father’s hatred, bound to a revenge that was never really his, forced to become a villain to protect the people he loved.

And through all of it, he had loved Whitney. Completely, and without apology.

He murmured something low to one of his men, then carried her away. I watched until they disappeared from sight, and the ache in my chest settled into something heavier. Maybe he really had wanted to give her a real bond a proper ceremony, a promise made in front of everyone. Without all the history and hatred that surrounded them, they could have been something simple and good.

But that was never how fate worked. It laid its web long before any of us arrived, and no matter how carefully we stepped, we always ended up caught.

I turned back to Grandma and knelt beside her, cradling her gently. My fingers found the wound on her head, and I wiped the blood away as carefully as I could.

For her, maybe this was the most peaceful ending she could have hoped for. She had given everything to the Morrigans her loyalty, her strength, her entire life. She had been formidable right up until the end, but the last six months had kept her bedridden and diminished. Compared to the others, she had suffered less. And given that she had been the one who set so much of this in motion, that felt like its own kind of mercy.

I traced my fingers lightly along her cheek. “Rest now, Grandma.”

This was the day I had been waiting for. Now that it had finally arrived, I wasn’t sure what I had expected to feel.

Greg knelt on her other side, his mouth opening and closing around words he couldn’t find. The confession he had made earlier all those raw, unguarded things he had said when he believed he was dying sat visibly between us now. Watching the chaos the Blackwells had unleashed, he finally understood, in a way no words could have taught him, what I had been living with all along. No apology could reach back far enough to touch it.

“Elena,” he said softly.

“It will be difficult to transport her home,” I said, keeping my voice even. “We may need to cremate her here and carry her ashes back to the family grounds.” He nodded slowly, and said nothing else. The fact that he was still breathing was already more than he’d earned today.

When Kate saw that Josh had been treated and stabilized, the tension ran out of her all at once. She crossed the space between us carefully, like she was walking on uncertain ground. “Elena, I’m sorry. I ”

I looked at her really looked at her, at the exhaustion carved into her face and asked quietly, “If you truly loved me, how could you not recognize me?”

She went still.

Zoey had worn my face, moved through my life, and not one person in my family had paused long enough to question it. Lewis had seen through it within three days. Three days just from paying attention to the small things, the habits, the ways I moved and spoke that no one else had ever bothered to learn. My own family had needed Wisteria to spell it out for them.

That comparison was the sharpest wound of all. It always had been.

Greg looked away, jaw tight with shame. I let the silence sit for a moment before I spoke again.

“You blamed me for not saving Ethan and Jake. But I didn’t know who the killer was how was I supposed to protect anyone from a threat I couldn’t see? And the day your brakes failed, you got a phone call that made you turn the car around. Do you know who that call was from?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I never came after you for what you put me through. I saved your family when I had every reason not to. I don’t owe the Morrigans anything anymore.”

“Elena, I know I was wrong,” Greg said. “Please ”

Kate grabbed my hand before he could finish, tears spilling down her face. “I’m impulsive. I react before I think. Someone says the wrong thing and I forget everything good about you. Please just give me one more chance.”

I looked down at her hand holding mine, then gently pulled free.

“I used to want exactly that,” I said. “Even when I hated all of you, some part of me still hoped hoped you’d find me sooner, see through Wisteria on your own, feel the weight of what you’d done and want to make it right. I held onto that for a long time.” I paused. “But not every apology deserves to be accepted. Not every ’I’m sorry’ closes the wound it came from.”

I looked at both of them really looked, one last time.

“You gave me life and raised me, and I’ve already repaid that debt. Now that Grandma is gone, the last thread I had to this family is gone with her. Once we lay her to rest, that’s the end of it.” My voice was steady. Quieter than I expected, but steady. “From this moment on, I have no ties to the Morrigans. Whatever came before it stays there. We’re done.”

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