Chapter 404: I’m The Dismembered Person

Lewis had shot her twice. That night she was dressed entirely in black, and all I could make out through the chaos was the blood — I never saw clearly where the bullets had landed. Then she had gone over the cliff’s edge, straight down into the churning sea below. The drop alone should have been fatal. The water should have finished anything the bullets hadn’t. Lewis had sent teams into those mountains afterward, combing every stretch of coastline they could reach.

They never found a body.

The thought of her — alive, out there somewhere, carrying that hatred like a second skin — sent a cold feeling crawling up my spine. She held me responsible for Silas’s death. As if she hadn’t been the one who came for me first. As if any of it had been my doing.

“Elena, Wisteria didn’t have a normal childhood,” Whitney said carefully, her voice soft in a way that wasn’t quite sympathy and wasn’t quite pity. “She was always… different.”

“You two spent time together?”

Whitney nodded slowly. “We were close in age. I didn’t understand much back then. She used to go after me — throwing dead things at me, caterpillars, mice, once a snake. If Vito hadn’t been there —” She stopped, then finished quietly, “I don’t think I’d still be here.”

“What changed her?”

“She disappeared for a while. When she came back, she was completely unrecognizable. Whatever had been difficult about her before had hardened into something else entirely — pure hostility, like hatred had eaten everything soft inside her and left only that. All she cared about was the Morrigans. The only person who could reach her, who could pull her back from the edge of herself, was Silas.” Whitney paused. “And now he’s gone.”

Which meant there was no one left to pull her back from anything.

I stared at the wall across from me, turning all of it over in my mind. A woman like Wisteria didn’t simply vanish — not permanently, not when she had something left to pursue. She had survived things that should have ended her before. The fall, the bullets, the sea. None of it had been enough. And now, with Silas gone and nothing tethering her to any version of herself that could be reasoned with, she would be moving without restraint. Without hesitation. Whatever shape her grief had taken, it had almost certainly sharpened into something directed. Something pointed directly at me.

“If she’s alive,” I said, and my voice came out colder than I intended, “then this time I will make sure she feels every single thing she put me through.”

Whitney reached over and touched my arm. “Elena. You’re carrying a child. You have to take care of yourself right now.”

I pressed my hand flat against my stomach. She was right. Whatever came — whatever Wisteria had become, whatever the Commander and his wife were planning, whatever was still moving in the dark — this child came first. The grief I had carried after losing Joy would never happen again. I would not let it.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this situation was far more tangled than anything we’d untangled yet.

Lewis came in from the kitchen carrying a bowl of noodles, plain and light, barely any oil — he had clearly made them that way deliberately, anticipating my stomach’s current state of rebellion. He set it down on the nightstand without ceremony, without making a production of it. That was the thing about Lewis. He never performed care. He simply did it, quietly, practically, as though it were the only obvious response to a problem. “You haven’t eaten all day and you’ve been sick twice,” he said gently. “Just try a little.”

“Alright,” I said, and meant it.

I got two bites in before my stomach clenched hard and I pressed my hand over my mouth. Lewis was already sliding the trash bin toward me before I could ask. Nothing came up, but the wave of nausea was bad enough that putting the bowl down felt like the only option. I managed a few small sips of the broth instead, hoping that would be enough to keep me upright — but even that didn’t stay down long.

“Elena!”

Both Whitney and Lewis said it at the same time, and I sat there afterward with nothing left to give, feeling completely hollowed out.

I couldn’t tell anymore whether it was morning sickness or my nerves or both working together against me.

Lewis set the bowl aside and exhaled slowly. “Forget it. We’ll try again when you feel better.” His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he glanced at me once before stepping out to take the call — probably being careful not to say anything in front of me that might send me straight back to the bathroom.

Whitney wiped my face gently with a damp towel. “Do you want to lie down?”

“Yes.”

I hadn’t eaten anything real all day, and the lightheadedness had settled in properly. I curled up under the covers and closed my eyes. When Lewis came back in a few minutes later, I didn’t even pretend to be resting.

“Carl. Is there an update?”

“Rest first —”

“I’ve already seen a severed head delivered to my front door. There is nothing left that can shock me. If you don’t tell me, I won’t be able to close my eyes anyway.”

He considered that for a moment, then sat on the edge of the bed. “Forensics found some clues at the scene where the body was discovered. Footprints. Trace evidence on the body itself.” He kept his voice low and even. “The analysis suggests the killer is a woman.”

“What kind of woman?”

“Around five feet five.”

The number landed quietly, but what it meant wasn’t quiet at all. Wisteria was just slightly shorter than me. That height, that precision, that particular brand of cruelty — it fit.

“Did any cameras nearby pick up anything? Could it actually be her?”

Lewis’s face had already gone cold — the kind of cold that meant he’d been sitting with this possibility for a while. “The probability is high. She was never part of the Blackwells, not really — she was the organization’s. After years of being used by the Commander and his wife, she belongs to them completely now. If she survived, she didn’t go back to the Blackwells. She came back here.” He paused. “Theo chose that alley specifically because it had no coverage. The nearby cameras were hacked in that window of time. Nothing was recorded.”

I gripped the edge of the blanket, frustration and fury burning low in my chest. “She really is lucky.”

Lewis’s jaw tightened. “I’m sorry, Elena. I should have made certain when I had the chance.”

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