Chapter 18 - THE FINAL CONFRONTATION
Elowen stepped out of the van into the biting coastal wind, wearing Nora’s heavy raincoat, holding baby Leo securely against her chest in a front-facing carrier.
"Mara!" Elowen’s voice carried clearly over the roar of the ocean waves and the diesel engines.
Mara whipped around, her eyes bloodshot, her costly clothes soaked through. She looked at Elowen and the baby, a twisted, desperate laugh bursting from her lips.
"You think you've won, Elowen?" Mara shouted, stepping closer to the edge of the wooden pier, holding a sleek silver flash drive in her gloved hand. "Everything is on this drive! The master trust keys, the offshore accounts, the clinical patents! Without this, you and that child will never touch a single dime of the Vance fortune! I will burn it all before I let a nobody like you raise my daughter's heir!"
"I don't care about your money, Mara," Elowen said, her voice dropping into a deep, unshakable calm. She took three slow, deliberate steps forward onto the slick wooden planks, stopping ten feet away from her mother-in-law. "I never cared about your trust, your name, or your social standing. All I ever wanted was to protect my son."
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Mara glared at the baby, her jaw trembling with unhinged rage. "He isn't your son! He belongs to Iris! He belongs to me!"
"He belongs to the woman who carried him, bled for him, and fought through locked doors to keep him breathing," Elowen countered, her eyes locking onto Mara’s with iron resolve. "You lost him the moment you locked that bathroom door."
