Chapter 205
Chapter 205:
“And the car crash? Three years later? When Eliza was in the car?” Dallas asked sharply, his mind a cold, calculating machine connecting the dots she couldn’t see.
Margo looked down. Her silence was its own confession. “Buck cut the brake lines p>
Eliza gasped — the sound like a physical blow. The phantom sensation rushed back: the falling, the screech of tires that had haunted her nightmares for years, now given a source, a name, a face.
“He wanted the trust fund. With your parents gone, he became guardian. But the trust didn’t release until you were twenty-five — or dead,” Margo admitted.
“And you knew? You let me live with him?” Eliza stared at her aunt. “I ate at his table. I slept under his roof p>
N𝗲𝗐 𝗐𝖾𝘦𝗸l𝘺 𝖼𝗵𝘢р𝘵er𝗌 𝘰𝗻
“I was scared! He threatened me!” Margo pleaded.
“And Anson?” Eliza turned to him slowly. Her voice had gone dangerously quiet — the calm at the eye of a hurricane. “Did you know p>
Anson held her gaze. “I suspected. That’s why I made a deal with Buck p>
“What deal p>
“I keep his secret. He keeps you alive. And I pay for everything,” Anson said. “I paid him off not to kill you, Eliza p>
“You protected a murderer… to keep me as a pet?” The horror in her voice was absolute. The burn scar on his forearm was no longer a mark of heroism — it was the brand of a jailer. “You let justice sleep for ten years p>
“I protected you from becoming the next victim!” Anson’s voice rose. “If I had gone to the police, Buck would have killed you before they ever arrested him. Or you would have disappeared into the foster system and never been found p>
“He sacrificed everything to keep you safe,” Sienna said from behind him, watching Anson with a strange mixture of jealousy and reluctant awe.
“Get out,” Eliza said to Margo and Sienna. Her voice was flat. Dead.
“But the police—” Margo stammered.
“Go to the station. Confess. Or I will hunt you down myself,” Dallas said. “Zane is waiting in the lobby with the detectives p>
Margo and Sienna fled the room.
Silence settled over what remained. The weight of the truth was crushing. Her parents hadn’t simply died — they had been murdered by her own uncle, their deaths staged as an accident. And Anson, her so-called savior, had used that truth to bind her to him, to make himself indispensable, to build a cage around her one secret at a time.
“Eliza,” Anson stepped forward.
“Don’t.” Dallas moved between them. “She needs time p>
Anson looked at her shattered expression. “I did it for you. I kept you alive p>
“Leave,” Eliza whispered. She didn’t look at him.
Anson stood there for a long moment, waiting for gratitude that would never come. Then he turned and walked out, the door slamming shut behind him.
Eliza stared at the wall. She began to shake.
Dallas sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn’t touch her. He simply waited.
She turned to him at last, her eyes wide with a grief that had nowhere left to go. “They’re dead because of money p>