Chapter 420
The Trap
Theo laid it all out for me, piece by piece. Jeffrey and Carl had been working quietly in the background, building a case against Sera, tracing the threads of her network and the people propping her up from the shadows. They knew she wasn’t operating alone, and they had every intention of dragging those connections into the light.
What surprised me was learning how calculated Sera had been about the pregnancy. She’d been holding on, trying to reach six months, the point where medical intervention could actually give the baby a fighting chance. She was barely two weeks away from that mark, spending most of her time locked in her room, protecting what little hope she had left. But Jeffrey made a decision that was cold, even by pack standards. He slipped something into her late-night food, a drug that ensured the pregnancy wouldn’t continue. It was brutal, but he refused to let a child born from that kind of poison grow up to threaten the pack’s future.
When Sera realized what was happening, she panicked. Too frightened to raise an alarm inside the house, she reached out to her people in secret, desperate for help. She had no idea Jeffrey had already anticipated exactly that move. Every frantic call she made, every quiet arrangement she tried to put in place, only served to expose the network she’d worked so hard to hide. The trap had been perfect.
I couldn’t help feeling a flicker of admiration for how cleanly it was executed, even as I quietly resented missing the whole thing.
“And the baby?” I asked, a tangle of emotions sitting heavy in my chest.
Theo shook his head slowly. “It was too early. Barely five and a half months. She didn’t make it.”
Sera had fought so hard. Half a month more, and things might have ended differently. I remembered her once telling me it was a girl, and despite everything, I had believed she meant it. That part of her had been real.
“But why was she pinned as the murderer?” I asked.
“It started with Mr. Lewis,” Theo said. “When you were barely sleeping and running on anxiety, he started digging. Everything, Randy’s death, the severed head, those photos, the threats, it all pointed to someone around five-five. At first, every clue seemed to lead back to Wisteria. But Mr. Lewis caught something the rest of us missed. It didn’t fit. If Wisteria wanted you gone, she would never be this obvious. Her instincts are too sharp, too controlled. This was messy. Deliberate, but messy.”
That landed somewhere deep. Silas stabbing me in the back had never settled right with me either. Even through the fog of pregnancy, something had always felt off, like a scent that didn’t quite match the story.
“She was trying to point everyone toward Wisteria,” I said.
“Exactly. Wisteria went off that cliff on Rosbel Island. Even if she survived, we were barely in Jaford before coming back to Snowville. A murder that soon after our return couldn’t have been her. She wouldn’t have had the time to get back, and even if she did, it would’ve taken weeks of careful planning and a complete identity change. Mr. Lewis ruled her out. Alive or not, this wasn’t Wisteria’s work. Someone used her name like a weapon.”
The picture sharpened fast in my mind. “She found out I was pregnant. Luther probably let it slip, and she used it. Staged the whole thing the murder scene, the head, the photos of my supposed death all of it designed to get inside my head. To make me believe Wisteria was always close, always watching.” I paused, letting the full weight of it settle. “She couldn’t touch me physically. Carl kept me too well-guarded for that. So she went after my mind instead, banking on the stress alone doing what she couldn’t.”
In the early weeks, a pregnancy is fragile in ways most people don’t fully appreciate. So much can go wrong without any outside interference at all. Sera knew that.
But her own crisis had pulled her focus away from me these past few weeks, and that had probably bought me more safety than anything else. In trying to destroy me, she’d been caught in the collapse of her own plans. Whatever she felt in that moment, losing the pregnancy and watching her network unravel at the same time, even someone as hard as her would have felt that.
I thought back to the day she looked at my stomach and said the baby must be doing well. There had been something off in her voice, something cold beneath the surface. She couldn’t hold onto her own child, and the sight of my healthy pregnancy must have been its own quiet torment. Lewis had made sure of that, letting her actions fold back on her while my baby stayed safe.
“Lately she’s been too focused on protecting herself to make any more moves,” Theo confirmed.
“How many did you catch last night?”
“Five came to the house. Two medical staff, three bodyguards. A few more were waiting outside.”
My chest lit up just thinking about it. “It must have been something. Please tell me it’s all on surveillance.”
Theo scratched the back of his head. “It is, but honestly, Mrs. Lewis, it’s pretty gory. Might be better if you didn’t “
“Theo.” I gave him a flat look. “Do you know what it’s like to step out during the best part of a film and come back to find it’s over? That is exactly how I feel right now. If you don’t show me, I will spend the rest of the week imagining it, and the version in my head will be worse.”
“Mr. Lewis said not to.”
“And who are you listening to right now him or me?”
He sighed like a man carrying a great burden. “When Mr. Lewis’s around, I listen to him. When he’s not, I listen to you.”
“Is he here?”
“…No.”
“Then?”
Another long sigh. “Fine. Just don’t tell him. Or tell him I’ll just take the slap.”