Page 357 of Reign

Elena draws her knees toward her chest and wraps her arms around them. Her gaze remains fixed on the waves.

“When my mother was taken, she locked me in my room.”

Her fingers tighten around her legs.

She has told me pieces. The locked door. The darkness. Her mother disappearing.

Never this.

I don’t touch her. I don’t ask a question.

I barely allow myself to breathe because she’s speaking, and I won’t give her a reason to stop.

“It wasn’t dark when she left me there,” Elena says. “It got dark afterward.”

She takes a breath.

“She gave me a note for my father. It had part of the license plate and the kind of car and who took her. Then she hugged me and told me not to leave the room.”

A tremor moves through her voice.

“She held me so tight, Luciano. I remember thinking it hurt, but I didn’t want her to let go.”

My chest tightens.

“I watched from the window after she locked me in. I saw them grab her.”

She blinks rapidly, but the tears come anyway.

“They picked her up like she was luggage. Like she wasn’t a person. Like she wasn’t my mother. They threw her into the car, and then they drove away.”

“Elena.”

“I don’t think they saw me.” She wipes at one cheek with the heel of her hand. “I tried to make myself as small as I could anyway, just in case they came back. I crawled beside the bed and kept calling my father.”

The waves continue breaking against the shore.

The sound is too peaceful for what she’s telling me.

“He didn’t answer,” she whispers. “I called over and over again. It kept going to voicemail, and the room kept getting darker. I had the note in my hand the entire time. I thought if I lost it, they would never find her.”

I picture her there.

Eight years old. Alone. Hungry. Clutching a piece of paper as though it was the only thing keeping her mother alive.

Something violent and helpless tears through me.

There is no man left to punish for that room.

No throat I can close my hand around. No life I can take that will return those hours to her differently.

Violence has always been useful to me because it produces an answer.

This has none.

“I know what happened to her,” Elena continues. “I understand that she died. But I don’t understand how she was right there with me, and then she wasn’t.”

Her voice cracks.