Elliana had always believed her mother’s departure from Ublento was a rash, emotionally charged decision—a desperate escape from a life too heavy to bear. But that illusion shattered earlier today, the moment she uncovered the deep-rooted connection between her mother and Cole’s. Now, Darin was confirming her suspicion.
“What did my mother tell you before she left?” Elliana demanded, eyes locked on Darin’s face.
Darin exhaled slowly, the weight of the past softening his tone. “She said she might not live much longer or that she’d have to vanish from Ublento for years, with no promise of coming back. She made me swear I’d raise you.”
Elliana’s gaze sharpened. “Then she must’ve left behind something for leverage,” her voice cold and certain. “Something to make sure you’d keep me alive until I came of age. Something that would hurt you if you didn’t.”
Elliana had known for years what kind of man Darin truly was—self-centered, reckless, the sort who wouldn’t raise a stray cat unless it benefited him. He had never been driven by duty or affection. And since she could see him for what he was, so had her mother. Rita would never have entrusted her daughter’s life to the mercy of a man like Darin without ensuring he was chained by something stronger than sentiment.
The accusation hit home. “That’s really what you think of me?” Darin asked.
Elliana scoffed. “Please. I know exactly what you are.”
His lips pressed into a thin, bitter line before he finally spoke again. “Rita… she left safeguards. The most important one was tied to the formulas behind Jones Pharmaceuticals.”
Jones Pharmaceuticals was a company built entirely on Rita’s genius. It lived and breathed her formulas. Darin might be the chairman, but he’d never been privy to the core secrets of her research. Rita had given him 99% of the formulas—ingredients, ratios, precise measurements. But the last, most crucial one percent—the catalyst that made the entire compound effective—was tethered directly to Elliana. Without that final component, the company’s prized pharmaceuticals would lose their edge, becoming nothing more than ordinary generics lost in a sea of competition. And without their patented exclusivity, Jones Pharmaceuticals would crumble.
“Rita never gave me the complete formulas. She entrusted the final, critical ingredient to a mysterious contact who handles the company’s raw material…”
The shipments each month were managed by a mysterious contact. Rita’s instructions were clear—as long as you were alive, the contact would continue delivering that crucial one percent of materials on schedule. But if anything happened to you before you turned twenty, the shipments would stop. Forever.
Everything clicked for Elliana. Before vanishing, her mother had planned every detail and sealed every loophole. Darin, a man with no scientific mind and even less integrity, had been surviving on Rita’s legacy like a parasite. From wherever she was, Rita still held the company’s pulse in her hand.
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A dry, bitter laugh escaped Elliana’s lips. “You owe every penny, every ounce of status you have to my mother,” she said, her voice trembling with fury. “All she asked was that you raise me. And you—what did you do? You threw me in a shed for fifteen years while your wife and stepdaughter treated me like trash. And now you have the nerve to stand there and pretend you’re anything close to human?”
Darin’s face reddened with anger. “Your mother told me to raise you,” he snapped, his tone cutting. “She didn’t say I had to raise you well. You reached twenty, didn’t you? I upheld my end.”
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