Page 164 of Seeking Shadows

The air in the tunnel thickened, suffocating us in the silence that followed. Mia was shivering now, her body trembling, but it wasn’t the cold that had her shaking. It was the past. The memories that we never spoke aloud.

I already knew Mia had suffered. I knew she carried pain that no one should ever have to endure. But seeing her like this, seeing her stripped of the bravado she wore like armor, shattered something inside me. The girl who had faced violence with a twisted smile, who found humor in danger, was gone. In her place stood someone raw, broken, vulnerable—someone I didn’t know if I could save.

Katie took a hesitant step closer, her voice breaking the fragile silence. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. "If I had known—if I had any idea what they would do to you…” Her voice faltered, the weight of her regret pressing down on her. “I would never have let you do this.”

Mia blinked rapidly, her eyes glistening with the unshed tears she refused to let fall. “It’s okay,” she said, but I could hear the tremor in her voice. It wasn’t okay. It was never going to be okay.

Katie seemed to sense this. She took a deep breath and looked between Mia and me, her voice carrying a strange tenderness as she spoke. "But you found love," she said, a sad smile curving her lips. "And Zane… so did you."

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Katie looked at me, her eyes clouded with something I couldn’t quite understand. "I thought about you," she admitted, the words spilling out before she could stop them. "I hoped you survived. That it would be real."

Real.

The lump in my throat grew, choking me. For so long, I hadn’t known what had happened to her. I hadn’t known if that night in the tunnel had been real or just another of my fractured memories, something my mind had created out of desperation. But now, standing before me, Katie was real. She was breathing, she was here, and it made everything—everything—feel wrong and twisted and unbearable.

Katie’s voice wavered. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes glistening with unshed tears of her own. “For keeping me alive those days.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but Mia beat me to it. Her voice was quiet, strained.

"Wait."

She looked at me, her expression full of confusion, as though something had shifted beneath the surface, something she didn’t understand yet but knew was there.

"You never mentioned her," Mia said, her words hanging heavy in the air. "You never told me about the woman in the tunnel."

I felt my chest tighten, the weight of the truth pressing down on me. How could I explain this? How could I put into words everything that had happened, everything I had buried so deep inside?

“I never thought I’d see her again,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

Silence stretched between us, heavy and suffocating. Mia's gaze was fixed on me, as if she were searching for an explanation to something that could never be explained. Her eyes flickered back to Katie, and in that moment, I saw the raw, unspoken pain—the hurt of seeing her mother like that, so broken and helpless.

Katie spoke again, her voice full of an aching kind of love. “Maybe it was fate, daughter,” she said softly, her words in Spanish. “That you would meet him of all people. The boy who saved me.”

Mia looked at me, her gaze uncertain, her heart clearly torn between the woman who had given birth to her and the man who had saved her life.

“He saved me too, Mother,” Mia whispered, and my heart clenched as I heard the depth of her pain. “We can get you out of here. We can protect you with the Society of Crow.”

Katie laughed weakly, the sound of it brittle and broken. "Do you think Nico didn’t make sure to keep me here? He’s been tempting the heir for years. With the twisted promise that he wants the blood to be purely Riviera."

“Purely Riviera?” Mia asked, confusion flashing across her face.

And that was when it hit me—like a brick to the chest. The realization slammed into me, leaving me breathless.

“You’re his sister,” I said, the words coming out hoarse, raw.

Katie nodded, her eyes clouded with regret. "Seth, the other one, was my brother on my mother’s side. Nico was given to Vicente, but he and my mother had an affair again, and I was born. She died in childbirth, and I stayed with Seth. He raised me until I was 13. Nico captured me and—”

God.

Mia and Seth.

Her voice trembles, jagged like shattered glass, as she whispers, “He never let me name my children. Never gave them that... that small piece of humanity.” She pauses, the weight of her words pressing against her chest, squeezing out a shuddering breath. “He said they were numbers. Just... numbers. I shouldn’t get too attached. One and Two. They were made for something bigger, something... that didn’t need something as fragile as a name.” Her hands tremble at her sides, and for a moment, she looks as if she might collapse under the sheer weight of the emptiness those words carry. She lets out a sob, a soft, broken sound that shatters the silence between us. “I... I never even had the chance to love them. Not like a mother should.”

Mia’s voice cracks, a sharp edge of anger slicing through the silence. “Of course you loved us,” she retorts, her words trembling with something unspoken, something deep.

Katie’s gaze falls to the ground, her eyes dark with regret and helplessness. Her lips part, but no words come at first, only a soft, broken breath that feels like it carries the weight of years. Finally, she whispers, her voice barely audible but heavy with truth, “I do. I loved you both, more than anything.” She closes her eyes as if the words themselves are painful to say, like they are cutting into her soul. “But I can’t protect you. I never could. Not from... not fromhim.”

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