Stepmother Beats Poor Waitress For Feeding Stray Dog — The Mafia Boss Saw Her Scars & Takes Action

Chapter 13

The reunification took place three days later, on a Sunday afternoon, in the same community center where Elodie had spent six years sitting across a table from her daughter for two hours at a time.

But this time, there was no caseworker at the nearby table. No timer. No paperwork.

Cassian waited in the parking lot. He hadn’t been invited, but Rosalind had called him that morning and told him the time and place—and he understood that it wasn’t an invitation. It was simply information, offered to someone who had earned the right to know.

He sat in his car and watched through the window as Elodie walked up the front steps of the community center, carrying the same canvas bag she’d left in the storeroom of the Copper Kettle.

She walked slowly, as though her legs were having trouble remembering how.

Twenty minutes later, the door opened again.

And Elodie came out, holding the hand of a small girl with light brown hair pulled into two braids.

The girl was wearing a yellow coat—new, by the look of it—and yellow hair clips shaped like stars.

She was talking, her head tilted up toward her mother, her mouth moving quickly, the way children talk when they have six years’ worth of things to say and only just now have the time to say them.

Elodie wasn’t looking at the stairs. She wasn’t looking at the street. She was looking only at her daughter.

And on her face was an expression Cassian had never seen there before.

Not relief. Not joy.

Something quieter than that. Something that didn’t need a name.

They reached the bottom of the steps, and the girl tugged on her mother’s hand, pointing toward something across the street—a bird, maybe, or a dog, or nothing in particular.

Elodie knelt down, and the girl wrapped both arms around her mother’s neck.

And Elodie closed her eyes.

Cassian looked away. He started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot before either of them saw him.

Some things were not meant to be witnessed. Some things were only meant to happen.