Chapter 34

Standing face-to-face with her stepmother after all these years felt surreal, almost alien. She had rehearsed this moment in her mind countless times, her imagination always casting Elenora as a formidable, intimidating figure - the woman who had stolen her father, her inheritance, her life. Yet the reality before her was starkly different from her mental renderings.

Elenora, who once exuded arrogance and a domineering confidence that loudly echoed power, now seemed... diminished. Perhaps it wasn't so much Elenora changing, but Christine herself who had grown stronger, more resilient over the years.

The once daunting stepmother no longer wielded the power to terrorize her as she once did. Those days were long gone, relegated to the dusty corners of the past.

A tableau of disbelief and shock etched itself onto Elenora's face as she absorbed Christine's presence, her eyes widening almost comically. Gone was the timid, vulnerable girl who once trembled beneath her tyrannical shadow, re