chapter 127

Angela’s POV

The door clicked shut behind me, and the silence of the empty hallway seemed to echo. I could still hear Kurtis’s words in my head, cutting deeper than I wanted to admit. “The sister Lyra loved would never have done this.” As much as I tried to shake it off, those words felt like an anchor around my chest, dragging me down, suffocating me with every step.

But something stopped me in my tracks. A knot in my stomach, a tension I couldn’t shake, like a hand tugging me back. My fingers itched against the door handle, and before I knew it, I was turning it, re-entering the room. Kurtis’s head jerked up, surprise flashing across his face. The look in his eyes held a challenge, daring me to do… what, I didn’t even know.

I took a step forward, my heels striking the concrete in sharp clicks that shattered the tense silence. “You don’t get to sit there and judge me, Kurtis. You don’t know what I’ve been through, what I’ve had to do.”

He scoffed, shifting in his chair as if testing