Chapter 14
The next few months were a blur of healing.
Elias was dead.
Jonathan was in prison, serving thirty years to life for the kidnapping and attempted murder.
Lila was in rehab, working with the FBI to testify against the rest of the Circle, getting her life back together.
The insider trading charges against Nathaniel were dropped.
Cross Meridian’s stock bounced back, higher than ever.
The Hale fortune—all two hundred and fifty million dollars—was now the Clara Carter Foundation, funding foster homes, scholarships, and housing for single moms all over the country.
We’d already helped over a thousand kids in the first three months.
Clara was thriving.
She was walking now, running everywhere, talking up a storm, her favorite word being "no."
She loved her grandma Maggie, who’d moved into the Westchester house permanently to help raise her.
She loved her papa Nathaniel, who spoiled her rotten, taking her to the zoo, to the park, to buy every stuffed animal she laid her eyes on.
She was happy.
Safe.
Loved.
And I was happy too.
For the first time in my life, I had a real family.
A dad who loved me.
A daughter who was my whole world.
A mom in Maggie, who’d been there for me when no one else was.
We had dinner together every night.
We went to church on Sundays.
We took family vacations to the beach in the summer, to the mountains in the winter.
Normal things.
Ordinary things.
The things I’d always dreamed of but never thought I’d have.
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But I knew better than to think the drama was over forever.
My life had never been that simple.
