Page 126 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
"When I realized I was carrying you, something changed. I wasn't just afraid for myself anymore—I was afraid for you. I couldn't let my child grow up in that house, with that man." She wipes her eyes. "So I planned. For months, I pretended everything was normal. Let him think I'd accepted my situation. And then, I ran."
"How did you manage to do it?"
"I'd been preparing in secret—saving money, gathering documents, planning our route. One night, while Dwayne was at one of his school events, I packed what I could carry and drove until I couldn't drive anymore. I changed our name later. Used my mother's maiden name. Became Linda Rivers instead of Linda Marsh."
She looks around the apartment—at the locks, the packed bag, the shadows that never fully lift. "Twenty-five years. I've spent twenty-five years looking over my shoulder, waiting for him to find us."
"But he never did."
"No. He never did." She shakes her head slowly. "I always wondered why. He was so obsessive, so determined. I couldn't understand how he just... let us go."
This is the moment. The truth she doesn't know, the truth that will change everything.
"He didn't let you go, Mom." My voice comes out steadier than I expected. "He was killed. About three months after we disappeared."
My mother goes completely still. "What?"
"Dwayne Thomas is dead. He's been dead for almost twenty-five years. One of his students—one of his victims—killed him."
She stares at me, her face cycling through emotions I can barely track. Shock. Disbelief. Dawning realization.
"Dead," she whispers. "He's been dead all this time?"
"Yes."
"And I..." She looks around the apartment again, seeing it for what it is—a fortress built against a threat that no longer exists. "I've been running from a ghost. All these years, all this fear, and he was already gone."
Tears spill down her cheeks. She presses her hand to her mouth, trying to hold back the sobs that shake her shoulders.
I move to sit beside her, wrapping my arm around her. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry you didn't know."
"Twenty-five years," she gasps. "I wasted twenty-five years hiding from a dead man. I could have... we could have..."
She can't finish the sentence. Neither can I. The weight of what she's lost—what we've both lost—is too enormous to put into words.
We sit together in the silence, holding each other, mourning all the years of fear that never needed to exist.
Eventually, the tears subside. My mother pulls back, wiping her face with trembling hands.
"How did you find out?" she asks. "About Dwayne, about what happened to him—how did you learn any of this?"
I've been dreading this question. The truth is tangled in so many other truths—Gabriel, the murder I witnessed, the impossible web of connections that binds us all together.
"I've been... involved with someone," I say carefully. "A man who had access to information about what happened."
"What kind of man?" My mother's eyes sharpen, the protective instinct cutting through her grief. "Who is he?"
I hesitate. There's no way to soften this.
"His name is Gabriel Ambrose."
The effect is immediate. My mother recoils as if I've slapped her. All the color drains from her face.
"No." She's shaking her head, pulling away from me. "No, no, no. Poppy, those people—they're dangerous. They're the kind of people Dwayne was connected to, the kind who make problems disappear, who protect monsters—"
"He's not like that—"
"How do you know? How can you possibly know what he's like?" Her voice rises, decades of fear pouring out. "I spent years hearing Dwayne talk about families like the Ambroses. The power they have, the things they've done. They're not good people, Poppy. They're thereasonmen like Dwayne get away with what they do!"
