We are not going back

Chapter seventy-six

I stared at Olivia, my heart hammering in my chest, my mind caught between disbelief and something much darker- something that whispered, This is real. She's real. But she couldn't be. This had to be some twisted hallucination, the final straw that would break me completely. Yet, there she stood, her eyes gleaming with that same old fire, her lips curved in that half-smirk that once made me weak and sick at the same time.

My fingers trembled as I reached out, almost afraid to touch her. But when my hand made contact with her skin, it was warm- alive. I jerked back, my mind spinning, bile rising in my throat.

"Olivia... you... you're not dead," I whispered, my voice shaking as the reality of it hit me like a punch in the gut. "You're alive."

She smiled softly, almost sympathetically, like she'd expected this reaction. "I told you, Eleonora. Some things aren't what they seem."

I took a step back, struggling to process everything. My hands were shaking so hard I had to shove them into my pockets. "How? How are you alive?"

Olivia glanced around, then took my arm, gently guiding me away from the grave and further into the cemetery. We walked in silence for a few moments, the wind whispering through the trees, until we came to a small, secluded corner of the cemetery. My breath hitched when I saw it- Elivio's grave. Our son. My knees almost buckled at the sight of his name etched into the stone, but I forced myself to stay upright, to keep it together.

Olivia stood beside me, her gaze softening as she looked at the grave. "I wanted to bring you here first," she said quietly. "He deserves to be part of this conversation."

I didn't have the words, couldn't even begin to wrap my head around what was happening. I stared at the grave, my heart breaking all over again. My voice was barely above a whisper. "You... you disappeared. You died, Olivia. I just saw your grave. They said you were shot, that it was Colette that killed you at the Bipartisan event. How is this possible?"

She sighed, turning to face me fully. "I was shot that day. But it wasn't an accident."

I blinked, her words sinking in like a slow poison. "What are you saying?"

"I was targeted, Nora. I was in danger, more danger than you could ever imagine. I had to disappear. It was the only way." Olivia's expression hardened, her voice lowering to a near whisper, "Colette made a rookie mistake. A woman buying a gun for the first time after entering  a relationship with someone she hated? Her plan was clear as day. She's always been unhinged- ever since we were kids."

My heart was racing now, my thoughts spinning out of control. "Disappear? What do you mean? You faked your death?"

She nodded, her eyes narrowing slightly. "When they rushed me to the hospital, I had already planned for this. I paid off the paramedics to let me go, and they swapped my body with another woman's- a Jane Doe. It wasn't hard to do. Money makes people do things, and I had plenty of it."

I felt like the ground was falling out from under me. "You... you paid them off? And...what? Just let me believe you were dead? For all these months"

Her gaze softened again, but it didn't make me feel any better. "I had to, Eleonora. It wasn't safe. For either of us."

I shook my head, backing away from her, my voice rising in disbelief. "Not safe from what? What could've been so dangerous that you had to disappear like that? Leave me with nothing but questions and nightmares?"

Olivia's jaw clenched, and she glanced around the cemetery, as if she was checking to make sure no one was listening. "I can't tell you everything. Not yet. You may think that this stops at that British bitch but it all links back to Kamala."