?Chapter 2921:


    “Alright…” Linda lifted her eyes, tears brimming.


    “I gave you my word, and I’ve kept it. I confessed… I’ll ept the punishment. You can go now.”


    Hadley stood in silence, making no move to leave.


    “Why are you still here?”


    Hadley paused for a second, thinking about the two men in the monitoring room. Then she said cautiously, “There’s something I want to ask you…”


    Hadley’s brows knitted together, genuine confusion on her face.


    “Tell me, how did you pull it off back then? What exactly did you do to save Ernest and Eric?”


    Inside the monitoring room, Ernest and Eric shared a nce, silently admitting they’d wondered the same thing more than once.


    They’d made their peace with never knowing, deciding it no longer mattered.


    Still, hearing Hadley voice the question for them made old curiosity spark to life.


    “So, how did you actually manage it?” Hadley’s voice shook with disbelief as she pressed for the truth.


    Chelsey once insisted Letty didn’t help Linda at that point. It was difficult to picture—Linda, a teenager, handling something like that all by herself.


    “How did I manage it?”


    Linda’s tears faded, reced by a sudden, almost mocking smile.


    Locking eyes with Hadley, she said with a cold littleugh, “Of course you can’t figure it out. I told you before—you’ve always had somebody watching out for you.”


    A bitter blend of sarcasm and envy colored Linda’s words.


    “You’ve lived your whole life shielded from the ugliest parts of this world. You wouldn’t even know where to begin imagining what people are truly capable of.”


    Hadley said nothing, quietly epting the truth in that statement.


    She honestly had no way to picture such darkness.


    ????????????’?? ??????????????: g???????ν?????????????


    A hint of challenge crept into Linda’s voice.


    “You truly want to know, don’t you?”


    The smile slipped from Linda’s lips as she drew a shaky breath.


    “Fine. If you’re so curious, I’ll spell it out for you.”


    Leaning in, her eyes darkened with a heavy shadow. She spoke with chilling rity.


    “Rat poison.”


    “Rat poison?” Hadley’s voice came out barely above a whisper, her shock in.


    “That’s right.”


    Lounging back in her chair, Linda’s tone turned almost casual, as if she was narrating someone else’s story.


    “I mixed rat poison into their food. The n was to kill them all, in and simple.”


    Thinking back, she gave a humorless sigh.


    “Too bad I messed up the dose. Instead of dying, they just got a bad case of food poisoning. Serves me right, I suppose.”


    Her lips twisted into a frigid, mocking grin.


    “All it did was leave me with more trouble to deal withter.”


    Shock left Hadley frozen, words stuck in her throat.


    She had always known Letty and her husband were monsters—running a trafficking ring and shattering lives wherever they went.


    .


    .


    .