Chapter Twenty Two
(Nia’s POV)
The apartment was quiet.
There was a difference I had learned after leaving Blackwood Estate.
I sat on the sofa with one hand resting against my stomach and the other wrapped around a mug of tea.
My phone had been buzzing all evening. Reporters. Lawyers. Board updates. Messages from employees asking what came next. A few from Mom I had not opened.
I knew what they would say.
Come home.
Think of the family.
Don’t make this worse.
Everything was always about what I could damage by existing too loudly.
My parents had made their choice long before today. Maybe they had never meant to. Maybe they loved me in the only way they knew how, with guilt in one hand and Sienna in the other.
They couldn’t let her go.
And they couldn’t truly love me without fe
