Cecilia’s pov
I sat across from her. I couldn’t see the car behind us, but I already knew who it was. Xavier.
He’d been tailing us all morning like so brooding ghost of boyfriends past.
"Wait... that woman looks familiar," Zaria said, squinting thoughtfully.
Woman? My heart skipped a beat.
A strange, cold pressure settled in my chest, like my body sensed sothing before my mind hadn’t processed yet.
Curious, I turned to look behind us. Tang mirrored .
We swiveled slowly, almost in sync, like dancers in a horror movie just before the big reveal.
What we saw sent a chill racing down my spine.
The woman in the next cable car wasn’t just so tourist. It was Maggie Locke.
And there she was. Smiling, relaxed, acting like this was just a normal weekend trip.
As if sensing our stare, Maggie looked up.
At first, she looked surprised. Then she smiled like it was funny.
She waved with syrupy enthusiasm, as if we were old friends bumping into each other at brunch. She looked harmless, even warm. But I knew better.
That woman had a heart of ice and arsenic.
I waved back with a fake, polite smile. The kind you drop as soon as you turn away.
My fingers barely moved. I kept the corners of my mouth lifted just enough to be civil. Any less would be rude. Any more would be a lie.
"That’s Mrs. Locke," I said, keeping my voice neutral.
I forced the syllables out like I was reading them from a prescription label.
"Lo..." Zaria snapped her fingers." Right! Uncle Zane’s wife. I rember her. I think I t her back when we visited Colorado Springs."
I nodded."That’s the one."
My tone didn’t shift, but my jaw tightened ever so slightly.
Zaria gave a sideways glance."You don’t like her."
I smiled, thin and practiced."You’ve got good instincts. Let’s just say we had an... unpleasant run-in at a shopping center. Her daughter and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye."
I kept it vague. No need to drag Sebastian’s family into this ss, and I wasn’t about to involve my friends either.
Zaria nodded but didn’t press. She knew I wasn’t telling the whole story.
The view from the cable cable car was breathtaking.
The mountain wasn’t steep, and we weren’t dangling over so dramatic drop, but the sea of green below us stretched endlessly.
Sumr had painted everything in rich shades of life.
Eighteen minutes later, we arrived at the platform nestled mid-mountain.
We disembarked.
Sebastian stood up front, scanning the arrivals.
His posture was still, but his eyes moved with purpose.
He wasn’t just watching the crowd. He was waiting for soone.
His gaze caught on Maggie Locke.
Back on the platform, Maggie walked over with that sa smooth, practiced grace. She looked like soone who’d never had a bad day in her life.
She headed straight for Luna Regina." Regina! It’s been far too long."
Luna Regina’s expression soured the mont she saw her.
"I don’t make small talk with won who sleep with my friend’s husbands," Regina replied coolly." Call Luna Regina."
Maggie smiled, unbothered. "Oh, co on. It’s been years. Aren’t we past all that now?"
Her voice was sweet, but her words had thorns.
She wasn’t alone.
Two won stood behind her. I didn’t know either of them, not then. One had Zane Locke’s eyes—sharp and watchful. The other held herself with a careful stillness, like she was used to being overlooked.
(I’d learn their nas soon enough from Sebastian: Poppy,Mr. Zane’s sister; and Liora, married to Mr. Zane’s brother. But in that mont, they were just two strangers with tense faces.)
They didn’t say a word. They didn’t step in.
That silence said everything.
Regina’s expression twisted slightly when she noticed Liora and Poppy. Disappointnt flickered across her face. But she masked it quickly.
She ignored Maggie’s outstretched hand and turned to Sebastian.
"Let’s go."
Sebastian didn’t speak.
His eyes slid right past Maggie like she was nothing but background noise.
Like everyone else, I stood by silently, ntally grabbing popcorn while pretending to admire the view.
Luna Regina started walking, and we followed.
As I passed Maggie and the others, she spoke to in a voice that sounded sweet but felt cold underneath.
"Ms. Moore. What a surprise," she said, like we were old friends bumping into each other at a country club.
Her tone carried a smile, but it felt like soone had just stepped on my grave.
"Until next ti," I replied, flashing her my most practiced diplomatic smile before turning away.
Luna Regina, eager to put distance between herself and the encounter, had already quickened her pace.
We followed her down a winding path that led to the pickup point, where a private SUV was scheduled to et us.
After a mont, Luna Regina turned back to us with a small, apologetic smile.
"I hope I didn’t co across as too harsh back there," she said, glancing between , Harper, and Yvonne." So people just bring out the worst in ."
"No worries," I said with a shrug." Honestly, I thought you handled it like a pro."
Harper nodded, arms crossed. "If soone tried to make a move on my friend’s mate, I wouldn’t have been half as polite."
Yvonne didn’t say anything, but the smile she gave said enough.
At first, we didn’t really trust Luna Regina. She’d been cold to , and it was pretty obvious. But after that little scene, we started to see her differently.
She was real. She didn’t pretend to be nice when she wasn’t. And honestly, that was kind of refreshing.
Even if she didn’t love her son’s choice in partners, she wasn’t the manipulative type we’d feared.
Luna Regina looked genuinely touched."You girls are wonderful."
Sebastian watched her with a faint smile tugging at his lips. Sotis, nothing brings won together faster than a shared enemy.
"Nice progress, big brother," Zaria whispered with a smirk.
But the mont barely lasted.
Maggie Locke reappeared like a bad habit.
She walked up behind us, her expression warm but her eyes locked on mine.
"Funny," she said, still smiling. "We just said goodbye, and here we are again, Ms. Moore."
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