Chapter 34

• Standing face-to-face with her stepmother after all these years felt surreal, almost alien. She had rehearsed this moment in her mind countless times, her imagination always casting Elenora as a formidable, intimidating figure - the woman who had stolen her father, her inheritance, her life. Yet the reality before her was starkly different from her mental renderings.
• Elenora, who once exuded arrogance and a domineering confidence that loudly echoed power, now seemed... diminished. Perhaps it wasn't so much Elenora changing, but Christine herself who had grown stronger, more resilient over the years.
• The once daunting stepmother no longer wielded the power to terrorize her as she once did. Those days were long gone, relegated to the dusty corners of the past.