Chapter 213

• Claire's pov
• I couldn’t breathe.
• The world around me was moving, people were talking, voices rising, footsteps shuffling, chairs scraping across the floor—but it was like everything was muffled, far away, as if I had been dropped underwater. My fingers trembled against the envelope that still sat in my lap, the damning proof of what Charles Shaw had dropped on me like a thunderstorm. My name—no, not even my name anymore—was written all over it, my life rewritten in black ink I had never asked for.