Eleanor’s face was icy, her expression carved from stone.
A flicker of impatience danced between her perfectly arched brows.
“You have no right to say these things to me,” she said coolly.
Her tone was casual—almost uninterested—but her eyes told another story.
Cold and unyielding, they gleamed with the sharpness of a drawn blade, slicing clean through Hazel Johan’s delusions of control.
“I won’t go.”
“You—!” Hazel Johan’s voice faltered, her eyes widening in disbelief.
For a moment, she looked truly stunned.
Then the heat of rage surged into her face. Her hands clenched into fists so tight that the tendons stood out like ropes beneath her pale skin.
Still, she didn’t strike. Not yet.
She remembered too well the last time she had tried to force Susan—no, Eleanor—into submission.
Back then, Susan had stood tall, unflinching, and had left Hazel humiliated.
She had changed.
This woman before her was no longer the docile girl she once controlled.