The Bello estate hadn't changed.
The same marble lions stood guard at the gates. The same tinted windows stared back like secrets. The same perfectly manicured lawn soaked in silence like it had something to hide.
Elara hadn't been back in nearly a year.
She walked past the guards without flinching. The family name still had weight, even when worn by its greatest disgrace.
Her mother waited in the prayer room.
Wrapped in a cream hijab, seated on the prayer mat, fingers dancing over prayer beads.
She didn't look up when Elara entered.
"I've been expecting you," she said.
Elara closed the door behind her.
"Why? Because your sins are finally catching up?"
Her mother sighed. "Because I knew you'd come looking. Eventually."
Elara stood in the center of the room. Her voice didn't shake.
"Did you take the money?"
A pause.
Then: "Yes."
It wasn't a whisper. It wasn't a confession. It was fact.
"Why?"
"Because they said it was the only way you'd be protected."
Elara's fists clenched. "You let her die."
Her mother finally looked up. Her eyes were hollow.
"I didn't let her die. I chose to let you live."
Elara laughed. Bitter. Sharp.
"You don't get to rewrite that."
"No," her mother said. "But you need to understand what I was up against. I married a man who thinks emotion is weakness. Who sees daughters as leverage."
"Then why stay? Why stay and let it all rot around you?"
"Because survival isn't pretty. And I stopped being brave a long time ago."
They sat in silence. Two women tied to the same blood, bleeding in different ways.
Elara's voice softened. "Why didn't you tell me? About the payment? About what they did to Amara?"
"Because I was afraid you'd burn it all down."
"You were right."
A small smile tugged at the corners of her mother's mouth.
"Then maybe it's time someone did."
Before Elara left, her mother pulled a thin envelope from inside the prayer mat.
"There's something you should see. Something he never wanted you to know."
Inside was a birth certificate.
Elara's name.
But the father's name wasn't Ibrahim Bello.
"He's not your blood," her mother whispered. "You were conceived during the only year I left him. A year he erased."
Elara swayed.
"He took you in when I came back. Claimed you. Gave you his name. But he never saw you as his. Not really."
Elara clutched the certificate.
"Why now? Why tell me this now?"
Her mother stood. "Because if you're going to burn him down, you deserve to know, you're not destroying your father."
"You're destroying your captor."
Elara stepped back, breath shallow.
The truth didn't feel like freedom.
It felt like ignition.