The Dragon Mother Returns: Taking Back Everything That Belongs to My Daughter novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Rain

I drove.

Matthias let me, which told me what my face looked like.

The rain came at the windshield sideways. The little gray car shook on the bridge over the Mianus River.

"The livestream ended," he said, watching his phone. "Ten minutes ago."

"Is she still out there?"

"I don't know."

The house sits at the end of a long gravel drive on the water. There's a stone cottage by the gate.

My grandmother left that cottage to the housekeeper for life, in her will, in 1999. The Dragon didn't trust husbands. She wanted at least one person on the property nobody could fire out of a home.

The cottage light was on.

I pulled up beside it and the front door opened before I'd turned the engine off.

The housekeeper came out into the rain in a raincoat over her nightgown, with an armful of towels and a thermos.

She was halfway down her path when she saw me get out of the car.

She stopped.

The towels started to slide.

I caught them.

Then she had both hands on my face, wet and cold, turning it toward the light.

"It's you," she said. "It's you, it's you."

"It's me."

"I couldn't say it. On the lawn. He told me in January if I made trouble, Clara would go too. Out. With nowhere."

"I know."

"She's nineteen and she has nothing in her own name anymore. He's got everything signed."

"I know. You did right."

She held on a moment longer.

Then she let go and was the housekeeper again.

"She'll be in her room by now, frozen through. I take her these every time." She shoved the thermos at Matthias. "You. Carry."

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