Chapter 76
Once the name crystallized in the void—Marina Del Cortez—Svetlana latched onto it like a hound on a scent. She surged forward through the decades, anchoring herself to Marina’s timeline to ensure she hadn't been led astray.
The confirmation was undeniable. She watched a younger Marina leave the sun-drenched heart of Mexico with her mother, drifting north across the border. Their journey ended in Ohio, at the very farmhouse the pack had recently stormed. Svetlana’s mental form recoiled; the house wasn't a tactical, off-the-books purchase meant to scrub a trail. It was an ancestral anchor, a piece of Marina’s history that had stayed in the family for decades, hidden in plain sight.
But as Svetlana parsed through the images of Marina’s life, an obvious void began to emerge—a sil
