After Luna’s alleged death, Poppy’s grief did not soften or fade—it hardened, curdling into a cold fury that consumed every part of her life. She could not accept that her daughter’s body vanished without explanation, nor that destiny had stolen Luna from her so brutally. Night after night, she looked at her daughter’s final photo, the renewed confidence in Luna’s eyes, and the unease inside her deepened until it eroded every last bit of peace she had left.

And that simmering doubt—that was what caught Sheila Carter’s attention.

Sheila arrived when the world had already begun to forget Luna, when sympathy cards stopped and friends urged Poppy to move on. One afternoon she appeared at Il Giardino with carefully crafted condolences—words that sounded gentle but rang with calculated intent. To everyone else, Sheila was a walking warning label. To Poppy, she was the only person who didn’t tell her to “let go.”

They spoke the same language: pain sharpened into purpose, grief twisted into vengeance. Sheila told stories of losing Finn, of watching him choose Steffy and the Forresters over her, and her voice carried a kind of cracked sincerity Poppy couldn’t dismiss. And so a connection formed—two mothers robbed of their children, two women shaped by cruelty.

At first, Poppy convinced herself that working with Sheila was just strategy. Sheila understood how the powerful families in Los Angeles covered up scandals, erased evidence, and buried inconvenient truths. If anyone could help her dig past the official story surrounding Luna’s accident, it was Sheila.

But bargains with devils always extract a cost.

Soon Poppy realized Sheila’s compassion was nothing but manipulation. Luna’s death offered Sheila a new opportunity—a way to weaken Steffy’s world and reopen wounds she had never truly stopped bleeding. Their partnership began secretly: late-night meetings, theories about altered police files, and names Sheila supplied from the city’s criminal underbelly. And though they appeared to be chasing justice for Luna, each new clue seemed to benefit Sheila more than Poppy.

Still, Poppy couldn’t walk away. The inconsistencies were too glaring—missing footage, witnesses silenced, timelines that contradicted themselves. Then came the most damning lead: a report of Luna arguing with a man in a designer jacket hours before the crash, a jacket that matched one Finn owned.

When Poppy confronted Sheila about this, expecting anger, Sheila merely smiled. “Do you see now?” she murmured. “The Forresters destroy everything.” That was the moment Poppy understood—the trap was closing around her. Sheila wasn’t helping her find justice. She was rewriting the story to fuel her own vendetta.

But Poppy wasn’t as broken as Sheila believed.

She started pretending—pretending to agree with Sheila’s narrative, pretending to share her hatred—while secretly recording their conversations and gathering her own evidence. Yet she couldn’t ignore the disturbing truth: whenever she looked into Sheila’s eyes, she saw a distorted mirror of herself. A mother twisted by loss, capable of crossing lines she once thought impossible.

Then Baker reopened Luna’s case, forcing Poppy to act quickly. Sheila escalated first, leaking selective information to the media and painting the Forresters as negligent. Meanwhile, Finn was collapsing under the pressure—falsified reports suggested Luna’s death had been covered up by the hospital, lies Sheila had planted and Poppy had unwittingly enabled.

Surrounded by Luna’s belongings, Poppy whispered to the memory of her daughter, insisting she was doing all of this for her—even though she knew Luna would never have wanted this descent into hatred.

The turning point came when Poppy finally obtained the full accident file. Its irregularities were real, yes—but the signatures and early closure of the case were not from Finn, Steffy, or even the Forresters.

They belonged to Sheila.

When Poppy confronted her, Sheila didn’t deny forging records. In fact, she calmly admitted she’d done it to push Poppy into battle. She wanted Poppy molded into her image—a new Luna replaced by a new Sheila.

But Poppy refused.

Their final confrontation unfolded quietly at the cliff where Luna had supposedly died. As the ocean thrashed below, Poppy held a gun, hands shaking. For a heartbeat, she considered ending Sheila’s reign of chaos—but something inside her shifted. She walked away instead, knowing killing Sheila would only finish the transformation Sheila had engineered.

After disappearing from public view, Poppy returned to the coast and started her own investigation. Rumors spread that she was building a dossier capable of tearing down the entire Forrester empire. Sheila, feeling her grip loosen, spread a new rumor—that Luna was alive.

The possibility ignited Poppy’s obsession all over again. If Luna truly survived, if Sheila knew more, Poppy would stop at nothing.

And so began a new cycle of grief, fury, and blurred lines.

By then, the question haunting everyone wasn’t whether Poppy could defeat Sheila…

…but whether she had already become her.