single finger on her body. He stayed rooted beside her in the cold, sterile morgue, a silent, unyielding sentinel guarding the only person he had ever

a whispered prayer, gently wiped the crusted, drying blood from her pale cheeks. Every deliberate movement was a

ows across his grief-stricken features. His lock screen bore no corporate emblem, no meaningless ab

e shot dated back years-long before Jemal, long before the brutal, suffocating pressure of surviving the cruel Vargas family's world had snuffed out the b

his voice a low, hoarse murmur, reserved so

s too late. I should h

ried for a decade. Ending their engagement, choosing Jemal out of fear and desperation... it was the fatal mistake t

he gesture brimmed with desperate, eternal love and irrevocable finality, so

icately ornate glass vial filled with thick, dark crimson liquid. It was no w

rough her incorporeal form. No. Do

tugging at his bloodless lips. Without a single moment of hesitation, he uncorked

ing, his vitality draining rapidly from his body. His tall frame slumped forward

ving her in secret, and now he'd given his

tself, was far too overwhelming for her fragile, fading spirit to endure. Her already unstable consciousness frayed completely. The searing image of his sacrific

undless blackness-a void devoid of

ut of nowhere. Warm sunlight spilled over her clos

l, cut through the thick haze of unconsciousness. "Al

mfort of a down duvet wrapping around her limbs. She drew in a deep breath, her lungs filling with

nt bedroom she had not stepped foot in for ten long years. Golden sunlight streamed through

t, untamed energy she hadn't possessed since her teenage years. She stared down at her hands: smooth, unmarred by scars, nails short and plain,

her voice, yet higher, clearer, laced wi

h white carpet beneath her. She stumbled toward the large gilt-edged ful

self. Fresh-faced, free of fine lines and wear, the bright innocence in her eyes

sneer as he'd ended her life, and Braxton's final, devastating sacrifice. The agony of death collided vi

on the sleek digital calendar sitting atop it. The date glowed b

n years in

ss Vargas family, after a full decade of drifting through the broken foster care sy

crippling grief for the man she had spent a lifetime blind to, the man who had l

e had been grante

through her mind, immediately followed by the haunting image of

t, sharp and jagged as shards of frozen ice. She would n

them would pay for every tear