MARGOT'S POV
The night rush had thinned to its usual lull, the kind of quiet I'd grown to treasure over the years — just the hum of the kitchen behind me and the soft clink of cutlery from the last few tables. I was wiping down the counter when the bell above the door chimed, and I looked up expecting a regular.
I did not expect her.
I recognized the coat before I recognized the face — the kind of tailored elegance that didn't belong in a place like mine, all soft lighting and mismatched chairs collected over a decade of making do. But it was the face that stopped my hands entirely. I'd seen it multiple times before, in photographs Isla had shown me once, in a magazine spread about the Blackthorne family I'd read years ago with no particular reason to remember it, and the face that alw
