Sophia's POV
The Vale mansion looked the same.
That was the thing that hit me first. I had been gone for six days. Six days that had dismantled and rebuilt everything I thought I knew about my life and the people in it and myself. Six days that felt like six months from the inside.
And the mansion looked the same.
Same iron gates. Same gravel path. Same lights in the upper windows casting the same yellow glow onto the same perfect lawn. Like nothing had happened here. Like I hadn't stood on that porch in the rain with a cracked suitcase and nothing else while the door slammed behind me.
I walked up to the front entrance and rang the bell.
Thirty seconds.
The door opened.
Not a guard. Not Victoria. Not anyone I had been expecting.
Carter Moss.
I had seen one photograph of him, pul
