"I’ll be there... I’ll be there immediately," Gwendolyn Preston stammered into the phone, her voice thick with a sudden, overwhelming surge of emotion. Tears, hot and unbidden, began to track through the light makeup on her cheeks, splashing onto her trembling hands.
Since her father, Chester Preston, had been found dead—branded a suicide that felt more like a state-sanctioned execution—her world had been a fractured landscape of shadows and sirens. She had seen her mother, Serena Frost, only once since the Internal Affairs Bureau had taken her into administrative custody. It had been a fleeting, brutal encounter: a few hurried whispers under the cold gaze of armed guards before Serena was whisked away into the labyrinth of the Provincial Inspectorate. To hear that she could see her now,
