The air in the VIP suite was thick with the scent of unwashed despair and antiseptic. Serena Ashford sat on the edge of the bed, her body hunched as if trying to shrink into a space where the world couldn't find her. She held Lemon Faulkner close, the girl’s small, shivering frame a constant reminder of everything she was failing to protect.
They were caught in a cycle of grief that felt eternal. For eight years, Serena had fueled her survival with a singular, flickering hope: that the man she had saved ten years ago, the man who had promised her a life beyond the social blockade of the Ashford family, would return.
But as the seconds ticked by on the clinical wall clock, that hope felt like a cruel joke. The Northern Front was winding down. The news was filled with the triumphant return
