"Enough!"
Serena Ashford let out a harsh, jagged laugh that echoed through the sterile V.I.P. wing of Riverbend General Hospital. She looked at the man standing before her—the man who was once her husband—and felt a wave of cold, crystalline disgust.
"What right do you have?" she hissed, her voice trembling with the weight of eight years of repressed agony. "What authority do you carry in this city to make anyone 'pay the price'? Look at you, Derek! Aside from your empty boasts and your tall tales about the Northern Front, what do you actually have? You talk about protecting me, about giving us a life of ease... but in the end, who was the one who suffered? Who was the one who bled?"
She stepped back, her eyes raking over his simple black suit, seeing only the 'pretty boy' who had once
