Serena's POV
I woke up with guilt sitting on my chest like a stone.
Not because of Marcus. The night with him didn't weigh on me the way I might have expected — it was something older, stranger. Something shaped like Lucian. I lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of mourning a man who had taken everything from me. First my father conveniently blamed on the cartel, as though I couldn't read between the lines of that particular lie. And now my mother.
He thought he was doing right by signing that consent form. That was the thing about Lucian — he always thought he was right. He believed control was the same thing as care, that making decisions on someone else's behalf was an act of love rather than theft. But death doesn't send warnings. Death doesn't wait for the right
