Rose stared at the crumpled photo in her shaking hands, her heart hammering against her ribs.
This can’t be real.
Her breath came in shallow gasps as she traced the worn edges of the image. A man stood in the dim lighting of what looked like a casino, his face partially shadowed but she knew. Knew the sharpness of his gaze. Knew the set of his jaw. Knew the ghost of a smirk that once haunted her childhood.
Her father.
Her stomach twisted violently, nausea clawing at her insides.
He was supposed to be dead, Gone. A ghost of her past that she had buried along with all the pain he had caused. But now this.
A package had been waiting at her doorstep when she arrived home, small and unassuming. No return address. Just a plain, nondescript envelope with her name scrawled across it in rough
