Hazel's POV
The morning of the Wentworth Gala, I woke to a voicemail I almost deleted without listening to, recognizing the number before the message even played. I sat on the edge of my bed in the gray London light for a long time before I finally pressed play, my thumb hovering over the screen like it might burn me.
Julian's voice, when it came, sounded different than I remembered, rougher, stripped of the polished calm he wore like a second skin in every boardroom and every anniversary dinner I had endured for five years. He told me about a driver named Desmond Ruiz. He told me about Penelope, confirming everything Eleanor had already relayed in careful, secondhand pieces. He told me, in a voice that cracked once, audibly, near the end, that the accident that had cost me my legs and m
