Jane's POV
The charity ball would be a night of hope—a glorious night when lovely smiles and soft music created a place of harmony and kindness. The lovely ballroom, its costly chandeliers and border of champagne glasses, resounded with laughter and soft murmurs. But beneath the glittering surface, I was weighed down by everything I had witnessed, a crushing weight that reduced even the loveliest adornments to secondary for my internal crisis.
I arrived at the assignation in a sharp black vehicle, its gleaming surface aglow with city lights as I emerged in a body-clinging gown that did nothing to conceal the tempest brewing inside. I had not arrived to mingle but to belong, to scrape crumbs of truth from a world in which appearances were as deadly as they were radiant. Every one of the c
