Serena Cole didn’t cry at first.

She stared at the article on her phone the way people stare at a car wreck: horrified, unwilling, unable to look away. The screen’s glow turned the tiny Brooklyn studio into something sterile and bluish, like the doctor’s office where she’d sat three days earlier with a paper cup of water in her hand and a miracle in her lap.

Now the miracle felt like evidence.

There he was, Dominic Carlucci, in a black suit that looked tailored out of shadow itself. One arm wrapped around a woman who belonged to photographs and penthouse balconies: sleek hair, blood-red lipstick, diamond smile. The headline used the word engaged like it was romantic, harmless.

Dominic Carlucci and Bianca Romano Celebrate Engagement at Private Manhattan Reception.

Serena scrolled down. Up again. Down again. As if the letters might rearrange themselves into something kinder if she stared hard enough.

Six weeks.

She’d been carrying his child for six weeks, and the entire time he’d been… planning this.

Her hands, still smudged with oil paint from the canvas she’d tried to finish the night before, trembled so badly the phone almost slid off the table.

“Okay,” she whispered to herself, voice paper-thin. “Okay, Serena. Breathe.”

But the breath wouldn’t go deep. It stopped at her ribs like it was afraid to go further.

She crossed the room in two steps, pushed aside a jar of brushes, and pulled the ultrasound photo from the envelope she’d hidden beneath a sketchbook. In the dim light, it looked almost fake: grainy, tiny, unreal. A speck that somehow had already rearranged her entire future.

Her chest tightened until it ached. Then, very calmly, she turned toward the sink and clicked the stove on.

A blue flame bloomed.

She held the ultrasound above it. The paper fluttered like it wanted to escape her. For a second, she hesitated, and her stomach rolled with nausea that wasn’t only pregnancy.

“This doesn’t belong to you,” she choked out, and her voice finally cracked. “You don’t get to own this. You don’t get to own me.”

The paper curled at the edges. Blackened. The little shape vanished into orange light.

Tears spilled before she could stop them. They dropped onto her knuckles and hissed when they hit the metal rim of the sink. She watched the last corner of the photo crumble into ash and fall like snow into the basin.

It felt like she’d burned a piece of her own heart and called it freedom.

Her palm flattened over her stomach. Still flat. Still quiet. Still, somehow, not empty.

Something was growing there. Something innocent. Something that would tie her to Dominic Carlucci forever if she let it.

She wiped her face hard, angry at the wetness, angry at herself.

Then she made a decision the way you make a decision in a burning building: fast, ugly, necessary.

She would run.

At 4:00 a.m., Brooklyn was drowned in darkness and winter’s leftover breath. Streetlight leaked through the narrow gap in her curtains, striping the floor like prison bars.

Serena moved quickly but soundlessly, as if the walls might report her.

Under the bed, she pulled out an old travel bag with a broken zipper. It had been her mother’s. Or maybe it had just been in the apartment when her mother died and Serena had been too young to separate grief from objects.

From the vanity drawer she took her savings: $843 in cash, folded into a trembling stack. Not much. But enough to vanish for a while.

She shoved in jeans, two sweaters, a hoodie. Passport. A cheap toothbrush. Then, from a small wooden box, she lifted a silver locket.

Her mother’s.

The clasp was worn from years of being opened and closed, but Serena had never opened it. She wore it like a promise she didn’t have the courage to read.

Tonight, she didn’t open it either. She only pressed it to her lips, then tucked it under her shirt.

Her phone lay on the table, still lit with Dominic’s face and Bianca’s smile. Serena stared at it for a long moment, feeling something in her throat harden into a sharp, clean hatred.

Then she slammed it onto the floor.

The screen spiderwebbed. She hit it again. And again. Until it was plastic and splintered glass, until whatever tether it had been was nothing but shards.

“You can’t track what doesn’t exist,” she whispered.

When she pulled her door shut, the click sounded too loud. Every step in the hallway echoed like a drum inside her chest.

Outside, the city hummed. A distant car. A cat crying somewhere. The hush of traffic that never truly stopped.

Serena flinched anyway and looked back, half-expecting a shadow in a doorway, a man on the stairs, a voice saying her name like it was a claim.

Nothing.

She walked faster.

The Greyhound station at dawn was a fluorescent purgatory: flickering lights, plastic seats, the smell of burnt coffee and tired air.

An elderly woman behind the ticket counter wore thick glasses and did a crossword as if the world had never contained men like Dominic Carlucci.

“Where to, sweetheart?”

she asked without looking up.

Serena glanced at the departures board. She needed far enough to disappear, close enough to afford.

“Hartford,” she said. “Earliest one.”

The woman typed on an aging keyboard and slid the ticket out with a gentle smile. “Leaves in twenty minutes. Bay three. Be careful.”

Be careful. As if danger was a loose stair step or a bad neighborhood. As if it wasn’t a man with an empire.

Serena sat in the farthest corner of the waiting room, bag in her lap, eyes fixed on the entrance. Every person who walked in made her heart kick hard, but nobody looked at her twice.

She was just another exhausted girl with red-rimmed eyes and cheap luggage.

No one knew she was carrying the child of the most feared man in New York’s underworld.

On the bus she took a seat in the back by the window. When the wheels began to roll, Brooklyn slid away in gray and glass. Manhattan’s towers shrank into haze.

And because her mind was cruel, it filled the empty space with him.

Dominic in her bed, arm locked around her as if he feared she’d dissolve. Whispering Italian she didn’t understand, but she’d felt the meaning anyway in the way his mouth softened against her hair. The way his gaze held her like a secret he couldn’t afford to lose.

Had it all been a lie? A game for a powerful man killing time before stepping into a marriage arranged like a business merger?

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

She didn’t wipe them away. She let them fall like they were washing something out of her.

The Starlight Motel outside Hartford had a flickering neon sign and a parking lot that looked abandoned, which felt like safety. The room smelled like old cigarettes and cheap disinfectant. The curtains were sun-faded. The faucet dripped.

But the door had a lock.

And nobody knew she was here.

Serena sat on the edge of the bed and felt the worn springs sink under her weight. Exhaustion poured into her bones like sand. For a long moment, she couldn’t even cry anymore. She just stared at the blank wall and listened to her own breathing.

Her hand found her stomach again.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered, voice soft as if she were speaking to something sleeping. “Tomorrow we start over. I can do this alone. I will.”

She lay down, pulled the thin blanket up to her chest, and for the first time in hours, her body unclenched enough for sleep to take her.

She didn’t know it would be the last peaceful sleep she’d have for a long time.

Morning sickness didn’t knock. It kicked down the door.

Serena jolted awake, stumbled into the bathroom, and gripped the toilet as her stomach heaved violently, even though there was nothing left inside her. When it finally eased, she splashed cold water on her face and stared at herself in the mirror.

Pale skin. Dark circles. Hair tangled. Eyes that looked like they’d run miles.

You’re on the run because you are.

She needed food, and she needed proof, one more time, that she hadn’t imagined it.

The convenience store was a few blocks away. She bought a loaf of bread, a bottle of water, and a pregnancy test. The cashier didn’t look at her twice.

She was invisible. She was safe.

On the walk back, the air felt different. Too still. Like the world was holding its breath.

Her motel door was slightly open.

Serena stopped so fast her lungs burned.

She remembered locking it.

Her heart did something awful, something slow and sinking. She told herself it was housekeeping. The wind. Anything except what her body already knew.

With trembling fingers, she pushed the door.

The room was darker than before. The curtains had been pulled shut. And in the corner, on the battered chair, someone sat with their legs crossed as if this was a living room and not a cheap motel.

A voice rose out of the shadows, familiar enough to make her knees go weak.

“How far did you think you could run, Serena?”

Dominic Carlucci stepped forward into the thin strip of light from the doorway. Black suit. Perfect collar. Gray eyes like steel.

She stumbled back until her spine hit the door. The bag slipped from her hand. The pregnancy test rolled across the floor and stopped near his shoe.

His gaze flicked down to it, then back to her, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile that held no warmth.

“You’re carrying something that belongs to me.”

Serena’s blood turned to ice. “How do you—”

“The clinic,” he said, almost gently, as if explaining weather. “The doctor is mine. I knew before you did.”

Her throat closed. “No. That’s impossible.”

Dominic took one step closer. “You thought I let you walk around my city without eyes on you?” His voice stayed low, calm. “From the first day you walked into that gallery in Soho, someone has been watching.”

Serena’s nausea surged again, but this time it was disgust, not hormones.

“You followed me?” she whispered.

“I learned you,” he corrected. “Your favorite coffee. The park you walk through when you can’t sleep. The nights you cried alone.”

The words landed like hands around her throat.

“You’re insane,” she said, voice shaking.

“Maybe.” His eyes dropped to her stomach. “But that child is mine.”

Something inside her snapped. She slapped him before she could think.

The sound cracked through the room. His head turned slightly. A red mark bloomed on his cheekbone.

Dominic didn’t flinch again. He turned back slowly, eyes unreadable, and caught her wrist with a grip that didn’t hurt but didn’t allow.

“I hate you,” she breathed, tears spilling.

“I know,” he said, too soft. His thumb brushed the frantic pulse at her wrist like a habit. Like a claim.

The doorway filled with another figure: tall, expressionless, built like a locked gate. His name, Serena remembered from whispers Dominic’s men used, was Luca.

Dominic released her wrist and stepped back. “Take her.”

Serena wanted to scream. To fight. To run. But in Dominic Carlucci’s world, resistance was a kind of prayer nobody answered.

They led her out to a black car waiting like it had been there all night. The door shut. The engine started.

Through tinted glass, she watched the motel shrink, then vanish.

Her freedom had lasted one night.

When Serena woke, the ceiling above her was crowned with a crystal chandelier. Velvet curtains sealed the windows. White silk sheets lay soft against her skin like they were trying to comfort her into submission.

She sat bolt upright, heart hammering.

A penthouse.

Dominic’s penthouse, high above Manhattan.

She went to the windows. The glass was unnaturally thick, the kind you didn’t break with rage. Bulletproof. The city glittered below like a world she couldn’t reach.

The bedroom door was locked from the outside.

A prison plated in gold.

And the prison knew her.

In the closet were clothes in her exact size, from silk pajamas to expensive gowns. In the bathroom: the shampoo she liked, the skincare brand she saved for, even the toothpaste she bought at her corner store.

On the bookshelf: the novels she’d been reading, and a watercolor instruction book she’d once added to her online cart but never purchased.

She wasn’t a sudden obsession.

She was a long-studied target.

Her legs went weak. She slid down to the plush carpet, pressing her hand over her stomach as if she could shield the baby from the air itself.

Days passed like chained beads.

She tried picking the lock. When it finally clicked open, Luca stood outside as if he’d counted the seconds.

She pretended illness, hoping for a public hospital. Dominic took her himself and watched the doctor’s hands like he might break them if they touched her wrong.

She tried bribing a housekeeper to send a message. The woman nodded, took the note, then disappeared the next day.

No one explained. No one said her name again.

That night Dominic came to Serena’s room. He didn’t shout. He didn’t threaten. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her with a calm so cold it made her bones ache.

“Every time you try,” he said quietly, “I tighten the hold.”

Serena held his gaze, refusing to blink. “You can’t keep me forever.”

Dominic’s eyes darkened, not with anger, but with something like sorrow he didn’t know how to carry. “Watch me.”

In her tenth week, nausea became a relentless storm. One night it was so bad Serena ended up on the bathroom floor, shaking, hair stuck to her damp cheeks.

She lifted her head between heaves and found Dominic sitting beside her, sleeves rolled up, holding her hair back with one hand and offering water with the other.

No comfort speeches. No apologies. Just… presence.

She hated that it made the room feel less lonely.

When the worst of it eased, something old and broken in her finally cracked.

“I was pregnant once,” she whispered, voice hoarse. “Before you.”

Dominic didn’t move. His eyes stayed on her face as if he were afraid looking away might shatter her.

“I was twenty-two,” Serena continued, staring at the tile like it held the courage she needed. “The man I loved promised me everything. When I told him, he held me and said we’d be a family.”

Her breath hitched. “Then he left in the night.”

Silence stretched, thick as smoke.

“Two weeks later,” she said, and her voice broke completely, “I miscarried alone. In a rented room. I thought I was dying, and nobody came.”

Her arms wrapped around her stomach now as if her body remembered the shape of loss.

Dominic’s jaw tightened. He didn’t speak for a long moment.

Then, softly, he said, “I won’t leave you.”

Serena looked up, startled by the steadiness in his voice.

“Whether you want it or not,” he went on, “I won’t leave.”

She should have told him to go to hell. She should have spat at him. Instead she just stared, exhausted, and felt the smallest, most terrifying thing:

She almost believed him.

The next morning, a new easel stood by the window. Beside it, a box of high-end oil paints, brushes, and pristine canvases.

He remembered.

He remembered she was a painter.

So Serena painted to keep from losing her mind. At first, her canvases were full of cages and storms and gray eyes staring out of darkness. Dominic never commented. He sat in the armchair each night like a guard who didn’t know he was also a witness.

One evening she couldn’t stop herself.

“Why me?” she asked, brush hovering. “You could have anyone. Women who belong in your world.”

Dominic’s gaze went distant, as if he were looking through time.

“The first time I saw you,” he said, “you were smiling over a painting you’d just sold.”

Serena’s throat tightened.

“It wasn’t a polite smile,” he continued. “It was joy. Real. In my world, nothing is real. Everything is leverage.”

He leaned forward slightly, as if confessing something he’d never said aloud. “I tried to stay away. I failed.”

Serena didn’t answer. She couldn’t. But that night, after he left, she painted a door cracked open with warm gold light spilling through.

Not freedom. Not yet.

But possibility.

When Dominic told her there would be an engagement party, Serena laughed, and the sound came out sharp as broken glass.

“You’re getting engaged to her,” she said. “While I’m here. Pregnant.”

His jaw clenched. “The Romano agreement was signed two years ago. If I cancel publicly without a strategy, it becomes war.”

“And I’m what,” Serena shot back. “Your hidden shame?”

Dominic stepped closer. “You are the woman I want.”

“Then act like it.”

He didn’t have an answer that didn’t sound like cruelty, so he gave her silence instead.

That night, music and laughter drifted up from below, from a world of champagne and diamonds where Serena did not exist. She found her way to a rooftop glass wall and looked down.

Dominic stood in a tuxedo, Bianca Romano beside him in red like a warning sign. Cameras flashed. A ring glittered as he slid it onto her finger.

Applause erupted.

Serena’s knees hit the rooftop floor. She wrapped her arms around her belly and sobbed until her throat hurt.

Below, Dominic glanced up once. His eyes found her huddled shape. For a fraction of a second, his expression tightened like pain.

Then he turned back to smile for the crowd.

Later, when the penthouse finally sank into silence, Dominic came into Serena’s room with his tie loosened and fatigue etched into his face. In his hand was the engagement ring.

He placed it on the bedside table like an offering. Like a rejection.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

“To you,” Serena whispered. “It means you chose her in front of everyone.”

Dominic stared at her for a long time. Then he left without another word, closing the door softly as if gentleness could undo what he’d done.

At eighteen weeks, the baby’s heartbeat filled the room during an ultrasound, and Serena watched Dominic’s face change as the sound pulsed through the air. The gray-eyed monster looked like someone kneeling at the edge of a miracle.

“A girl,” the doctor said.

Dominic’s hand tightened around Serena’s. “A girl,” he repeated, as if saying it made him human.

In the elevator afterward, he spoke with brutal suddenness.

“I’m ending the engagement.”

Serena stared. “You said it would be war.”

“I’ll find another way,” he said, voice vibrating with something she’d never heard in it before. “My daughter won’t grow up in a lie.”

Two days later, Bianca Romano walked into Serena’s room like a blade in heels, eyes full of ice and hatred. Dominic appeared in the doorway fast enough to make the air shift.

“Touch her,” he told Bianca, voice so cold it went quiet in Serena’s bones, “and you’ll leave here in pieces.”

Bianca’s smile was pure venom. “You’ll regret this,” she hissed. “Both of you.”

When she left, Serena couldn’t stop shaking.

That wasn’t a woman walking away.

That was a woman building a fire.

Weeks later, Serena finally stepped into Dominic’s world openly, belly rounded beneath silk dresses, his hand steady at her back. People bowed their heads. Men who looked like they’d never apologized in their lives lowered their eyes around him.

But danger has a smell, and Serena could taste it in the air: extra guards, sealed windows, Dominic checking a handgun at night with a calm that made her skin go cold.

Then she found the drawing on his desk: a crude sketch of a pregnant woman with a blood-red X through her body.

“Don’t hide it,” Serena said when he walked in. “Tell me who wants us dead.”

Dominic’s face tightened. “The Romani… and their allies. They can’t easily kill me. So they’ll kill you.”

Serena’s stomach dropped. “Because I’m your weakness.”

His eyes held pain that looked like a confession. “Yes.”

Luca stepped in then, pale. “We found out who leaked the route.”

Dominic’s voice went low, deadly. “Who.”

“Bianca.”

The room felt suddenly too small for oxygen.

Dominic’s hands trembled with fury. Serena stepped close and covered them with her own.

“Don’t go alone,” she whispered. “Don’t let rage be your driver.”

His eyes softened, a fraction. “First I get you safe.”

The convoy left Manhattan at midnight in armored vehicles, headlights slicing the dark. Serena sat beside Dominic, fingers locked around his as if holding on could change fate.

The highway north was empty, the world reduced to speed and breath.

Then the night erupted.

A flash ahead. A concussion of sound. The lead vehicle spun into chaos as gunfire cracked from the roadside.

Dominic shoved Serena down, covering her with his body. Bullets struck the glass like hail, spiderwebbing the window. The car lurched, swerving through smoke and debris.

Serena felt Dominic jerk, heard a harsh sound rip from his throat.

Blood seeped through his shoulder.

“No,” she gasped, pressing fabric to the wound with shaking hands. “No, no, no.”

Luca drove like a man trying to outrun the end of the world, tires screaming, engine protesting. They smashed through a barricade, metal grinding, sparks flying.

Then the SUV slammed into the median.

Serena’s body whipped forward. Pain exploded through her abdomen so bright it stole her voice. Warm wetness spread between her legs.

She reached down and came up with red on her fingers.

“No,” she whispered, voice shattered. “Please.”

Another wave of pain hit, tighter, stronger.

She was in labor.

Too early.

Dominic saw the blood and went white, terror finally cracking through the iron in his face.

He grabbed his phone with a hand that shook. “Doctor. Now. She’s bleeding. She’s in labor.”

Serena lay curled on the floor of the vehicle, clinging to her belly, the world reduced to pain and Dominic’s voice saying her name like a prayer he’d never learned.

The safe house outside the city appeared like a miracle: gates opening, lights blazing, doors flung wide. Serena was carried inside into a living room transformed into a makeshift delivery room.

The doctor worked fast. Orders. Monitors. Hands moving with practiced urgency.

Dominic refused treatment for his wound until Serena was stabilized.

“Thirty-two weeks,” the doctor warned, eyes sharp. “Heavy blood loss. If it comes to it—”

“Save them both,” Dominic snapped, voice cracking with something like desperation. “I won’t accept anything else.”

Serena caught his hand, pulling him close even as another contraction tore through her.

“If you can only save one,” she whispered, shaking, “promise me… save her.”

Dominic broke.

The man who had stared down enemies without blinking, who ruled a city’s shadows, bent over her and cried. Tears fell onto her fingers like a confession he couldn’t control.

“Don’t say that,” he choked. “Don’t.”

Hours later, a thin, fierce cry cut through the room.

A baby girl, tiny but alive, lungs fighting like she had inherited stubbornness from both of them.

Serena saw a flash of black hair and a wrinkled face before darkness took her.

When Serena woke days later, her body ached with the deep soreness of survival. Sunlight rested gently on the curtains like nothing bad had ever happened.

Dominic was slumped in a chair beside her bed, his bandaged shoulder stained with old blood, his hand still wrapped around hers as if he’d been afraid to let go.

A soft cry came from the cradle.

Serena’s breath caught. “My baby…”

Dominic stirred instantly, eyes flying open, then softening when he saw her awake. He stood and lifted the bundle like it was the most delicate thing he’d ever held.

“She’s here,” he whispered. “She’s real.”

He placed the baby in Serena’s arms.

Tiny. Warm. Alive.

Serena sobbed, pressing her lips to the baby’s forehead. “Hi,” she whispered. “Hi, my love.”

Dominic hovered like a man learning gravity. “I’m afraid I’ll break her.”

Serena laughed weakly through tears. “You’re not afraid of anything else.”

“Not true,” he said, eyes fixed on the child. “I’m afraid of losing you.”

The days that followed were strangely peaceful. Dominic learned diapers the hard way, bottle-feeding with fierce concentration, singing old Italian lullabies in a voice softer than Serena would have believed possible.

But peace never lasts untouched in a world built on power.

On the fourth morning, Dominic dressed in a black suit that wasn’t for a meeting. Serena woke to the hollow feeling of empty space beside her.

“Where are you going?” she asked, heart thudding.

“Something needs to be handled,” he said quietly.

Serena swallowed. “Are you coming back?”

Dominic stepped close and kissed her forehead, then kissed the baby’s tiny brow like a vow.

“I always come back,” he said. “To you.”

And he left.

He was gone three days.

Serena tried not to watch the news. She failed.

Reports came in pieces: raids, arrests, indictments, “organized crime” finally being pulled into the light. Names like Romano and their allies slid across the bottom of the screen in cold text.

When Dominic returned at sunset on the fourth day, he looked exhausted in a way Serena had never seen. Not triumphant. Not bloodthirsty.

Just… empty.

He stood in the doorway, shirt wrinkled, eyes hollow as if part of him had stayed out there with the darkness.

Serena rose with the baby in her arms and walked to him.

“Are you afraid of me now?” he asked, voice rough. “Now you know what I am.”

Serena studied him. The monster. The protector. The father. The man who had held her hair back while she vomited. The man who had made terrible choices and was learning, slowly, that love doesn’t erase consequences.

She shifted the baby into his arms.

“She needs her father,” Serena said gently. “And I need you here, where you’re human.”

Dominic looked down at the sleeping child. Something in his face softened, like ice melting into water.

“I didn’t do what they expected,” he murmured.

Serena’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”

Dominic’s jaw worked, as if words didn’t fit his mouth the way violence did. “They wanted a war in the streets. They wanted bodies. They wanted you to know I chose vengeance over you.”

He swallowed. “I chose… an ending that doesn’t reach our daughter.”

Serena didn’t ask for details. Some things, she realized, were better left outside the nursery. She stepped in behind him, wrapping both of them in her arms.

“Come home,” she whispered. “For real.”

A year later, the Manhattan penthouse sounded different.

It had laughter in it now. Small footsteps. Toys scattered like confetti. Serena’s canvases leaned against walls flooded with light instead of cages.

Isabella, with Dominic’s black hair and Serena’s green eyes, toddled across the living room and threw herself into her father’s legs.

“Papa,” she babbled, the word new and bright.

Dominic lifted her with a grin Serena still sometimes couldn’t believe belonged to him.

At dawn, with gold sunlight pouring through the glass, Serena stood in the doorway watching Dominic hold their daughter and sing softly in Italian.

The hands that had once dealt death now cradled life with reverence.

Serena’s fingers found the silver locket at her throat. For the first time, she felt ready.

She opened it.

Inside was a small, yellowed photograph: her mother, young and radiant, holding Serena at three years old. Both of them smiling into sunlight that looked impossibly warm.

On the back of the photo, in trembling handwriting, were words that punched air into Serena’s lungs:

Find love, my daughter, no matter where it comes from.

Serena covered her mouth as tears spilled, but this time they tasted like relief.

Dominic turned, saw her crying, and crossed the room instantly, Isabella balanced on his hip.

“What is it?” he asked, thumb brushing her cheek.

Serena showed him the photo.

He read it, silent for a long moment. Then he pulled Serena into his arms, careful not to crush her, careful as if she were still made of glass.

“Do you regret it?” he asked quietly. “Everything. The way we began.”

Serena looked up into his gray eyes, the same eyes that had once terrified her and now held a softness she’d helped carve into existence.

“I burned the ultrasound because I thought it was the only way to be free,” she said. “I thought running was the only way to protect our child.”

She touched his chest, feeling the steady beat beneath. “But freedom isn’t running. Freedom is choosing where you stay.”

Dominic closed his eyes like the words hurt and healed at the same time.

Serena reached for Isabella’s tiny hand and laced it with Dominic’s fingers.

“You’re not perfect,” she whispered. “Neither am I. But we’re here. We’re trying. And she’s alive because we refused to give up.”

Dominic pressed a kiss to her forehead, then to Isabella’s hair.

“The world can come for us,” he murmured. “But it will find us together.”

Outside, Manhattan glittered like a kingdom that never slept. Inside, in a room washed with dawn, the girl who had once burned her dream held the living proof that some flames don’t destroy.

Some flames warm.

THE END