Emma Hart got into the wrong car at 11:47 p.m. on Christmas Eve with a dead phone, a discount dress, and shoes that had already betrayed her twice.

She would later replay the moment like a courtroom exhibit, pausing it in her mind and pointing to every tiny decision that led to everything else.

If she had checked the license plate.

If she had waited under the awning instead of stepping into the street.

If she had remembered to pack a charger.

But life didn’t negotiate with “if.” It signed in ink, whether you were ready or not.

Right now, she was standing on a frozen sidewalk in Wicker Park, Chicago, watching the last breath of her battery vanish into a black screen.

“Great,” she muttered, pulling her thin coat tighter. “Merry Christmas to me.”

Across the street, a bar window glowed with warm amber light. Inside, couples leaned into each other, laughing like the world was a gentle place. Outside, the wind cut through her dress like it had personal grudges.

Emma hated Christmas in the specific way you only hate something that keeps reminding you you’re alone.

Not the carols. Not the lights.

The pairing-off. The invisible rule that if you didn’t have someone, you were a loose thread, something the holiday didn’t know where to put.

Sophia’s “Christmas party” had been exactly what she’d expected: cheap champagne, forced smiles, loud music meant to drown out the quiet truths. Emma had stayed long enough to be polite, then slipped out while everyone was distracted by a karaoke disaster.

Now she just wanted her studio apartment, her mismatched blanket, and a bowl of cereal eaten like a victory for survival.

A black SUV rolled up to the curb. Tinted windows. Quiet engine. The kind of car that didn’t belong to anyone who said “please” without being paid for it.

Relief flooded her anyway.

She didn’t check the plate. Her fingers were numb. Her feet hurt. Her pride was exhausted.

She yanked open the rear door and slid into leather that smelled like clean money.

“Oh, thank God,” she breathed, sinking back. “Fourth Street, please. I’m the one who called. My phone died, but the order went through. Can you turn up the heat? I can’t feel my fingers.”

A voice cut through her rambling like a blade.

“Who are you?”

Emma blinked, her heart forgetting its rhythm.

The man in the front seat had turned halfway around. Streetlight caught his face in sharp angles: dark hair, hard jaw, and eyes so pale they looked almost winter-blue, the kind of eyes that didn’t ask questions because they already knew how to make the answer happen.

His expression said her presence was an inconvenience he was deciding how to remove.

Emma swallowed.

“I… I’m the Uber,” she stammered, then winced at her own stupidity. “No. I mean. I’m the passenger. I called an Uber. I thought—”

He stared at her. Then his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, and something in his gaze changed. Not surprise. Not fear.

Calculation.

The SUV lurched forward so hard her head tapped the headrest.

“Hey!” Emma grabbed the seat. “What are you doing? Stop! I’ll report you—”

A second car pulled alongside them, slick and black, gliding like it was attached to their shadow. Its window rolled down.

A gun appeared.

The sound that came out of Emma wasn’t quite a scream. It was something smaller and worse, like her body hadn’t had time to decide what terror should sound like.

A hand shot back from the front seat. It grabbed her hair, not cruelly, but with the brisk certainty of someone who had done this before, and shoved her down.

“Down.”

One word. Not a request.

The first bullet shattered the rear window.

Glass rained onto the carpet. Emma pressed her face into it, breathing dust and panic. More shots cracked through the night, the sound so loud it felt like her bones vibrated.

Over it all, the man in front spoke rapidly in Italian, his voice calm as if this was a business call.

Emma tried to lift her head.

His hand pressed her down again.

“Stay.”

The chase became a blur of hard turns and violent noise. Tires screamed on icy streets. Bullets pinged off metal, sharp little notes of death.

“Let me out!” Emma screamed. “Stop the car!”

The answer came flat and final.

“No.”

The SUV shot through a yellow light. Her stomach lurched. Her mind scrambled for sense in a world that had stopped being sensible.

They were being hunted.

And she was in the wrong car.

When the SUV finally slammed to a stop, Emma stayed face-down, trembling, waiting for the next crack of gunfire to split her life in half.

A hand gripped her arm.

“Up.”

She lifted her head.

Outside the cracked window, looming against the snow-bright night, stood a Gothic mansion draped in Christmas lights. The kind of place that looked like it had secrets in every room and teeth in its foundation.

The man was already out, moving to her door.

When he opened it, cold air poured in like judgment.

Emma shoved herself back against the seat. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

His hand closed around her elbow, unbreakable.

He pulled her out like she weighed nothing and started dragging her toward the house.

“Let go!” Emma yanked, heels slipping on packed snow. “I said let go!”

His eyes stayed forward, fixed on the property like he was already planning ten steps ahead.

“Wrong car,” he said. “Those men saw your face.”

“So tell them I’m not—”

“It won’t matter.”

He kept walking.

Emma’s blood turned to ice. “Who are you?”

His jaw tightened.

“You walk out that gate,” he said, as if explaining math to a child, “they grab you in two minutes.”

“I’m not your problem,” she snapped, refusing to let fear turn her into someone smaller.

His grip tightened just slightly.

“They think you’re mine,” he said. “They’ll use you or kill you. Either way, you don’t get to go home.”

The word home punched through her like a cruel joke.

The front door burst open.

A small round woman in a red apron rushed out, white hair flying like a banner. She made a distressed sound in Italian, then froze when she saw Emma.

Worry vanished. Joy rushed in like champagne uncorking.

She clasped both hands to her cheeks.

“A girlfriend!” she cried, voice cracking with delight. “On Christmas Eve!”

“NO,” Emma tried, but the woman was already pulling her into a crushing hug.

Emma’s protest got muffled against warm shoulders that smelled like tomato sauce and flour and something heartbreakingly maternal.

The woman released her just enough to cup her face, inspecting her like she was a miracle wrapped in a bargain dress.

“Oh, bella,” she breathed. “Look at these eyes. Luca, where have you been hiding her?”

Emma’s eyes darted to the man. Luca, then. Luca Moretti, her brain supplied, because that name sounded like danger in a tailored suit.

He stood in the doorway like a carved statue, giving nothing away.

“I’m not his girlfriend,” Emma said, voice rising. “I got in the wrong car. I thought he was my Uber.”

The woman pinched Emma’s cheek hard enough to sting, grinning like she’d won the lottery.

“So modest,” she cooed. “And this figure. My grandchildren will be gorgeous.”

Emma’s soul briefly left her body and hovered near the chandelier.

“Grandchildren?” she squeaked.

The woman leaned in conspiratorially, stage-whispering as if this was adorable gossip. “She’s shy. Don’t worry. Moretti men are intense.”

“I’m not shy!” Emma snapped. “I was kidnapped!”

The woman paused, blinked, and looked at Luca.

He remained expressionless.

A slow smile spread across the woman’s face like sunrise.

“Romantic,” she declared.

Emma stared. “How is kidnapping romantic?”

The woman looped her arm through Emma’s with surprising strength and started steering her inside. “Your father kidnapped me, you know. Well. Aggressively courted. I was engaged to someone else.” She sighed like it was an old movie she’d watched a thousand times. “He did not care. Very passionate.”

This was her chance.

The door was still open. The cold night beyond looked like freedom.

Emma bolted.

She took three steps before a wall of muscle appeared like the house had conjured it.

A massive man blocked her path, face like carved granite, hands like dinner plates. He didn’t glare. He didn’t smirk.

He simply existed in a way that made escape feel theoretical.

Emma tried to dart around him.

He shifted one inch.

It was enough.

“Let me go,” she hissed, pushing at his chest. It was like pushing a refrigerator.

Luca’s voice came from behind, bored and sharp.

“Marco. Inside.”

The giant took Emma’s arm, not rough, just inevitable, and guided her back through the door.

The woman patted Emma’s hand like she was a spirited puppy.

“Such fire,” she said happily. “I love her already.”

Emma wanted to scream until her throat bled.

Instead, she did the next best thing.

She looked at Luca and said, very clearly, “Are you going to tell her I’m not your girlfriend?”

Luca climbed the first few steps of the grand staircase, then paused on the third. He turned just enough to look at her.

Those winter-blue eyes held nothing.

“My mother will handle you,” he said. “Stay inside. Don’t try to leave.”

Emma’s voice cracked with disbelief. “She thinks I’m your girlfriend!”

He studied her dress, her ruined heels, the tear streaks she hadn’t noticed yet.

Then, like handing down a verdict, he said, “Bambi.”

Emma blinked. “What?”

His eyes flicked to her face.

“Big eyes,” he said clinically, detached, like he was naming a species. “Scared. Helpless.”

Heat flared in Emma’s chest, anger clawing its way up through fear.

“I’m not helpless,” she snapped. “I’m a lawyer.”

Luca didn’t even raise his voice.

“You got in the wrong car,” he said. “Now you’re in the wrong world. Try not to die in it, Bambi.”

“And you’re not going to tell her the truth because…?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite amusement. Not quite mercy.

“More entertaining this way.”

Then he disappeared upstairs, swallowed by shadow like the house had simply accepted him back into its bones.

The woman squeezed Emma’s arm.

“Don’t mind him,” she whispered. “He’s not good with feelings.”

Emma let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “He finds my suffering entertaining.”

The woman’s eyes sparkled. “Exactly. He never finds anything entertaining. This is progress.”

Emma stared at her.

The woman beamed. “Come. Eat first. Then we talk about the wedding.”

“There is no wedding,” Emma said, but the woman was already humming something that sounded suspiciously like a wedding march.

Not yet, her smile promised.

---

The tears came later.

One moment Emma was arguing about how she had rights, and the next she was crying into a napkin while Luca’s mother rubbed her back with firm, comforting circles.

“I just wanted to go home,” Emma whispered, voice raw. “I just wanted to watch Netflix and pretend tomorrow wasn’t another Christmas alone.”

The woman’s frantic energy softened, like a flame turning into warmth.

“Alone?” she asked quietly.

Emma hesitated. Then the words spilled out, ugly and honest.

“No family,” she said. “Foster care. No parents. No one.”

She laughed bitterly. “The one time I end up with a family, it’s because criminals want to kill me.”

The woman’s arms wrapped around her. Gentle now.

“You have family now,” she said fiercely. “Whether you want us or not.”

Emma pulled back, wiping her face. “You can’t just adopt a kidnapping victim.”

The woman’s eyes flashed, fierce under soft wrinkles.

“Watch me,” she said. “You ate my pasta. In Italy, that makes you family.”

---

That night, alone in a guest room bigger than her apartment, Emma stared at a ceiling painted with cherubs. The sheets were soft. The silence was heavy.

A knock came.

“It’s Rosa,” the woman called softly. “Can I come in?”

Emma sighed. “Yes.”

Rosa slipped inside, her earlier comedy replaced by something tender and tired.

“I know I’m… a lot,” she admitted. “I get carried away.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded.

“It’s been fourteen years since my husband died,” she said quietly. “Fourteen years watching my son freeze. Not with snow. With… what this life does to a heart.”

Emma swallowed.

“I’m not what you’re looking for,” she whispered. “I just got in the wrong car.”

Rosa reached over and squeezed her hand.

“Maybe,” she said. “But my son noticed you. Really noticed. For the first time in fourteen years, he gave you a name.”

“Bambi,” Emma said flatly. “Because I look like prey.”

Rosa’s gaze held hers. “Because you made him pay attention. Powerful women? He sees through them like smoke. But you made him stop.”

Emma didn’t know what to do with that. It sat inside her chest like a stone that was warming.

Rosa rose, pausing at the door.

“Sleep,” she said. “Tomorrow will be complicated.”

Then, softer: “Tonight, you’re safe. You’re fed. You’re home.”

“This isn’t my home,” Emma said automatically.

Rosa smiled, hope and stubbornness braided together.

“Not yet,” she said. “Give it time.”

---

By morning, hunger and the need to feel in control pushed Emma out of bed and into the mansion’s maze of marble halls.

If she was trapped here, she needed to know the exits, the blind spots, the rhythms of the guards. She moved carefully, mapping the house like it was a case file.

A voice floated behind her, cheerful and casual.

“Well, well. You must be the kidnapped girl everyone’s whispering about.”

Emma spun, heart slamming.

A young man lounged in a doorway: messy dark hair, warm brown eyes, dimples that looked illegal in a house like this.

“Back up,” Emma snapped.

He lifted his hands. “Easy. I’m Miles. The funny one. Luca’s the scary one.”

“Who are you to him?” Emma demanded.

“His nephew,” Miles said, grin returning. “He raised me after my parents died. He hates when I call him ‘Uncle.’ Which is why I do it constantly.”

Emma stared. “So his name really is Luca.”

“Oh yeah,” Miles said. “And if you want to annoy him, call him Uncle in front of Rosa. She’ll throw confetti.”

Emma’s lips twitched despite herself.

Then she remembered the bullets.

“Why am I here?” she asked, voice low.

Miles’s grin faded just a little.

“Because the men who shot at us,” he said, “belong to Victor Valenti. And Victor hates Luca with the kind of hate that makes people get creative.”

Emma’s stomach clenched. “So I’m leverage.”

“You’re… a complication,” Miles corrected gently. “But yes. If you leave, they’ll grab you.”

Emma hated that it sounded true.

---

She tried anyway.

At 2:15 p.m., she made it to the garden wall, fingers numb, breath steaming in frantic little clouds. The stone was slick with frost. Her borrowed shoes were a joke.

Freedom was on the other side, gray and cold and uncertain, but still hers.

She swung a leg over.

Her foot slipped.

The world tilted. Her palms scraped against stone. Gravity won.

Emma hit the frozen ground hard, pain detonating in her ankle.

She bit back a cry, trying to stand.

Her leg buckled.

A voice drifted down from above, calm and cold.

“Finished?”

Emma looked up.

Luca stood on the wall like he’d been carved there, hands in his pockets, expression untouched by surprise.

“How?” she gasped. “You were supposed to be in a meeting.”

He jumped down beside her with predatory grace, crouching to examine her ankle like it was a problem he could solve.

“Meeting ended early,” he said. “Can you put weight on it?”

“I’m fine,” Emma snapped, trying to rise again.

Pain dropped her back down.

Luca’s hand shot out, catching her arm with quick certainty.

Before she could protest, he lifted her, one arm under her knees, the other behind her back.

Emma pushed at his chest. “Put me down!”

His grip tightened a fraction, gentle but absolute.

“You can’t walk,” he said.

“That’s not your problem.”

He started toward the house, carrying her like the weather.

“In the snow,” he said, bored. “With a hurt ankle.”

Emma glared up at him. “My name is Emma. Not Bambi.”

For a moment, his eyes flicked to her face, and something almost like focus sharpened there.

“I know,” he said softly.

The words hit harder than they should have.

He didn’t sound mocking.

He sounded… certain.

---

The doctor came. Rosa fussed. Marco stood like a silent wall. Miles made jokes to keep Emma from shaking.

Luca watched from a corner, quiet as winter.

Later, when Rosa ushered everyone out, Luca stepped closer with a small jar that smelled like eucalyptus.

“Give me your ankle,” he said.

“No.”

He didn’t argue. He simply waited, gaze steady.

Emma hated that her body obeyed before her pride could file an objection. She extended her leg.

His hands were warm. That was the first surprise.

The second surprise was how careful he was, how his touch stayed professional, restrained, like he was trying to prove something to himself.

When he finished, he wiped his hands.

“Rest,” he said. “Dinner at seven.”

“I’m not your family,” Emma said.

The door clicked shut behind him.

She stared at the ceiling, ankle wrapped in warmth, heart doing something traitorous and loud.

---

At seven, a dress appeared on her bed. Deep green silk, winter elegant, with heels that matched perfectly.

She shouldn’t have tried it on.

She did.

It fit like it had been made for her, and she hated how that made her feel seen.

Downstairs, the dining room fell silent as she entered. Rosa clasped her hands to her mouth, eyes wet. Miles whistled. Marco nodded once.

Luca didn’t look up from his plate.

Rosa rushed over. “Bellissima!”

Then she turned on her son with delighted accusation. “Luca! Look what you chose! Perfect!”

Emma’s head snapped to Luca. “You chose this?”

He continued cutting his food. “Your dinner is getting cold.”

“That’s not an answer,” Emma said, voice sharper than she intended. “Did you pick it?”

Rosa beamed. “He spent an hour. An hour! Comparing colors, flipping pages like a man possessed.”

“Rosa,” Luca said quietly.

“Embarrassed!” Rosa sang, delighted. “My Luca is embarrassed.”

“I’m eating,” he said flatly.

Miles leaned over, dimples flashing. “Historic moment. Uncle Luca buying someone a dress. Should we alert the media?”

Luca’s gaze rose, slow and lethal. “One more word.”

Miles grinned. “See? He cares. He just expresses it like a threat.”

Emma stared at her plate, trying to understand the impossible combination of danger and domestic warmth.

This man had dragged her into his world.

And he’d chosen a dress like he’d been paying attention.

---

Three days later, Emma found herself in Luca’s office, staring at contracts and shell companies while snow drifted past tall windows.

“Everything we have on Valenti,” Luca said, pushing a mountain of documents toward her. “Find something.”

“Your lawyers didn’t?” Emma asked.

His mouth tightened. “They found invoices.”

Emma rolled up her sleeves.

Hours blurred. Her neck ached. Her eyes burned.

Then she saw it.

A notary signature on a corporate filing: Arthur Bennington.

Her pulse spiked.

She flipped to another document. Same signature. Another. Another.

“Luca,” she said sharply. “Come here.”

He was behind her in seconds, close enough that she felt his heat like a second coat.

“What?”

Emma tapped the name. “Arthur Bennington. Notary public.”

“So?”

“He died,” Emma said, voice electric. “November 2019.”

Luca’s brow furrowed.

“And his signature keeps appearing,” Emma continued, flipping pages, “on documents dated 2021, 2022, 2023.”

Silence slammed into the room.

“A dead man notarizing legal filings,” Emma said. “That means every shell company registration using his seal is invalid. Every asset tied to those entities becomes vulnerable.”

Luca stared at her like she’d just held up the blueprint to a collapsing building.

“What does that get us?” he asked, voice low, dangerous.

Emma turned, fire rising in her chest.

“It gets you the power to freeze Valenti’s empire,” she said. “If we take this to the right prosecutor, the whole structure is exposed as fraud. He won’t just lose money. He’ll lose control.”

Miles, hovering in the doorway, made a sound like stunned laughter. “You just murdered a mafia empire with paperwork.”

Marco’s mouth twitched, almost a smile.

Rosa crossed herself in the hallway like Emma had performed a miracle.

Luca’s hand came down on Emma’s shoulder, heavy, warm.

“Your firm didn’t listen,” he said quietly.

Emma lifted her chin. “No.”

His eyes held hers with something she couldn’t name.

“I’m listening now,” he said.

Something inside Emma shifted, like a door that had been locked for years had finally found a key.

---

The next day, Victor Valenti made his move.

Emma stepped outside with Miles, ankle still tender, breath fogging in the air. She’d insisted on a short walk, on proving she wasn’t made of glass.

A black van slid to the curb with predatory silence.

Two men climbed out.

“One of Luca’s?” one asked.

“This the girl Valenti wants,” the other replied, voice bored, like confirming an order.

Emma’s body went cold.

Hands grabbed her arms. The world narrowed.

“Please,” she breathed. “You’ve made a mistake. I’m not—”

A gunshot cracked the air.

One man screamed, clutching his shoulder. Emma fell to her knees, palms burning against ice.

She looked up through shaking lashes and saw Luca standing in the street like a storm given human shape, gun raised, face carved from fury.

“Put her down,” he said, voice cold enough to freeze fire. “Now.”

The uninjured man aimed his weapon at Emma’s head, hand trembling.

“Back off, Moretti,” he snapped. “Valenti wants her.”

Luca took one step forward, utterly unbothered.

“You have three seconds,” he said, flat and calm, “to drop that gun.”

The man’s bravado cracked. Sweat shone on his forehead despite the cold.

“Valenti—”

“One,” Luca said.

The gun wavered.

“Two.”

The gun clattered to the ground.

The men scrambled back into the van, dragging the injured one, tires screaming as they fled.

Luca was beside Emma instantly, dropping to his knees. His hands skimmed her arms, her shoulders, checking her like she was fragile and priceless.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded, and the edge in his voice wasn’t anger.

It was fear.

Emma shook her head, breath snagging. “I… I’m okay.”

Luca’s hand cupped her face, his thumb brushing away a tear she hadn’t realized had fallen.

“I told you,” he said quietly, voice rough. “I told you what would happen.”

“I’m sorry,” Emma whispered, and hated how small she sounded.

Luca lifted her into his arms like it was the only natural thing in the world, carrying her back toward the house.

Over his shoulder, she saw Miles standing frozen, guilt written across his face like a confession.

---

That night, Emma sat by the library fire with Luca, the mansion quiet around them, snow soft against the windows.

“Why don’t you just marry the woman Valenti wants you to marry?” Emma asked suddenly, the question tasting like rust. “Solve it. End the war.”

Luca went still.

He rose slowly, crossing the room and stopping in front of her. He tilted her chin up with one finger.

“You want me to marry her?” he asked, voice soft and dangerous.

“It’s logical,” Emma said, forcing steadiness. “No bloodshed. No threats.”

His gaze held hers.

“I don’t live by logic,” he said.

Emma’s throat tightened. “Then what do you live by?”

For once, his mask slipped enough to show something human underneath.

“Responsibility,” he said. “And debt.”

His thumb brushed her cheekbone, gentle.

“From the moment you got into my car,” he said, “you became my responsibility.”

Emma swallowed. “That doesn’t explain why you care.”

Luca’s jaw flexed, like the truth cost him.

“Because you looked at me like I was a person,” he said quietly. “Not a monster. Not a rumor.”

Emma’s eyes burned.

“And because you are not helpless,” he added, voice rougher now. “You’re brave in a way that doesn’t need applause.”

The fire crackled, loud in the silence.

Emma stood, closing the distance she’d been guarding like a border.

“If I stay,” she said, voice trembling, “I’m not property. I’m not leverage. I’m not a pet name.”

Luca’s eyes sharpened.

“Then what are you?” he asked.

Emma breathed in, tasting smoke and snow and the terrifying edge of choice.

“I’m someone who decides,” she said. “And if you want me in your life, you learn how to be better than the world that made you.”

A long moment passed.

Then Luca nodded once, like a vow forming behind his eyes.

“I don’t know how,” he admitted, voice low. “But I’ll learn.”

---

They took the evidence to the district attorney two nights later.

Emma walked into that office with documents in her hands that could burn an empire to ash. She answered questions. She watched skepticism turn into alarm, then ambition.

She told them everything about Victor Valenti.

She told them nothing about Luca.

When she stepped back into the snow, Luca’s SUV was still there, waiting like a promise he didn’t trust himself to speak.

Inside, the heater hummed. The city glowed beyond the windows.

“You could’ve run,” Luca said quietly, hands tight on the wheel. “You were free the moment you went in.”

Emma looked at him, at the man who had scared her, protected her, challenged her, listened when no one else had.

“I don’t want to be alone on New Year’s,” she said simply. “Not if I have a choice.”

Something shifted in Luca’s face, small but seismic, like ice cracking to reveal water.

Emma reached across the console and took his hand.

“Take me home,” she said.

Not her apartment.

Home.

---

On New Year’s Eve, the mansion glowed with fairy lights and candles. Rosa cooked like she was feeding an entire village. Marco stood guard with less stiffness than usual. Miles wore a ridiculous party hat just to make Rosa laugh.

Emma found herself laughing too.

At midnight, the TV announced what the documents had set in motion.

“Victor Valenti arrested,” the anchor said. “Federal investigation—”

Emma’s breath caught. Her eyes flew to Luca.

“It worked,” she whispered.

Luca kissed her forehead, a rare tenderness that felt like a confession.

“You did this,” he said.

Rosa cried. Miles whooped. Even Marco’s shoulders shook with something like relief.

It wasn’t just victory.

It was a wound finally closing.

Later, when the noise quieted and the snow fell soft, Luca found Emma by the window.

“What are you thinking, Bambi?” he asked, then corrected himself, voice gentler than she’d ever heard it. “Emma.”

She turned, smiling despite the sting behind her eyes.

“A week ago,” she said, “I got into the wrong car thinking it was my Uber.”

Luca’s mouth tightened like he still hated how close he’d come to losing her.

“And now?” he asked.

Emma looked at the lights, the warmth, the imperfect, dangerous family that had somehow made room for her.

“Now I have people who see me,” she said. “And a life that’s mine because I chose it.”

Luca stepped closer, careful, as if he still didn’t fully believe he was allowed.

“Any regrets?” he asked.

Emma shook her head.

“Not one,” she said, and meant it.

Luca exhaled, like he’d been holding his breath for years, then said the words with quiet certainty:

“Welcome home.”

Outside, snow kept falling, soft as forgiveness.

Inside, Emma Hart finally felt found.

THE END