The first time Adrian Vale put a gun in my hand, I was trying to pay him $680,000 I didn’t owe.
“You understand better now?”
I looked at Ray’s body.
“Yes.”
“No, Mara. Look at me.”
I did.
“This is the part nobody puts in movies. Tonight you may throw up. Tomorrow you may feel nothing. Next week you might hear that gunshot when somebody drops a pan. A year from now you might smell your mother’s soup and remember his blood on the floor.”
My throat tightened.
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“I’m trying to give you one last chance to stay human.”
I looked toward the paramedics lifting my mother onto a stretcher.
Then at Ray.
Then back at Adrian Vale.
“My father died because of debt. My mother nearly died because of debt. Men like Ray think people like us are things they can break.”
I wiped my face.
“If your world is going to come through my door anyway, I’d rather learn how to survive inside it.”
Something painful passed through Adrian’s expression.
Then he stood.
“Davis.”
“Yes, Don?”
“Put her on payroll.”
That was how I joined the Vale family.
Not with an oath.
Not with champagne.
With my mother’s soup cooling beside a dead man.
The first few weeks were almost boring.
Weapons training.
Driving.
Surveillance.
Security protocols.
Hours studying maps of warehouses and freight yards.
I learned quickly that Adrian’s organization was less glamorous than rumors suggested.
It was mostly logistics.
Trucks.
Security.
Cargo.
Money.
Men arguing over territory and pretending ego was strategy.
I also learned that Adrian hated drugs, trafficking and anyone who harmed children.
That didn’t make him good.
It made him a criminal with boundaries.
There is a difference.
People romanticize dangerous men because boundaries look like morality when surrounded by worse behavior.
I refused to make that mistake.
At least, I tried.
My first real operation happened at Warehouse Nine.
A rival crew had taken a shipment and trapped six of Adrian’s men inside.
Shots came from a rooftop nearly three hundred yards away.
Adrian’s people couldn’t move.
I could see the shooter.
Barely.
Adrian handed me a rifle.
“You sure?”
My mouth was dry.
“No.”
He looked surprised.
“Good answer.”
I settled behind a concrete barrier.
The shooter fired again.
A man beside us screamed.
My scope found movement behind a rooftop air unit.
Breathing.
Target.
Trigger.
The figure disappeared.
Silence.
Adrian stared at me.
“Did you hit him?”
“I don’t know.”
Davis checked through binoculars.
“You hit the rifle.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“You shot his rifle.”
Adrian almost laughed.
“You did that intentionally?”
“No.”
Now he really did laugh.
It was the first time I heard the sound.
Warm.
Young.
Almost normal.
That frightened me more than gunfire.
Two months later, Adrian named me chief of his personal security.
Half the room hated me.
Especially Owen Rusk.
Owen had been Adrian’s second-in-command for eight years.
Handsome in a polished, poisonous way.
He cornered me outside the training room after the announcement.
“You slept with him?”
I punched him in the mouth.
He stumbled against the wall.
Then started laughing.
“Guess not.”
“You ask me that again, I’ll break something harder to replace.”
His eyes glittered.
“I think I like you.”
“That sounds like your problem.”
“It could become yours.”
From then on, Owen watched me.
I watched him too.
Adrian watched both of us.
Somewhere between bodyguard shifts, midnight strategy meetings and coffee at sunrise, something changed between Adrian and me.
Nothing dramatic happened.
That was the dangerous part.
He knew I hated mushrooms.
I knew he slept only four hours a night.
He knew I called my mother every evening at nine.
I knew thunderstorms made him stand near windows even though windows were the worst place for a man with enemies.
One night I asked why.
“My mother loved storms,” he said.
Past tense.
I waited.
He rarely spoke about her.
“She died when I was fifteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
“My father threw us out when I was eleven.”
I looked at him.
“Your father is alive?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Why would he throw out his own son?”
“Because my mother wasn’t the woman he married.”
That explained things Adrian had never explained.
The contempt for inherited power.
The hatred of men who used families as leverage.
The old coat he kept despite owning twenty better ones.
“You were homeless?”
“For a while.”
Then he looked at me strangely.
“You really don’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing.”
Months later, I would understand.
When I was fourteen, my mother once dragged me away from a freezing boy outside a grocery store because she thought he might steal from us.
Before leaving, I’d given him my sandwich, hot chocolate and the fourteen dollars in my pocket.
I had forgotten his face.
Adrian hadn’t.
But he didn’t tell me yet.
Instead he reached across his desk and touched a bruise beneath my jaw from training.
His thumb barely brushed my skin.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
He noticed.
“So,” he murmured.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Look pleased with yourself.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Maybe a little.”
I should have moved.
I didn’t.
Then Davis opened the office door.
“Sorry.”
He immediately closed it.
I stepped back so fast I hit the desk.
Adrian looked toward the ceiling.
I laughed.
And that was the precise moment I knew I was in trouble.
Not when men shot at me.
Not when I killed Ray Mercer.
When Adrian Vale made me laugh.
The first clue about my father arrived in a brown envelope.
No return address.
Inside were six pages of banking records.
Whitfield Commercial Press.
Vale Strategic Holdings.
Three offshore companies.
Dates.
Transfers.
Loan recalls.
At first, the numbers meant nothing.
Then I saw the timeline.
Two weeks before my father’s company collapsed, a Vale-controlled fund purchased a bundle of Whitfield debt.
Forty-eight hours later, the bank demanded immediate repayment.
Seven days after that, my father’s largest clients canceled contracts.
Thirty-one days later, he fell from the garage.
My stomach turned cold.
I read everything three times.
Then I hid the envelope.
For the first time since joining Adrian, I lied to him.
“Everything okay?” he asked that evening.
“Fine.”
He studied my face.
“You’re terrible at lying.”
“Then stop asking questions you don’t want answered.”
His expression changed.
But he let me leave.
I hired a private investigator named Leon Price.
Leon was a former forensic accountant with a habit of wearing bow ties that made him look like a history professor.
“I can trace the ownership,” he said. “But this could take time.”
“I have money.”
“People who say that usually don’t.”
“I work for Adrian Vale.”
Leon stared.
Then removed his glasses.
“Oh.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Yes.”
“Will you do it?”
He sighed.
“Yes.”
Three days later, Adrian’s estranged father came back into his life.
Garrett Vale invited half the city’s wealthy families to a charity gala at his estate.
He also possessed something Adrian badly needed—a shipping contract that could keep several of Adrian’s legal companies from collapsing after months of sabotage.
Adrian didn’t want to go.
I convinced him.
“Some things don’t disappear because you refuse to look at them.”
He gave me a long stare.
“That sounded annoyingly wise.”
“My mother says it.”
“I liked you better before you became philosophical.”
“You liked me?”
“I thought that was obvious.”
The room went quiet.
“Adrian…”
He stepped closer.
“There’s only one woman I’ve ever wanted beside me when the shooting starts.”
“That is possibly the worst love confession in human history.”
“I wasn’t finished.”
“Please don’t make it worse.”
He smiled.
I wanted him to kiss me.
Instead his phone rang.
Garrett Vale’s gala was held in a mansion where every room looked designed to remind visitors they were poorer than the owner.
Garrett was in his sixties.
Silver hair.
Straight posture.
Adrian’s eyes.
Nothing else.
When he saw his son, he opened his arms.
Adrian didn’t move.
Then Garrett announced to two hundred guests that Adrian would marry Lydia Crane, daughter of a powerful shipping magnate.
I actually laughed.
Everyone looked at me.
Garrett didn’t.
Adrian walked onto the small stage.
“I’m not marrying Lydia.”
Garrett’s face hardened.
“This is bigger than your preferences.”
“No.”
Adrian looked directly at me.
“There’s only one woman in my life.”
My pulse stopped.
“Mara Whitfield.”
Every head turned.
I wanted the floor to open.
Instead I saw Garrett.
He was staring at me like he had seen a ghost.
“Whitfield?” he said.
That was clue number two.
Before I could ask what he meant, my phone vibrated.
Leon.
I slipped into the hallway.
“Mara,” he whispered.
He sounded terrified.
“I found it.”
“Found what?”
“The connection. Your father wasn’t just borrowing money. Someone set him up.”
“Who?”
“I’m outside.”
“Leon, who?”
“Listen carefully. The records you received were altered. Vale Strategic did appear in the transaction chain, but the controlling signature came from—”
A noise.
Then breathing.
“Leon?”
“Don’t trust—”
The line went dead.
I ran.
Outside the ballroom, near the service entrance, Leon Price lay on the marble floor.
Blood soaked his shirt.
His eyes found mine.
“Leon!”
I dropped beside him.
“Who did this?”
He tried to raise his arm.
His finger pointed past my shoulder.
I turned.
Adrian stood twenty feet away.
My entire body went cold.
Leon died before he could say another word.
The police came.
Garrett’s people cleared guests away.
Adrian tried to approach me.
I stepped back.
“Mara.”
“Don’t.”
“You think I did this?”
I pulled the banking records from my purse.
“Tell me they’re fake.”
He scanned the pages.
His face changed.
“Where did you get these?”
“Tell me.”
“They’re fake.”
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
“Convenient.”
“They’re excellent fakes.”
“Leon found the connection. Then he was shot. When I asked who did it, he pointed at you.”
Adrian looked past me.
“Owen,” he said.
Owen stood near the doorway.
“What?”
Adrian’s attention returned to me.
“Give me forty-eight hours.”
“My father didn’t get forty-eight hours.”
“Mara.”
“You destroyed his company.”
“No.”
“You bought his debt.”
“No.”
“You forced the banks to close in.”
“No.”
“He died because of you!”
“No!”
It was the first time Adrian ever shouted at me.
Everyone froze.
He lowered his voice.
“If I had destroyed your father, I would tell you.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you know exactly what kind of man I am.”
That hurt.
Because I did.
Or thought I did.
I drew the gun he had given me months earlier.
People shouted.
Davis reached for his weapon.
Adrian raised a hand.
“Stay back.”
My gun pointed at his chest.
My hand shook.
Adrian walked closer.
“Don’t.”
He kept walking.
“Adrian, stop.”
He stopped five feet away.
“If you believe I killed your father, shoot me.”
Tears blurred my vision.
“You think I won’t?”
“I think you will.”
He looked almost unbearably calm.
“But I also think you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering whether you were right.”
“Stop talking.”
“The first night at the range, I told you anger ruins aim.”
“Stop.”
“You remember?”
“Shut up!”
He took one more step.
I fired.
Adrian dropped.
The sound of his body hitting the marble floor changed my life.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then Davis tackled me.
People screamed.
I saw Adrian’s blood spreading beneath him.
And suddenly every feeling vanished except one.
What have I done?
The bullet entered high in his chest.
It missed his heart by less than two inches.
He survived surgery.
I sat outside the hospital room with blood dried on my dress.
Davis refused to look at me.
At 4:17 in the morning, a voice behind us said:
“Miss Whitfield.”
I turned.
Leon Price stood at the end of the hallway.
Alive.
His left arm was bandaged.
For a moment, I genuinely thought I had lost my mind.
“You died.”
“No.”
“You—”
“The bullet missed anything vital. I lost consciousness.”
I stood.
“Who shot you?”
“Owen Rusk.”
The hallway tilted.
Leon handed me a flash drive.
“The financial records were fabricated. Owen hired the man who delivered them to you.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“But you pointed at Adrian.”
“No.”
Leon shook his head.
“I was pointing behind him.”
Owen.
My knees nearly gave out.
Leon continued.
“Your father’s company was destroyed by Garrett Vale.”
“Why?”
“Your father discovered Garrett was using Whitfield trucks to move illegal cargo without his knowledge. Daniel Whitfield threatened to expose him. Garrett retaliated. He bought your father’s loans through shell companies, destroyed his credit and fabricated evidence suggesting he’d stolen from investors.”
“My father killed himself.”
Leon’s face changed.
“I’m not certain he did.”
Everything inside me went silent.
“What?”
“The garage camera failed for exactly eleven minutes.”
He held my gaze.
“And your father’s brass lighter had Garrett Vale’s fingerprints on it.”
I stopped hearing the rest.
I had shot the wrong man.
A man I loved.
With the gun he had taught me to use.
I pushed into Adrian’s hospital room.
He was pale.
Machines surrounded him.
His eyes opened.
“Mara?”
I couldn’t speak.
I sank beside his bed.
“I was wrong.”
His eyelids lowered.
“I know.”
“You knew?”
“Davis found the forged account trail last night.”
“I shot you.”
“Yes.”
“I could have killed you.”
“Yes.”
“Why aren’t you angry?”
His mouth moved faintly.
“I am.”
That surprised me.
“You are?”
“Furious.”
I almost laughed through my tears.
“Good.”
“You should be.”
He lifted one weak hand.
I took it.
“But anger is easier than losing you.”
I pressed his knuckles against my forehead.
“I don’t deserve you.”
His voice sharpened.
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“No. That’s the kind of garbage people say when they want guilt to make decisions for them.”
I stared at him.
“Then what do I do?”
“Live with it.”
He squeezed my hand.
“Apologize. Learn. Never do it again.”
A sob escaped me.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Then someone opened the door behind me.
Owen Rusk walked in holding a suppressed pistol.
He shot the monitor first.
Davis lunged.
Owen fired.
Chaos exploded.
I threw myself across Adrian.
Davis hit Owen against the wall, but Owen escaped through the stairwell before reinforcements reached us.
That was when the final pieces became clear.
Owen had been working with Garrett.
Garrett promised him control of Adrian’s organization.
Owen had forged the evidence against Adrian.
He had sabotaged the warehouses.
Arranged the assassination attempts.
Manipulated me.
And after failing to kill Adrian at the hospital, he disappeared.
Two days later, so did I.
I woke tied to a chair in Adrian’s country house east of Graybridge.
The absurdity almost made me laugh.
Owen had hidden me in property Adrian rarely used because everyone would assume he’d taken me far away.
He sat across from me eating spaghetti.
“You always did underestimate me,” he said.
“I mostly found you annoying.”
“That hurts.”
“You shot Leon.”
“Yes.”
“You tried to kill Adrian.”
“Yes.”
“You helped Garrett murder my father.”
His fork stopped.
“I didn’t murder your father.”
“Garrett did?”
Owen smiled.
“You still think he jumped?”
My stomach turned.
“Tell me.”
“Your father met Garrett on that garage roof. He had copies of shipping manifests. Garrett offered him money.”
Owen took another bite.
“Your father refused.”
“What happened?”
“They argued.”
His smile disappeared.
“Garrett pushed him.”
For months, I had imagined my father standing alone on that ledge, destroyed by shame.
Now I saw something else.
My father resisting.
My father refusing.
My father dying because he finally chose courage too late.
Owen leaned forward.
“Forget them.”
“What?”
“Adrian. Garrett. Your father. All of them.”
He touched my cheek.
I turned my head.
“Come with me. We disappear.”
I stared at him.
“You honestly think I’d choose you?”
His face tightened.
“I betrayed Adrian for you.”
“No.”
I pulled against the restraints.
“You betrayed Adrian because you wanted what he had.”
“I love you.”
“Love without respect is ownership.”
His eyes changed.
That sentence made him angry because it was true.
He stood.
“You think Adrian respects you?”
“Yes.”
“He orders you around.”
“And I tell him no.”
“He puts you in danger.”
“I chose danger.”
“He kills people.”
“So have I.”
Owen slapped me.
My head snapped sideways.
When I looked back, he was breathing heavily.
“Choose me.”
“All right.”
He froze.
“What?”
“I choose you.”
Suspicion crossed his face.
Then hope.
People become stupid when you hand them the lie they desperately want.
“Untie me.”
“Mara—”
“You want me? Untie me.”
He did one hand.
That was enough.
I drove my thumb into the pressure point beneath his jaw, hooked my foot behind his knee and pulled.
He fell.
I grabbed the gun from his waistband.
He laughed from the floor.
“There she is.”
“Don’t move.”
“You won’t shoot me.”
“I’ve shot someone I loved. Do you honestly think you’re safer?”
His smile vanished.
Headlights swept across the windows.
Adrian.
I knew it before the front door opened.
Owen reached for an ankle gun.
I fired.
Once.
He collapsed.
Adrian appeared in the doorway seconds later, still pale from surgery, a pistol in his hand.
He saw Owen.
Then me.
Then the bruise on my face.
“Are you hurt?”
“That’s your first question?”
“Yes.”
I lowered the gun.
“I’m okay.”
He crossed the room and stopped directly in front of me.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s his.”
His eyes closed for a second.
Then he pulled me against him.
Adrian had held me before.
But never like that.
His body shook.
That frightened me.
“I thought I lost you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I tore apart half the city looking for you.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because you’re dramatic.”
He laughed against my hair.
Then winced from his wound.
I pulled back.
“You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“You were kidnapped.”
“So you ignored medical advice?”
“Obviously.”
“Idiot.”
“Shooter.”
“Criminal.”
“Woman who shot me.”
I covered my face.
“Too soon.”
“Much too soon.”
He kissed me anyway.
Our first kiss tasted like blood, exhaustion and everything we should have said months earlier.
Nothing about it was beautiful.
That was why I remember it.
Garrett Vale was waiting when we returned to Graybridge.
He had locked himself inside the old Whitfield factory.
My father’s factory.
There are men who need symbolism even when committing evil.
Garrett was one of them.
Adrian wanted to go alone.
I refused.
Inside the abandoned press floor, Garrett stood beneath rusted steel beams with two armed men.
Boxes of my father’s old invoices still sat against one wall.
For a second, grief hit me harder than fear.
I could almost hear the machines.
Dad shouting over the presses.
Me doing homework in his office.
Mom bringing takeout on Fridays.
Garrett looked at me.
“So Daniel’s daughter became a gunman.”
“Shooter,” I said.
“What?”
“Gunman sounds lazy.”
Adrian sighed quietly beside me.
Garrett stared.
“You find this amusing?”
“No.”
I aimed at him.
“I just don’t want you choosing the language in my father’s building.”
His face hardened.
“Your father was weak.”
“No.”
“He lost everything.”
“You stole everything.”
“He should have understood business.”
“You murdered him.”
Garrett didn’t deny it.
That was the cruelest part.
He smiled.
“Your father believed doing the right thing made him untouchable.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“He believed doing the right thing mattered even when it didn’t save him.”
Garrett looked at Adrian.
“You’re going to let this woman threaten your father?”
Adrian lowered his gun slightly.
“You were never my father.”
Something broke in Garrett’s face.
Just for a moment.
Then he drew.
I fired first.
The bullet struck his shoulder.
His weapon fell.
Adrian’s men disarmed the others.
Garrett collapsed against one of the old printing presses.
I walked toward him.
He looked up.
“Finish it.”
I pointed my gun at his forehead.
For a long time, I wanted to.
This man had destroyed my father’s company.
Murdered him.
Nearly ruined my mother.
Manipulated me into shooting Adrian.
Every terrible road led back to him.
My finger rested against the trigger.
Then I remembered Adrian’s voice.
Being good at shooting paper doesn’t mean you can shoot a person.
Then my father’s.
Anger ruins aim.
I lowered the gun.
Garrett laughed.
“Weak.”
“No.”
I took the flash drive containing his financial records from my pocket.
“I’m making sure you live long enough to watch everything you built disappear.”
For the first time, Garrett Vale looked afraid.
We released enough evidence to destroy his legitimate companies and send investigators through the rest.
His partners abandoned him.
Banks froze accounts.
Men who once called him sir claimed they barely knew him.
Garrett disappeared into the legal system he had spent his life believing money could control.
I wish I could say that fixed everything.
It didn’t.
My father stayed dead.
My mother’s health never fully recovered.
Adrian remained a man who had done terrible things, even if Garrett had done worse.
And I remained someone who could close one eye, slow my breathing and put a bullet almost anywhere I chose.
You do not come out of years like that clean.
Six months later, Mom died in her sleep.
Not from violence.
Not from debt.
Her heart simply stopped.
Somehow, that felt unfairer.
I sat beside her hospital bed holding her cold hand while Adrian stood quietly near the door.
“She wanted grandchildren,” I whispered.
Adrian said nothing.
“She told me last week.”
Still nothing.
I looked at him.
“You’re supposed to say something.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“That’s never stopped you before.”
He almost smiled.
Then I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe.
Adrian sat on the floor beside me and held me.
No promises.
No speeches.
No telling me she was in a better place.
Just arms around me while grief did what grief does.
After the funeral, I resigned as Adrian’s shooter.
He read my letter once.
Then folded it.
“Okay.”
I stared.
“That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
“You to object.”
“I do.”
“Then object.”
“No.”
“Why?”
He came around the desk.
“Because I spent half my life watching men confuse love with possession.”
His hand touched my face.
“I won’t do that to you.”
“What if leaving changes us?”
“It will.”
The answer hurt.
He continued.
“Everything changes us.”
“So what happens now?”
“You decide.”
That was the most loving thing Adrian Vale ever gave me.
Not money.
Not protection.
Not revenge.
Choice.
I opened a firearms training center outside Graybridge the following spring.
Before anyone panics, we taught safety more than shooting.
Women escaping violent relationships came.
Security guards.
Hunters.
College students.
People terrified of firearms.
People too comfortable with them.
Above my desk, I kept one photograph of my father standing beside his printing press.
Beside it sat his brass lighter.
The dent Garrett’s hand had left in it was still visible.
Adrian visited most evenings.
He never completely escaped his world.
People like him rarely do.
But he sold the nightclubs.
Closed businesses that depended on violence.
Turned freight operations legitimate one painful contract at a time.
Some men left.
Some threatened him.
One tried to kill him eighteen months later.
I shot that man’s tire from eighty yards.
Adrian never let me forget it.
“You resigned.”
“I resigned from employment.”
“You fired a rifle.”
“Technically I fired at a tire.”
“From my roof.”
“You’re welcome.”
Three years after my father died, Adrian proposed.
Nothing fancy.
No restaurant.
No orchestra.
We were cleaning the training range after closing.
He picked up a spent shell casing and placed it on my palm.
“You know,” I said, “most people use diamonds.”
“Most people aren’t us.”
“Thank God.”
Then he looked at me.
Really looked at me.
“I can’t promise a normal life.”
“I know.”
“I can promise I’ll never lie about what it is.”
I closed my fingers around the brass casing.
“That sounds better than normal.”
“Mara Whitfield…”
“Oh God.”
“Will you let me finish?”
“No.”
He stared at me.
I smiled.
“Yes.”
“You don’t even know the question.”
“Yes.”
“That ruins the entire thing.”
“I’m comfortable with that.”
He kissed me.
People like stories where the broken girl meets the dangerous man and love magically repairs them both.
That is not what happened.
Adrian did not save me.
I did not redeem Adrian.
My father’s death did not become meaningful simply because the truth came out.
My mother did not live long enough to enjoy the peace we bought at such a terrible price.
I still sometimes wake because I hear a gunshot that happened years ago.
Adrian still stands near windows during thunderstorms.
Sometimes we argue.
Sometimes we go days speaking carefully because love does not erase damage.
But on the wall of our kitchen hangs a photograph from our courthouse wedding.
Adrian is smiling.
I am laughing because Davis accidentally stepped on my dress.
My father isn’t in the picture.
Neither is my mother.
There are empty spaces in every life that love cannot fill.
Eventually, I understood that love was never supposed to fill them.
It simply teaches you that an incomplete life can still be worth living.
My father died in debt.
I joined the men who came to collect it.
I became their best shooter.
I fell in love with their don.
I nearly killed him because I believed a lie.
And then I discovered the debt my father left me was never six hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
It was fear.
Shame.
Silence.
The belief that children must pay forever for the choices of their parents.
That was the only debt I finally refused to inherit.
And Adrian?
He still keeps the pistol he gave me the night I joined him.
It hasn’t been fired in years.
Sometimes I catch him looking at it.
“Regrets?” I ask.
He always gives me the same answer.
“One.”
“What?”
“I should’ve kissed you in the office before Davis opened the door.”
I roll my eyes.
Then I kiss him anyway.
Because some endings aren’t clean.
Some wounds don’t close perfectly.
Some dead people never get justice that feels big enough.
And some love stories don’t save anyone.
They simply give two damaged people a reason to keep choosing tomorrow.
For us, that had to be enough.
THE END
