It’s not what you think.

The corridor leading to the residential ward always felt a little too quiet. Not peaceful, never that, but hushed, like the building itself was holding its breath, a finger to its lips. A silence thick with the weight of time, and the quiet toll of slow goodbyes. Laya moved slowly, her boots muffled against the floor’s linoleum sheen. Room 214 was near the end, just before the large window that overlooked the hospital gardens. The door was half-open. She knocked gently before easing it further. “Kyle?” she said softly. He lay curled on his side, tucked under the hospital-issue blanket, the kind that always looked warm but never was. The pale light from the window fell across his face, making his skin appear almost translucent. Too pale. Too thin. His eyes opened at the sound of her voice, and it took a moment for recognition to register. When it did, he smiled. It was tired, lopsided, but real. “Hey, Laya,” he murmured, his voice a dry whisper. She walked to his bedsid

The hospital chapel was dimly lit, a soft amber glow spilling from wall sconces onto the polished wooden pews. The scent of old incense lingered faintly in the air, soothing, almost sacred. It was the kind of quiet that wrapped around the soul like a wool blanket, warm, heavy, absolute. Cybil Ashcroft stepped inside, her heels hushed by the carpet. She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, the weight of the day pressing into her chest like a boulder. Daniel’s prognosis remained uncertain. The doctors had said things like “hours,” “trauma,” and “massive blood loss.” Words that spun like autumn leaves in her mind, never settling, never stopping. She needed to think. To be still. Her eyes swept across the room and paused. A young woman sat hunched on the front pew, shoulders shaking, hands covering her face. She looked small in the vast stillness of the chapel, swallowed by grief. Cybil hesitated, half-ready to leave, but something in her, the mother perhaps, kept h

The next morning brought with it a grey light that barely filtered through the tall windows of the law office. Laya sat stiffly on the edge of a worn leather chair; her fingers laced together so tightly her knuckles were pale. Her eyes were fixed on the contract sitting in the centre of the oak desk between her and Marcus Bellamy, her father’s lifelong friend and the Kerrigan family’s legal counsel for over two decades. Marcus looked every bit the part of the seasoned solicitor, silver-haired, sharp-eyed, with lines around his mouth that spoke of too many serious conversations and too many burdens carried in silence. He was flipping through the final pages of the contract again, though she knew he’d already reviewed it thoroughly before she arrived. “I had hoped the next time you sat in this office it would be for something joyful,” he said quietly, sliding his glasses off and setting them on the desk. “But this… Laya, this is something else.” Laya swallowed hard, her throat dry d

The morning air felt lighter, as though the weight pressing on Laya’s chest had lessened slightly. For the first time in weeks, there was a sense of movement—of something finally happening instead of just crumbling around her. She clutched the cardboard coffee cup in her hands, fingers wrapped tightly around its warmth as she stepped off the elevator and made her way down the familiar corridor toward Kyle’s room. His transfer was scheduled for the afternoon. A private ambulance was already on standby, arranged by Cybil through her extensive network. Cybil the guardian angel, she had been able to open doors Laya could never have dreamed of. The facility—one of the top neurological treatment centres right here in the city—would give Kyle access to equipment and experimental therapies far beyond what had been available in his current ward. It was everything Laya had dreamed of for him. But it had come at a cost. She paused just outside his door, took a breath, then pushed it