Blood and Betrayal
Every headline was a fresh bruise: The Incestuous Titan, The Silent Mother, The Girl in the Glass Cage.
I spent those months in a small, weathered cottage on the edge of a different coast—one where the sand was grey and the air tasted of salt and honest decay. Toby was there, always a few feet away, a steady presence that didn’t demand I be “Lisa” again. He understood that Lisa had died in the mountains, and whatever had crawled out of that plum silk dress at the gala was something new, something fragile and sharp.
Today was the final day. The sentencing.