Mara let out a soft, trembling breath, the kind that felt like it had been lodged in her chest for a lifetime.
A year.
A whole year of swallowing pain sharp enough to cut through bone. A year of carrying the image of her baby, yanked from her body and thrown into flames, a memory so jagged it left her bleeding on the inside, unseen and unhealed.
That kind of pain… it doesn't fade.
It rewrites you.
Turns the girl who loved too easily and forgave too much into a storm with no mercy.
Philip had paid for his sins. Paid in blood. But there was still another debt to be collected.
And tonight, she'd come to settle it.
