THE road stretched endlessly ahead of him, but Valentine barely noticed it.
His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, knuckles whitening with the pressure. The engine of Amelia’s car purred beneath him, steady and controlled, everything he was not at that moment.
His mind was chaos.
Vivian.
Amelia.
Adrian.
The past.
The lies.
Everything Amelia had told him replayed in his head like a broken record he couldn’t shut off.
He had sat there, in that living room, listening.
At first, he had thought it was impossible.
A mistake. A misunderstanding. But Amelia didn’t speak like someone guessing. She spoke like someone who knew.
Every detail. Every memory. Every pain she had buried beneath years of strength and survival.
And Vivian’s reaction?
That wasn’t confusion. That wasn’t co
