Chapter 1

The air in the hospital room was sterile, cold. It smelled like antiseptic and despair. I stared at the white walls, the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor the only sound breaking the heavy silence. My daughter, Gabrielle, lay still in the bed, her face a swollen, bruised mess under the harsh fluorescent lights.

Andrew, my husband, stood by the window, his back to me. He hadn't touched me since he delivered the news.

"The doctors said she won't make it, Maria."

His voice was flat, devoid of the grief a father should feel. He was Andrew Fowler, a man who moved mountains in D.C. with a phone call, but he spoke of our daughter's death like a failed business deal.

"They found her in an alley. Beaten."

I finally looked at him. His expensive suit was perfect, not a single crease. His hair was styled. He looked ready for a gala, not a hospital vigil.

He turned, his face a mask of practiced concern. "This is a disaster. Her reputation... it's finished."

I didn't understand. "Her reputation? Andrew, she's dying."

"Exactly!" He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The President, the Senator... they made her a goddaughter, a symbol. What do you think they'll do now? An unlucky girl, found broken in a back alley? It's a political stain."

My mind went numb. He was talking about damage control.

"I' ve been putting out fires all morning," he continued, pacing now. "I had to start a rumor, you know. That she was always... unlucky. It' s the only way to frame this, to control the narrative."

He started a rumor. About his own daughter. Lying broken in a hospital bed.

"It protects the family name," he said, as if that explained everything. "It protects Molly."

Molly. His other daughter. The one he had with his colleague, Jennifer. The daughter he loved.

"What do you want, Andrew?" My voice was a dry rasp.

He stopped pacing and looked me straight in the eye. His were cold, like a winter sky.

"You need to make a public statement. Renounce Gabrielle' s position as the President's goddaughter. Endorse Molly to take her place. It' s the only way to save our standing in this city."

He saw my daughter not as a person, but as a position. A thing to be replaced. And he wanted me to be the one to do it.

The door creaked open, and a nurse entered. She checked Gabrielle's vitals, her expression grim.

"She's stirring," the nurse said softly. "She might be trying to say something."

I rushed to Gabrielle's side, leaning in close. Her eyes fluttered open, just a slit. Her lips, cracked and bloody, moved.

"Mama," she whispered, a sound so faint it was almost lost in the beep of the machine. "It hurts... take me home. Away from here... away from him."

Tears I didn't know I had streamed down my face. I squeezed her hand gently.

"I will, my love," I promised. "I'll take you home. I swear it."

Her eyes closed again. The promise settled in my soul, a piece of iron. I turned to Andrew, my grief hardening into something else, something sharp and cold.

"Get out," I said.

He looked shocked, then angry. "Maria, we need to be rational-"

"Get. Out."

He stared at me for a long moment, then turned and walked out of the room, his footsteps echoing down the empty hall. He left the scent of his expensive cologne behind, a smell that now made me sick.

My pact was broken. Twenty years I had stayed in this city, a place that felt like a cage, all for a promise I made to a dead President, brokered by a Senator who saw my "gift" of good fortune as a national asset.

"A nation's fortune," I whispered to the silent room, "is worthless when its people are cruel."

My gift wasn't for them anymore. It was for Gabrielle. And I would use every last drop of it to honor her final wish.