Richard had done everything a father with unlimited resources could do. The best specialists. Experimental treatments. Private nurses rotating day and night. Therapy animals. Gentle music drifting through the halls. Shelves filled with books, imported toys untouched by small hands, blankets in Luna’s favorite colors, walls painted just for her.
Everything was flawless.
Her eyes no longer searched the room. They drifted past it, as if she were watching a world no one else could see. She existed somewhere beyond reach.
Since his wife’s death, Richard had quietly disappeared from the world that once praised him. Meetings went unattended. Calls unanswered. Headlines replaced his name with silence. The empire could function without him.
Luna could not.
His days became ritual. He woke before sunrise. Prepared meals she barely tasted. Measured her medication with precision. Noted every change in a leather notebook—every slower breath, every blink that lingered too long—as though writing it down might anchor time.
Luna rarely spoke. Sometimes she nodded. Sometimes she didn’t respond at all. Most days, she sat by the window, watching light fall across the floor as if it belonged to someone else.
Richard spoke anyway.
He told her stories she once loved. Recounted trips they’d taken. Invented fairy tales with brave heroes and happy endings. He made promises he knew he couldn’t keep. Still, the distance between them remained—silent, invisible, unbearable.
Then Julia Bennett arrived.
She didn’t enter the house with the polished confidence Richard was used to seeing. There was no eager smile, no performance of optimism. What she carried instead was something quieter—a calm shaped by loss. The kind that comes only after grief has already done its worst.
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