The room felt colder than before, the kind of cold that seeped into my bones and wrapped around my lungs, making every breath a struggle. The rhythmic beeping of the monitors filled the silence, each pulse a reminder that life still clung to the fragile body in the incubator. My hands pressed against the glass, trembling, as I tried to strengthen into the tiny figure lying inside. My child. My hope. My punishment.
Ryan was nowhere to be seen.
His absence was a wound, fresh and bleeding, a reminder of how fragile the threads binding us had become. The weight of everything we had lost pressed against my ribs, suffocating, relentless. I wanted to believe he would come, that he would walk through the doors and stand beside me, his presence a shield against the encroaching darkness. But he didn't.
Instead, Leonardo did.
