ELENA POV
Two weeks after Sarah's death, I was finally able to go outside without having a panic attack.
Progress. That's what Damien called it.
I called it barely surviving.
The nightmares were still there. The flashbacks. The compulsive hand-washing. But I could function now. Eat a little. Sleep in short bursts. Leave the building without feeling like I was going to die.
Small victories.
Damien and I had been meeting at a small café near the clinic every few days. A place where we could talk about what came next without the walls of our room closing in on me.
Today was one of those days.
I sat at a corner table, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee I wasn't drinking, staring at nothing.
Damien was late. Something about checking on Isabella's condition with the doctors.
My mother. Still in the clinic. Still unable to remember me. Still locked away in her broken mind with all the evidence we needed to destroy Brighton.
