"My mom sacrificed herself for you. She made sure that you would live, even if she had to suffer for it. She never wanted to hurt you, but most of all, she never wanted to see you fail just because of her. Is this really what you want? Do you really want to fail her memory?"
Jillyanna spoke in a slow, melancholic tone, allowing every single word to hang heavily in the quiet, stifling air of the room. It was her mother's shadow that had dragged her into this dangerous predicament, so she had no choice but to use her mother's memory as a shield to carve a way out.
Enzo was still weeping on the floor beside the edge of the mattress, looking utterly broken and devastated. His once-neat hair was disheveled, wild strands clinging to his damp forehead, and his clothes were severely rumpled, as if he had been physically dragged through a storm. He looked less like a dangerous captor and more like a hollowed-out shell of a man drowning in decades of unaddressed grief.
