I raise my glass in a silent toast to the photographs spread across my desk. “To new variables, Giuliana Conti. May you prove as fascinating to break as you were to capture.”
The whiskey burns going down, but not as much as the unexpected anticipation building in my chest.
For the first time in three years, I’m genuinely curious about what tomorrow will bring.
The thought should concern me more than it does.
3
GIULIANA
Less than twenty-four hours later, I’m back at what used to be my clinic, standing in the skeleton of my life’s work with a flashlight in one hand and a garbage bag in the other.
Every breath sends sharp pain through my ribs where that bastard kicked me, and my head still throbs from where it hit the concrete.
The smell is overwhelming—acrid smoke mixed with melted plastic and something chemical that burns my nostrils.
I cough, and the pain in my ribs makes me gasp and my eyes water.
I couldn’t sleep last night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my father being dragged into the darkness and heard my own screams echoing off the warehouse ceiling.
The helplessness was worse than the physical pain.
I’d lie there in the dark, clutching my ribs, wondering if Dad was hurt worse now.
If they’d beaten him again for my interference.
If he was even still alive.
The fire department has cleared the scene for me to salvage what I can, though “salvage” feels like a cruel fucking joke.
I move gingerly through the debris, each step carefully measured to avoid jarring my injured ribs.
Glass crunches under my feet with every step, a sound that makes me wince.
The walls are blackened husks, the ceiling has partially collapsed, and everything I owned lies in twisted, unrecognizable heaps.
I pick up what might have been my stethoscope, gritting my teeth at the movement.
The metal is warped beyond recognition, and something inside me cracks.
Two years of building this place from nothing.
Two years of loving and caring for every animal that walked into this place.
Two years of proving to myself that I could make something good out of the wreckage of Mom’s death and Dad’s addiction.
And it’sgone.
The morning is overcast and humid, the kind of Chicago weather that makes your clothes stick to your skin and promises a thunderstorm by afternoon.
Gray clouds hang low overhead, matching my mood perfectly.
I pull my hair back into a ponytail and try to focus on what I came here for—anything important that might have survived in the fireproof safe I kept in the back office.
The safe is still there, buried under a pile of debris that used to be my surgery table.
