Marisol’s love had not protected her.

It had marked her.

It had told Dorian, more clearly than any words, that she was the safe one to disappoint, the one whose devotion would survive being let down, the one who could be handed his mother’s anger without ever handing it back — and he had read the signal, and acted on it, every single day, for five years, not out of hatred but out of a coward’s arithmetic that her own kindness had solved for him in advance.

Chapter 12 — The Stronger One