Anyone in the glass corridors would have taken me for an anonymous woman arriving for a low-level meeting.

They wouldn’t have known I’d spent the last twelve months surviving in the darkest corners of the city.

They wouldn’t have known that the little girl sleeping against my collarbone was fighting a war inside her own tiny, failing body.

I adjusted the carrier and looked down at Grace. Her hand, pale and almost translucent, rested against my blouse.

Her breathing was shallow and ragged, and it terrified me every time it paused a second too long.

She was four months old, but her diagnosis — a rare, aggressive genetic blood disorder unique to the Waverly bloodline — had turned my already fractured world into a ticking clock.

We were out of time. I’d drained my savings on specialists. I was out of options and nearly out of hope.

I needed a bone marrow donor. I needed her father.

When the steel doors slid open, the executive floor stretched out in an intimidating expanse of floor-to-ceiling glass and rich mahogany. Assistants moved like ghosts behind spotless desks.

A senior receptionist looked up from her monitors and stiffened, recognizing my face from security briefings I assumed had been updated daily since my banishment.