The silence in the waiting room outside Serena’s private room was heavy, pregnant with pain, with hope and somewhere below, the uncertainty of death which lingered in the room. The Delnos had had Louis’ fiancée shifted into a room which had all the extras he wished for her.

Huge, spacious and clean.

Like a suite in a luxury hotel.

The hospital room was dimly lit, bathed in the low hum of machines and the steady, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. In the middle of the sterile white room lay Serena Kingston—still, pale, and heartbreakingly fragile. Tubes ran from her nose and arms, machines breathing for her, measuring the faint...