Page 122 of The Beast's Broken Angel

“We still do,” I said. “But the wounds are cleaner now.”

He chuckled, just once. “We keep telling ourselves that.”

Further down the hall, near the glass doors leading to the recovery suite, a plaque bore Isabelle’s name.The IsabelleHastings Foundation for Autoimmune Research. Five new research fellowships had been funded through her foundation in the last year alone.

“She donates ten percent of everything she makes,” Adrian said quietly. “It funds this place—the research, the fellowships. She wants to give back.”

“She believes in building something that lasts.”

“So do you.”

Ravenswood didn’t humlike it used to. It breathed.

The east wing no longer smelled like bleach and regret. It smelled like antiseptic, sure, but also sage and tea tree oil and the faint scent of jasmine. The burns unit was fully operational now. A living monument to what he had survived. What others still could.

Healing hadn’t stopped at survival. After years of failed treatments and scars that never softened, Adrian finally let me do things differently. I’d pushed for new grafting techniques, pressure therapy, and laser treatments—approaches I knew worked, even when old-guard consultants scoffed. Bit by bit, his mobility came back. The chronic pain faded. The rigid scar bands relaxed, just enough that he could lift his arm without wincing or button a shirt with both hands. He started trusting his body again, and sometimes, in the mornings, I’d catch him flexing his right hand in the sunlight, just to see if it was real.

It wasn’t a miracle. The scars would always be there. But so was the progress—hard-won, tangible, and ours. Every day, Adrian healed a little more. Not just in flesh, but in the way he let himself be seen. In the way he let me touch him.

“This wasn’t just for me,” Adrian said as I led him throughthe recovery halls. “You built this because you needed to. You couldn’t leave the wounded behind.”

I paused, fingers grazing the edge of a chart. “And you gave me the place to do it.”

He watched a nurse pass, then turned back to me. “You gave me a reason to let it happen.”

The facility served Calloway personnel and select patients from Westminster. People who didn’t fit the system. People like we’d once been. Patients came here when no one else would take them. People who’d been discarded, broken, burned.

They left with scars and a future.

Isabelle’s new studio took up the old conservatory, all glass and light. Her newer pieces were messier, louder. Color had returned to her world, aggressive and unapologetic.

She painted like the sun was a person she was in love with.

“Her art’s in clinics now,” I told him. “Her foundation funds therapists who integrate creative therapy into pain management. The work she’s doing here—it’s healing more than nerves and muscles.”

“It’s healing people.”

We passed renovation plans for Sophia's suite near the main staircase. Adrian glanced down at the blueprints. “She insisted on larger windows. Said she was tired of pretending she didn't need light.”

I smiled. “She'll like it here. Being closer to Isabelle.”

“She's growing softer.”

“She's growing.”

He looked at me like he couldn't believe it was real. That we were real. That we'd survived everything Harrison had set in motion.

The first six months after Harrison's death had been brutal. His network of allies and enemies alike had tested our resolve, probing for weakness in the power vacuum he'd left behind.Adrian had responded with surgical precision—eliminating the most dangerous threats while offering strategic partnerships to those willing to negotiate.

By the end of the first year, the message was clear: the Calloway empire had evolved, but it hadn't weakened. If anything, removing Harrison's manipulative influence had made it stronger.

Later, when the house was quiet and the fires burned low, I found him in his study.

The shelves had grown over the last two years. Books in languages I didn't read. Poetry anthologies. First editions. Medical journals. A few mystery novels I recognized as mine.

He didn't turn when I entered, just kept flipping through the old journal he'd been reading for weeks now.

“Harrison's final writings?”