Chapter 175

• Rose’s POV
• Learning that my father was dead hurt in a way I couldn’t properly explain. Memories kept surfacing without warning—his voice, his stern looks, the way he used to stand between me and the world. Since my mother died when I was very little, he had been everything to me. Father. Mother. Protector. I spent most of my life thinking he was too strict, too controlling, always stopping me from exploring, from having fun. Only now did I truly understand that it had been his way of loving me—of shielding me from a world he knew was cruel.
• And now he was gone.