Chapter 107 Embers Of Courage

• Rachel POV
• The morning sun filtered through the Morrow mansion’s heavy velvet curtains, casting pale, ghostly streaks across my childhood bedroom, but its light was hollow, a cruel mockery of hope that couldn’t pierce the suffocating grief wrapped around me like a shroud. I lay on the bed, my body curled into a tight ball, the comforter a damp cocoon clinging to my skin, soaked from last night’s relentless tears, my eyes raw and stinging, my heart a shattered mosaic still reeling from Jeremy’s arrest. The mansion, with its marble grandeur and echoing silence, was a gilded prison, its towering walls closing in with the weight of my parents’ pity—Nick’s cold, averted gaze, a silent judgment that cut deeper than words; Scarlett’s tearful assurances that I’d “heal” from a wound they couldn’t fathom, a love they refused to see.
• Jeremy’s voice from last night’s call, warm and steady despite the crackling jail line, lingered like a fragile thread woven into my soul, his love a beacon that kept me from drowning, but the weight of Celine’s lies, the scandal branding him a predator, pressed down, a storm I couldn’t outrun, its thunder echoing in every headline, every whispered rumor. The news of Bonnie’s discharge from the hospital was a faint spark in the darkness, a whisper of purpose that stirred me from the bed’s embrace, a reason to move, to breathe, to escape the mansion’s oppressive grip.