Only after watching her take the medicine did Lucas finally leave.
As the sound of his car faded into the distance, Beauty let out a long sigh of relief, stretched lazily, and pulled out a fresh sheet of white drawing paper.
The foundation of her design was already complete, every fluid line on the page brimming with her passion and dedication.
This piece was her love letter—a guardian's promise, inspired by a story her father had told her long ago, a story about her mother.
Back then, she had been too young to understand it fully.
All she remembered was that her mother had been gifted in design, and her father would often flip through a sketchbook with a wistful expression.
But after his fatal car accident, her grandparents had burned everything connected to him and her mother, erasing them from her world as if they had never existed.
*"Daddy, why do the other kids say Mommy was a bad woman?
That she had no shame?"
*"Don't listen to them, Beauty.
