DEVLIN

Watching Ella pretend to be fine hurts more than anything my father’s men did to me.

We leave Maria’s house long after Leo has fallen asleep on the couch between us, his small head resting against my arm while cartoons play quietly in the background, and for a few hours, the world feels normal again because children have a way of doing that.

Leo does not understand hospitals or terminal diagnoses or the complicated wreckage of the Ford family and the men who tried to destroy it, ...