A trembling voice, tiny fingers clinging for life, and a mother’s heart turned to stone. That was the moment Rosalie Voss’s childhood ended on a rusted bridge over a cold river in southern Illinois, far from the only home she had ever known in the United States. Her father was Killian Voss, a man whose name made grown men fall silent in Chicago, an empire builder who controlled every shadow in the city.
But as his daughter hung over the dark water that night, all his power and all his dangerous money were useless to save her.
This is a story of a wrong that time could not drown, and a fate that, against all odds, refused to die. “Please, Mommy, don’t let me go.”
The little girl’s voice shook like a leaf caught in a hard Midwestern wind.
Her small, frozen fingers, slippery with cold, clung desperately to the wrists of Camille Ashworth while her body hung suspended over the edge of the old bridge. Below her, the river churned with a dark, relentless force, slamming against the rocks as if it were demanding something that did not yet belong to it.
Rosalie sobbed without control.
Her legs kicked wildly in the emptiness, searching for ground that no longer existed. The wind whipped her dress and stuffed her mouth with freezing air. Her wide eyes, filled with pure terror, looked up at the woman she called Mom, hoping to find compassion there.
She didn’t find it.
Camille’s eyes were too still. No tears.
No hesitation. Only a bone-deep exhaustion mixed with something far more dangerous: resentment.
She had married Killian Voss two years earlier, believing she would become the queen of his world.
But the doctors in Chicago had told her she would never carry a child of her own. Not with difficulty. Not someday.
Never.
And every time she looked at Rosalie—this breathing, laughing proof that another woman had given Killian something she never could—something inside her cracked a little more. Until there was nothing left but hate.
“You’ve ruined my life,” Camille whispered, her voice broken but steady. “Because of you, I’ll never feel like I’m enough.”
Rosalie shook her head, sobbing.
“No, Mommy, I didn’t do anything.
Please, Mommy, don’t do this. I love you. I’ll be good.”
The bridge was completely deserted.
It was one of those forgotten places on the outskirts of the state, where the sounds of American city life couldn’t reach, where time itself seemed to have stopped.
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