Axel helped his mother, Lana, to set the dining table, a quiet yet significant gesture that hadn't gone unnoticed. Draco, his father, watched with a subtle smile, while Axel's grandmother practically glowed with satisfaction. For the first time in a long while, peace hovered in the air, and the subtle warmth between mother and son was like sunlight through a cloudy window.
Axel's grandmother, a stern woman with a sharp tongue and an even sharper sense of judgment, had never been fond of Dessie. From the very beginning, she'd known the girl's sweetness was nothing but a carefully cultivated illusion. But Lana—soft-hearted, endlessly hopeful Lana—had always believed in Dessie's purity, blind to the subtle manipulations and veiled malice that had driven a wedge between her and Axel.
