and Zephyr, heartbroken for a boy she’d not known, had promised her that she would be there for him. The older woman, Adriana, had smiled lovingly and made her pinkie promise. She had died in her sleep that night. The next morning, Zephyr had seen a tall, lean thirteen-year-old boy in a torn shirt throw a chair through the ward window, his golden eyes red from crying, the pain in his body something she’d felt in hers in that moment. Alessandro Villanova had loved his mother to the point the nurses had to sedate him to ease his pained howls.
