Adrian never reached the altar.

At 7:16 that morning, while the Lockwood estate was filling with white roses and musicians were preparing for the ceremony, his assistant rushed into the bridal suite.

His face was bloodless.

“Mr. Lockwood.”

Adrian adjusted his cuff link.

“What?”

“They found Mrs. Lockwood.”

Valeria stiffened.

Adrian slowly turned around.

“Where?”

“Near the northern shore. Fishermen spotted her and called emergency services.”

For one second, Adrian didn’t move.

Then he asked the only question that mattered.

“Is she alive?”

His assistant swallowed.

“Yes.”

The room seemed to exhale.

But the next words destroyed whatever relief appeared on Adrian’s face.

“She was holding something.”

He placed a photograph on the table.

A small sealed urn.

Luna’s name was visible on it.

Adrian stared at the photograph.

“What is that?”

No one answered.

His assistant finally whispered:

“Your daughter’s ashes.”

Adrian looked at him as though he had spoken another language.

“My daughter?”

Valeria went pale.

“Adrian…”

He turned toward her.

“What does he mean?”

She couldn’t answer.

And suddenly Adrian remembered.

Months earlier.

Sofia begging him not to take Luna away.

Sofia standing in a hospital corridor, shaking.

Sofia saying:

“She is your daughter too.”

He had refused to listen.

All he had cared about was saving Leo.

He had told himself Sofia was being selfish.

That doctors knew what they were doing.

That she was exaggerating the danger because she hated Valeria.

Then Luna disappeared from his life.

Sofia stopped calling.

Stopped arguing.

Stopped begging.

And Adrian had mistaken her silence for surrender.

His assistant handed him another document.

“The hospital released this after Sofia was admitted this morning.”

Adrian read the first page.

Then the second.

His fingers began trembling.

Luna had suffered complications after the procedure.

There had been warnings.

Consent disputes.

Requests from Sofia to stop.

Records showing that she had repeatedly demanded another option.

And beside several authorizations was a name Adrian knew better than his own.

Adrian Lockwood.

His signature.

His influence.

His decision.

“No.”

His voice barely existed.

Valeria stepped toward him.

“Adrian, you were trying to save Leo.”

He looked at her.

“My daughter died?”

Valeria’s lips trembled.

“We didn’t know that would happen.”

“But you knew she was gone.”

Silence.

Adrian’s face changed.

“You knew.”

“I wanted to tell you after the wedding.”

He stared at her.

“After?”

“You were finally happy.”

Something inside Adrian seemed to collapse.

He removed his wedding jacket.

Valeria grabbed his arm.

“Where are you going?”

“To Sofia.”

“Our ceremony starts in three hours.”

Adrian looked at the decorations.

The flowers.

The champagne.

The suit he had chosen to marry another woman while the mother of his child was carrying Luna’s ashes alone.

“There is no wedding.”

Valeria froze.

“Adrian.”

He walked away.

For the first time, she ran after him.

For the first time, he didn’t turn around.

At the hospital, Adrian discovered that money couldn’t open every door.

Sofia had left written instructions.

No visitors except her parents.

Especially not Adrian Lockwood.

He stood outside the restricted ward for almost four hours.

Eventually, an elderly couple appeared.

Sofia’s mother recognized him immediately.

She stopped.

Her husband placed a protective hand around her shoulders.

Adrian approached them.

“Please.”

Sofia’s father looked at him coldly.

“You don’t get to say that word now.”

“I need to see her.”

“No.”

“I didn’t know about Luna.”

Sofia’s mother laughed bitterly.

“You didn’t want to know.”

That sentence silenced him.

She stepped closer.

“My daughter called you seventeen times from the hospital.”

Adrian’s face drained.

“What?”

“She begged your office to contact you.”

“I never received—”

“You were with Valeria.”

He remembered that week.

Leo’s recovery.

Valeria crying in his arms.

His assistant telling him Sofia kept calling.

Adrian had ordered:

“Don’t put her through. I’m dealing with something important.”

Something important.

His own daughter had been dying.

And he had considered her an interruption.

Adrian lowered his head.

“Can I at least know how Sofia is?”

Her father answered.

“She survived.”

Adrian closed his eyes.

“But surviving doesn’t mean she owes you another chance.”

That night, Sofia woke.

I opened my eyes to a white ceiling.

For several seconds, I didn’t know where I was.

Then everything returned.

Luna.

The wedding.

Adrian.

I turned my head.

My mother was sleeping beside the bed.

My father sat near the window.

When he realized I was awake, he rushed toward me.

“Tinh— Sofia.”

His voice broke.

I looked around.

“Where is Luna?”

My mother’s eyes filled with tears.

“The urn is safe.”

I closed my eyes.

At least I still had that.

Then I heard another voice.

The system.

But it sounded different.

—Host.

I remained motionless.

—The seventh mission has been terminated.

I thought I had misheard.

“What?”

My father leaned closer.

“Sweetheart?”

“Nothing.”

The system continued.

—Your obligation to Adrian Lockwood has ended.

For seven lifetimes, those were the words I had wanted.

Freedom.

But I felt nothing.

—What happens now?

—You live.

I almost laughed.

—That’s all?

—That’s everything.

For the first time, the system wasn’t asking me to win Adrian.

Wasn’t measuring affection.

Wasn’t giving me another impossible task.

It simply said:

—Your life belongs to you now.

And then the voice disappeared.

Forever.

Three days later, I learned Adrian had been waiting outside the hospital every day.

I didn’t see him.

A week later, he sent a letter.

I returned it unopened.

Then another.

Returned.

Then flowers.

Returned.

Finally, he stopped sending anything.

Good.

I didn’t need his regret.

I needed a life in which Luna was remembered as my daughter, not as the price paid for someone else’s happiness.

Two months later, legal proceedings began over what had happened at the hospital.

Adrian cooperated.

He surrendered documents.

He admitted where he had used his influence.

He never asked me to forgive him in exchange.

Valeria disappeared from society almost immediately after investigators discovered something else.

Leo’s treatment had not been the only option.

There had been another compatible medical route.

More complicated.

More expensive.

But possible.

Valeria had hidden that information because Adrian’s solution had been faster.

When Adrian discovered that, witnesses said he sat in silence for almost an hour.

Then he asked for every document connected to Luna.

Every medical note.

Every photograph.

Every record of the daughter he had barely known.

But regret could not make him her father retroactively.

Six months later, I moved away.

I opened a small design studio near the coast.

Not the same coast.

I wasn’t trying to punish myself with memories.

I chose somewhere warm, where children played on the sand and mornings smelled like coffee instead of hospital disinfectant.

On Luna’s first birthday, I planted a magnolia tree.

My mother asked whether I wanted company.

I said no.

That afternoon, I sat beneath the young tree and finally cried without thinking of Adrian.

Only Luna.

Her tiny hands.

Her ridiculous little socks.

Her moon-shaped smile.

“I remember you,” I whispered.

That was enough.

Far away, Adrian was standing in an empty nursery.

He had built it after everything happened.

Not because he expected Luna to return.

Not because he believed suffering could purchase forgiveness.

He simply needed one room in his enormous house where he couldn’t lie to himself.

On the shelf stood a photograph Sofia’s father had eventually allowed him to keep.

Luna smiling.

Behind the photograph was the invitation to the wedding that never happened.

Adrian had written one sentence across it:

I spent my life protecting the wrong things.

Then his assistant entered.

“Mr. Lockwood?”

Adrian turned.

“There is someone downstairs asking for you.”

“Who?”

The assistant hesitated.

“A representative from the hospital.”

Adrian’s expression hardened.

“The investigation is finished.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He handed Adrian an envelope.

“There was one medical record that was never included.”

Adrian opened it.

His eyes moved across the page.

Then stopped.

At the bottom was a signature.

Not Sofia’s.

Not Valeria’s.

Not his.

It belonged to the physician who had approved Luna’s procedure despite the objections documented elsewhere.

Adrian knew the name.

He had known it his entire life.

His hand began to shake.

Because the doctor responsible wasn’t a stranger.

He was Adrian’s own father.

And suddenly Adrian understood that the tragedy surrounding Luna had begun long before Valeria ever asked him for help.