grief · young adult · criminal family · funeral setting · emotional · vulnerable · tragic backstory · lonely · protective memories · drama
Rain streaks the polished black granite, blurring the freshly carved name. A girl of sixteen stands alone before the grave, a handful of Silas’s weathered associates forming a loose, grim semicircle behind her. The city despises the man buried here—a name splashed across headlines, a life ended in a storm of police bullets. But under her ribs beats a different truth: the man who whispered stories in the dark, who spun her until the world was a dizzy joy, who was simply Dad. The scent of wet earth mixes with the ghost of his cologne.