“Ethan… even without your leg, you’re still the same person. You don’t need to be ashamed.”
He smiled — the first real smile I had ever seen from him.
“That’s why they gave you the mansion,” he said softly. “Not as payment… but as gratitude. Because you gave me a reason to live again.”
I stepped closer and held his hand.
“I don’t need a mansion, Ethan,” I told him. “All I want is you — who you are, not what you have.”
That night, as we held hands, I felt the warmth of a love that was real — without lies, without doubt.
In the months that followed, we slowly learned to laugh again, to travel, and to build a family inside that mansion — not as a reward, but as the beginning of a new life.
One evening, while we watched the sunset from the balcony, Ethan hugged me and whispered,
“If it weren’t for you, I might have been lost in the darkness long ago.”
