Time Cannot Slow the Parting

Serena Valentine escapes a private psychiatric hospital, three ribs broken, weeks to live. Dying of ALS, she has donated her body to an experimental chemical study that will dissolve it completely. Outside waits Adrian Cross—the man she once loved. Five years ago, Adrian's sister Isabella died in a kidnapping fire; everyone believed Serena abandoned her to save herself. Adrian had his friend Marcus send her abroad; Marcus instead imprisoned and tortured her for five years. Now engaged to Veronica Ashford, Serena's old bully who claims she saved him from the fire, Adrian keeps her as a servant and sexual outlet; sworn to Isabella's secret, she says nothing. Veronica frames her in a sea accident; enraged, Adrian throws her overboard. A forced bone-marrow donation to Veronica leaves her paralyzed. Told she fled with money, he burns every trace of her. When both are abducted, he saves Veronica—leaving Serena to the flames. The truth: Serena nursed him on a cruise and carried him from that fire; Marcus imprisoned her; Veronica stole her identity as rescuer. Her phone holds hundreds of unsent love messages—the last: "Please, come and save me." His search comes too late—Serena is dead, dissolved, with nothing to bury. He sends Veronica and Marcus to the same hospital, then endures the torture himself. After watching the video of her destruction, he tries to die but is saved, cursed: "May you live a long life—and spend every day of it with nothing." Years later, a crippled beggar wanders the New York waterfront, whispering Serena's name—condemned to live, paying for the woman he destroyed.