I received control of the remaining marital assets.
His agency collapsed.
Creditors took most of what remained.
I kept one thing from our marriage.
A photograph.
Not of Derek.
Of me.
It had been taken during a Luma Belle campaign six months before the fire.
For a long time, I couldn’t look at it.
Then one afternoon, I placed it beside a photograph taken after my final major surgery.
Two versions of me.
Neither better.
Neither worse.
One hadn’t yet learned what she could survive.
The other had.
PART 10 — VELVET ASH
I never returned to modeling the way I had before.
Instead, Luma Belle offered me something unexpected.
A consulting role.
I helped develop products for people with scarring, grafted skin, pigmentation changes, and post-surgical sensitivity.
The project became a new line.
I named it Velvet Ash.
Not because I wanted to romanticize what happened.
Because ash is what remains after fire.
