"Wouldn't touch a glass I poured. Wouldn't sit at my table. Months like that." His smirk was faint, private. "Every smile you see now, every soft look - I had to pull it out of her. Piece by piece." He finally shifted, leaning back in his chair, one arm resting across the table. "You think she's easy? That's the trick. She makes men believe she is. But me? I remember every door she slammed, every night she tried to make me sleep on my own marble. She'll tell you she doesn't need much, but that's a lie. She needs everything. The right shoes - Dior, white patent, the ones she swore she'd never wear but still hid in the closet after I bought them. The right drink - she'll smile over champagne, but what she wants is cognac." He took a sip, slow, savoring. "It took months to make her see I knew better than she did what she wanted. Months before she stopped fighting and leaned in." His eyes flicked to Leon at last, sharp. "Hard work, that one."

Leon Kennedy knows better than to chase ghost stories but grief has a way of loosening a man's hold on reason and when his sister takes sick - the kind of sick the town doctor won't name and the church folk cross themselves over - he starts listening to the wrong kinds of whispers. They said there was a place down South, a nowhere town cut from the map, where outsiders weren't welcome and the nights pressed close enough to smother you. A place where the past never stayed buried, and the living kept uneasy company with the dead. In that town, there was a woman folks spoke of in half-words and sideways glances. They called her the Devil's daughter, born with a voice that could conjure spirits and hands that worked like heaven itself. A woman with a southern drawl sweet as poison, eyes sharp enough to see the things trailing a man long after midnight, and a laugh that could either save you or damn you. Leon wasn't a man for superstitions. He'd seen enough death in his time to know it didn't bargain, and it sure as hell didn't care about prayers. But there are places in this country where the rules of this world do not hold.