Ink & Ashes

"Some scars don't fade - they just learn how to breathe."

Layla Thomas came to Harlem to disappear.
After losing almost everything - the love she trusted, the future she planned, the self she used to recognize - all she wants now is silence. A new start. Something that feels like hers again.

One night, she finds herself standing outside a hidden tattoo studio with a sign that reads Ink & Ashes. Inside is Dave, a man with inked hands, a calm voice, and eyes that seem to see straight through her defenses. He doesn't ask for details. He just asks what the mark means - and somehow, that's the first time anyone's really asked her anything that mattered.

What starts as one tattoo becomes a ritual. Late nights turn into confessions between strangers, stories traded in low light and cigarette smoke. But Dave East has his own ghosts - the kind that don't stay buried for long.

In a city that never stops moving, two broken souls find something dangerously still in each other. But when the past catches up, both will have to decide if love built from pain can survive the fire that made it.