The Hour We Lost

The dead girl called at 2:17 in the morning.

Six years ago, Elara Quinn left Mercy House with empty arms and a death certificate for the daughter she never got to hold. Her marriage to Rowan Vale shattered under the grief, the silence, and the signature he put on the form that turned their baby into ash.

Then an unknown number sends Elara twelve seconds of audio: a child's voice singing the private lullaby only Elara, Rowan, and their baby could have known.

Rowan has been hunting Mercy House in secret. Elara has been surviving by hating him. Together they uncover forged records, stolen infants, paper cradles, rich families, and a living child who may have been loved by someone else for all the years Elara spent mourning her.

Finding their daughter will not simply give back what was stolen. It will force Elara and Rowan to face the woman who raised her, the men who sold her, and the love they buried because it hurt too much to keep.

The Hour We Lost is part of the Velvet Wounds series, a devastating contemporary romantic suspense novel about grief, hope, second chances, stolen truth, and the kind of happiness that arrives already crying.