The sun rose slowly over Los Angeles, casting a golden glow on the Forrester estate, but for Hope Logan, the warmth of the morning brought no comfort. Her world had shifted overnight, turned upside down by betrayal, heartbreak, and the kind of loss that can never fully be healed. Just a few days earlier, she was filled with cautious optimism, thinking she had finally found peace with Carter Walton—a man who had brought calm to her chaotic past. Their relationship had been quiet, mature, respectful. It wasn’t flashy like her romances with Liam or toxic like the mess with Thomas—it was different. It was stable. It was real. But now Carter was gone, taken from her in a moment of recklessness, and she was left picking up the pieces of a future that would never be. The accident was sudden, tragic, and so avoidable. A single night of drinking, a single bad decision, had destroyed everything. Carter, the responsible, honorable man she had come to love, had gotten behind the wheel when he shouldn’t have. Whether it was pride, guilt, or pain that drove him to it, Hope would never fully understand. What she did know, though, was that she had lost someone who truly saw her—not as Brooke’s daughter, not as Liam’s ex, not as a designer—but as a woman worthy of unconditional love. The Forrester family was devastated. Ridge tried to stay strong for the team, but even he couldn’t stop the tremble in his voice when he addressed the staff. “Carter wasn’t just a colleague,” he said. “He was our brother, our confidant, our anchor.” Steffy wept openly, clinging to Finn, while Thomas sat silently, unable to process the loss of his friend and former rival. Meanwhile, Brooke blamed herself for not recognizing the signs, for not warning Hope to slow things down, and for trusting that happiness—especially for a Logan—ever lasted long