63
Alaric’s POV
I was sitting in my office, staring at the same stack of paperwork I’d been staring at for hours, my mind elsewhere. The mansion was quieter than usual, the kind of quiet that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It was the calm after a storm.
I couldn’t concentrate. Not on business, not on the next move I needed to make. My thoughts kept drifting back to everything that had happened—the betrayal, the punishment I’d meted out, the look on Emilia’s face when she saw the toll it took on me. I’d managed to maintain a mask of strength, but inside, I felt like I was bleeding out, slow and quiet, in a way no one could see.
A knock at the door pulled me out of my thoughts.
“Enter,” I called, leaning back in my chair, rubbing a hand over my face.
The door swung o
