The room had been thick with silence, a silence so heavy it pressed into Belle’s ribs, making each breath feel fragile, stolen. Then came the sound—the sharp metallic twist of the door latch. It cut through the stillness like a blade.
Both Belle and Mr. Houston turned at once, their gazes drawn to the massive oak doors as they swung inward.
And then he was there.
Ashton.
The hallway light poured around him like a halo of fire, outlining his frame in stark brilliance. Broad shoulders squared, the sharp lines of his tailored suit hugging him like armor, and that aura—dark, magnetic, unyielding—that seemed to fill every corner of the room the moment he entered. He carried power not as something worn, but as something lived, breathed, owned.
But in that instant—before the mask fully settl
