The silence of the manor had become a physical presence. It was the seventh day since Serena had walked out, leaving nothing behind but a void and a pile of precisely disassembled clockwork on my desk. For seven days, that silence had accused me.
I had spent the first seventy-two hours in a state of righteous fury. The audacity of her performance at the gala, the calculated theatricality of dropping her ring into a champagne flute—it was an act of war. It confirmed every suspicion I’d harbored: that she was vindictive, emotionally unstable, and desperate to inflict damage on the Blackwood name. My public relations team worked around the clock, spinning a narrative of a troubled woman lashing out, of my patient forbearance in the face of her instability. I had approved every press release,
