The morning after the near slip at the charity gala, Arielle moved around their home with deliberate caution. Every gesture was measured, every word carefully chosen, as though she were rehearsing lines in a play she couldn’t afford to stumble through.
Kairo had said little since that night. He hadn’t accused her or pressed her about her brief absence, but silence itself had become its own kind of weapon.
It was the silence that unnerved her the most.
Kairo wasn’t a man prone to idle chatter anyway, but now there was a new quality to his quiet. He lingered in rooms longer than necessary. His eyes stayed on her for seconds too long.
If she asked him something mundane—what time they were expected for dinner, if he’d seen the morning paper—he would answer, but with a stillness that made h
