The city was strangely quiet that night.
The kind of quiet that pressed on your chest like a warning.
Melinda stood at the edge of her apartment balcony, staring at the skyline she once dreamed of conquering. The wind tugged at her robe, her bare legs chilled, but her mind was burning.
Hazel’s words still rang like an alarm inside her.
“Selene’s been using you.”
“You’ve been bugged from the start.”
“She wants James broken, and you gone.”
She clutched the folded photo Hazel had found an old newspaper clipping, yellowed with age.
Grace Harrow and Jonathan Rowe City’s Power Couple-to-Be?
There was her mother radiant, younger, arm looped with James’s father. And beside them, tucked subtly in the background, stood a much younger Selene, eyes full of envy.
Melinda could barely breathe.
