For several seconds, neither Clara nor Alexander moved.
The sound inside the locked room had been loud enough to erase every possible excuse. It wasn’t imagination. It wasn’t the wind.
Someone—or something—was inside.
Clara slowly looked back at the door, her pulse beginning to race painfully against her chest. The silence afterward somehow felt even worse, thick and suffocating as rain continued beating softly against the mansion windows.
Then she looked at Alexander again. And what unsettled her most wasn’t the tension in his posture.
It was his eyes,for the first time since meeting him, the calm control he always carried had cracked slightly.
“Alexander…” Clara said carefully, “what was that?”
His expression hardened almost immediately, as though whatever emotion she had seen sec
