Aria tossed her pen down with a frustrated sigh, rubbing her temples as she leaned back in the leather chair of her home office. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, her family’s estate stretched across acres of manicured gardens and rolling hills, but the view was little comfort today. It was Sunday, and yet she’d buried herself in work, hoping that columns of numbers and stacks of reports would serve as a temporary escape. But it wasn’t working; nothing could keep the mounting dread and fury at bay.
She pushed her chair back, standing to stretch and pacing the room, trying to release some of the tension that had coiled inside her like a spring. She hadn’t heard from Sebastian in days. She knew he was waiting, knew he was losing patience with her silence, her refusal to engage after tha
