The mansion was quiet that night. Not the usual quiet that blanketed the halls when servants moved unseen, but a charged, expectant kind of silence, the kind that pressed against the walls and made even the chandeliers seem to hold their breath.
Elena lingered on the terrace outside their bedroom, the city lights spilling across the lawn and into the distance like scattered diamonds. Her fingers absently traced the railing, and she tried to ground herself in the moment, but the events of the past twenty-four hours churned inside her. The revelation from the former legal consultant, the hints that the threats against them had been orchestrated long before she ever left… it was almost too much to bear.
She felt vulnerable, exposed in ways she hadn’t been for five years. Adrian’s hands had
