Meanwhile, yesterday, after that fateful phone call with Eliana at the pastry shop—where her voice had trembled with a mix of desperation and quiet resolve—Rafael Vexley found himself unraveling. The words she had spoken echoed in his mind like a relentless storm: her pleas for him to listen, her insistence that there was more to the story than the damning evidence he clung to. And then James, his ever-loyal secretary, had scolded him with uncharacteristic fire, his voice cutting through the air like a whip.
