After the gut-wrenching conversation at the restaurant yesterday—the kind that tears something vital out of a person and doesn't give it back—Henry Jackson felt like he'd been hollowed out from the inside. Eliana's words still echoed in him with vicious clarity, each one a splinter digging deeper the more he tried to forget.
She hadn't shouted. She hadn't stormed out. Instead, she had spoken with a trembling calmness that somehow hurt him more than any outburst could have. Her voice had broken completely, right when she admitted the truth: she never really had a choice. Not with Rafael Vexley. Not with the kind of power her mother held. Not with the kind of fear she had lived in.
The memory stabbed him again—the sight of her tear-streaked face across the table, the way her honey eyes shimmered with apology and exhaustion, and the strangled finality in her voice when she told him she chose survival, not love. Not him.
