The ride to the Blackwood mansion was cloaked in a suffocating silence.
Outside, the night fell like a thick shroud, stars hidden behind clouds as though the heavens themselves were unwilling to witness the storm inside the car. Melissa sat beside Alec, her face turned toward the window, tears slipping silently down her cheeks like the quiet surrender of a broken sky. She didn’t make a sound—her pain had gone beyond words, beyond pleading. Her fingers twitched slightly, trying in vain to free her wrist from Alec’s merciless grip, but he didn’t budge.
He wasn’t holding her hand. He was chaining her with it.
Alec sat beside her, his eyes staring into the void in front of him, jaw clenched so tightly it looked like it would snap. Rage rolled off of him in suffocating waves, but it was quie
