Whispers of Betrayal
The mansion felt unusually quiet that morning. It was a silence that pressed against Alec’s chest, thick and suffocating. He sat at his desk, looking over papers that required his signature, but his mind wandered to other things—things that gnawed at him, unsettling him. Selena’s behavior over the last few days had shifted ever so slightly. She was quieter, more distant. Her eyes, which used to gaze at him with the practiced devotion of a prisoner, now held something else—something unreadable. The soft vulnerability she had shown him, the moments of tenderness that made him think she was beginning to surrender to him entirely, had started to falter. And Alec couldn’t stand it.
He knew better than to ignore the signs. Selena had always been a master of playing the gam
