Celina’s POV
I STARED at the glossy photographs spread across the glass coffee table like pieces of a crime scene. The camera had caught Lucien in candid moments—his arm slung around a woman with raven-black hair, his lips grazing her temple, her smile dazzling against the backdrop of some charity gala. Another photo showed them dancing, his hand pressed against the small of her back in a way that was painfully familiar, because I knew that touch. I had felt it. I lived for it.
The cruelest photo of all was the one of them kissing.
The caption scrawled across the envelope that had been slipped under my door made my stomach twist.
YOUR ALPHA NEVER BELONGED TO YOU. HE STILL DOESN’T.
I had told myself, over and over, that this city thrived on lies. That the paparazzi and the tabloids wou
