CHAPTER 72 — THE PRICE OF CHOOSING SIDES
The night did not end when Elena's father walked out of the Kane mansion.
If anything, it deepened—thickened—settling into the walls like an unspoken promise that nothing would ever return to how it once was. The city beyond the towering windows glittered with careless beauty, lights reflecting off steel and glass, oblivious to the fracture that had just carved itself through Elena's life.
She stood alone in the bedroom she shared with Adrian, her reflection staring back at her from the mirror. For a long moment, she didn't move.
The woman looking back at her felt unfamiliar.
Her eyes were sharper now, darker, as though something had been stripped away and replaced with something harder. There was no innocence left there—only awareness. Truth, once revealed, never returned quietly to the shadows.
