Aaron gave Raina—who stood silently behind him—a long, unreadable glance. Her posture was tense, her eyes fixed on the floor as though the weight of the world was crushing her. He remembered the time she told him about her former personal assistant. The betrayal. The heartbreak. How she walked in on her assistant and her ex-fiancé. Her voice had cracked with pain then, not the kind you could fake, and as he looked at her now, he could see that same vulnerability in her eyes.

There were ...