Ariana’s POV

I don’t know when it started.

The distance.

Maybe it was after the tea incident. Maybe before. But now, I feel it like a curtain between us—thick, silent, invisible.

Leone barely looks at me anymore.

And when he does, it’s like he’s looking through me.

This morning, he passed me in the hallway without a word. I paused, thinking maybe he was distracted. Maybe something urgent had pulled his mind away. But then I saw the way his jaw clenched when he glanced ...