Elena’s POV

Matthews walked toward me with a darkness on his face I had never seen before, as though the carefully cultivated gentleness he always wore had finally cracked under the weight of humiliation. The banquet had ended, the spectacle had dispersed, yet the bitterness clung to him like a second skin, heavy and inescapable.

When he spoke, his voice was low, strained, stripped of its usual composure.

“Are you laughing at me in your heart too?” he asked quietly. “In the end… ...