CHLOE POV

I shouldn’t have called Zoe.

I shouldn’t have asked for advice.

I shouldn’t have believed I could keep this lie going Silently.

But it was too late. Everything was already unraveling, tearing apart faster than I could stitch it back together.

And Jake…

Jake was no longer the man who’d kissed me in the garden days ago.

He was something colder. Harder. Unreadable.

When I returned downstairs, the entire house was suffocatingly silent. The guards avoided ...