The tinted windows of the sleek black car muted the chaos outside, turning the world into a blur of flashing cameras and hungry voices. To the reporters swarming the courthouse steps, Eliana Bennett and Rafael Vexley were just another headline waiting to happen. But inside the car, shielded from the frenzy, the silence between them pulsed—thick, fragile, and bruised with everything they hadn't said soon enough.
Eliana still had her hand in Rafael's, though now her fingers rested against his palm with no strength at all, as if the weight of his confession had siphoned the last of her fire. But it wasn't gone. It wasn't even dim. Beneath her stillness, beneath the tremble in her breathing and the shimmer of leftover tears, something powerful churned—a storm she was holding steady by sheer force of will.
