Chapter 86: Elena Breaks

Elena Whitmore understood timing the way other people understood breathing.

She did not rush. She did not react. She waited until the story had already begun to tilt on its own, until speculation ripened into hunger, until society was searching for a name to attach to the unease humming beneath Aurelia’s polished surface.

Then she stepped forward.

The setting was deliberate. A charity luncheon hosted by the Whitmore Foundation, framed as cultural preservation but attended by every person who ma