CHAPTER FORTY SIX

(POV: Alexander)

The nights were now my punishment.

I tried closing my eyes in order to sleep, but my body betrayed me every time. Sleep slipped in like a thief, and with it came the voice, the face, the memory that I had hidden for years.

"Eleanor!"

I shouted the name again last night. I knew. Even in my trance, I could sense the pain bursting out of me, the shame that I would never be able to confess, the weight that had saddled my back from childhood. I woke up drenched in sweat, the sheets twisted, my throat burning from the scream. The glass of water I had set on the bedside table had spilled on the floor, broken. My chest heaved and sank with a heavy rhythm as I sat in the blackness, looking at nothing.

I laid my hands on my face. Why now? Why again?

I had suppressed it for years, stilled the nightmares, acted as if the past only lived as a shadow. But with Victor’s constant presence, his smug face, his relentless rivalry, the memories dug their way back, and now Eleanor has hau