INICIAR SESIÓN(Elara's POV)The lights were a physical assault. They burned away the shadows of the ICU waiting room, the private grief, and left everything raw and exposed. A small podium had been set up at the end of the corridor, a wall of microphones sprouting from it like metallic fungi. Beyond the cordon of hospital security and Charles’s own men, a pack of journalists shifted, their cameras raised like weapons.I stood just out of sight, my hands ice-cold. A makeup artist, summoned by Charles, had dabbed away the worst of my pallor, but nothing could fill the hollows under my eyes. The suit they’d brought was too perfect, a armor of navy wool.Charles was a statue beside me. “Remember,” he said, his voice for my ears only. “Grief. Loyalty. Defiance. In that order. Then the warning. Look at the lens, not the people.”I didn’t nod. I was afraid if I moved, I would shatter.A press aide murmured something, and Charles gave a single, sharp nod. He stepped into the light first, a wave of question
(Elara's POV)The car was a silent cage. Peter’s eyes found mine in the rearview mirror every few minutes, a mechanical check in. I kept my face turned to the window, my hand a tight fist around the black phone in my coat pocket. It felt alive, like a venomous insect trying to burrow into my skin. The smell of James’s cologne had seeped into my clothes, a sweet, cloying lie over the sterile hospital smell I couldn’t shake.He dropped me at the service entrance. “I’ll be close by, Mrs. Truman,” he said, holding the door. His voice was the same respectful tone he’d always used. It made my teeth ache.The ICU waiting area wasn’t the same. Charles had stamped it with his presence. A laptop glowed on a side table, wires snaking to the floor. A woman I didn’t know, a lawyer with a pinched, urgent face, was speaking to him in a low hiss. Eleanor slept in a chair, a hospital blanket pulled to her chin, her face soft and collaps
(Elara's POV)The door opened before my knuckles could touch the wood, as if he’d been waiting right behind it.James stood there, his face a portrait of gentle worry. He wore a soft sweater, the kind that promised comfort. His eyes, warm and concerned, scanned me. “Elara,” he said, his voice a low hum of sympathy. “Come in. Please.”I stepped past him into the familiar space. I didn’t look around. I knew it all by heart—the careful placement of every chair, the precise mood of the lighting. It was a set designed for intimacy, for confession. His stage.The door clicked shut. He didn’t crowd me. He gave me room, his hands open at his sides. A harmless man.“When you texted,” he began, letting the words hang, an open invitation.I turned to face him. I let him see the damage. The hospital vigil was etched on my face—the pallor, the shadows under my eyes, the tremor I couldn’t hide. I wasn’t acting broken. I’d just
(Elara's POV)The beeping followed me into my dreams. That steady, mechanical beep, beep, beep was the soundtrack of a nightmare where I was running down white hallways that never ended. I jolted awake, my neck screaming in protest. I was still in the plastic chair. The hospital waiting room was washed in the pale, watery light of a miserable morning.Eleanor was gone, probably to relieve Charles. Peter was nowhere to be seen. For a second, there was just the hum and the ache in my bones.Then Charles was there. He didn't walk up. He just appeared in front of my chair, blocking the light. He looked like he'd been carved from stone. No wrinkles of sleep, no rumpled clothes. Just crisp, cold focus."Up," he said, not unkindly, but with zero room for argument. "Consultation room three. Now."My heart did a stupid little stutter. This was it. The first report. The first test. I pushed myself up, my legs stiff, and followed him down a si
(Elara's POV)Charles, Silas’s dad, was wearing a path in the thin carpet. Shush, shush, shush. His shoes were the only sound, an angry, rhythmic scrape. Eleanor sat on a plastic chair, her purse prim on her lap, her hands clenched so tight the knuckles were little white mountains. She hadn’t looked at me since the ambulance.The doctor came out. A woman with a kind face but eyes that were just… tired. I stopped breathing.Silas was stable. Not awake. Breathing on his own.A sound punched out of me,a harsh, ugly gasp of relief that hurt my throat. For one second, the ground felt solid.Then Charles, always straight to the point, growled, “What caused it?”And the doctor said the word. Digoxin. A heart medicine. Then she said, “But it’s not in his current prescription.”My brain short-circuited. “No,” I whispered. It was a reflex. “I locked all of that away.”The doctor gave me a look that was part pity, part rout
(Elara's POV)The hospital lights were too bright. They washed out all the color, turning everything into shades of white, gray, and sickly green. I stood in the waiting room outside the ICU, my arms wrapped around myself. I could still feel the ghost of Nora's weight in them, the heat of her tears on my neck. Eleanor had taken her home. "She shouldn't see this," she'd said, her voice hollow, and I was too shattered to argue.Charles, Silas's father, paced a trench in the thin industrial carpet. His footsteps were the only sound. A relentless, angry shush, shush, shush. Eleanor sat perfectly still on a plastic chair, her purse on her lap, her knuckles white where she gripped it. She hadn't looked at me since we arrived.The doctor finally came out. A woman with a tired face and kind eyes behind wire-framed glasses. "Family of Silas Truman?"We all moved at once. "Is he awake?" I asked, the words tripping over Charles's de







