Elena's POV The ocean at dawn was a bruised purple, a vast, restless expanse of violet and indigo that seemed to bleed into the horizon. The waves arrived with a rhythmic, shushing sound, licking the white sands of the Vane private estate with a clinical persistence that made the rest of the world—the glass towers, the shouting headlines, the frantic pace of Manhattan—feel like a distant, flickering memory. There were no paparazzi here to document our every breath. No satellite vans lined up like vultures, no security details adjusting their earpieces with robotic precision, and no Board members waiting in the shadows to tally the cost of a smile. There was just the biting salt air, the lonely, piercing cry of a lone gull circling overhead, and the two of us, finally stripped of the armor we had worn for a year. I stood on the deck of the beach house, my bare feet pressing into the weathered, sun-bleached wood. The grain was rough and grounding, a stark contrast to the plush, suff
Last Updated : 2026-04-19 Read more