Todos os capítulos de ALIBI : Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 37

Mara did not move for a long moment.Her body remained still, locked in place, as if moving would make the scene real in a way she wasn’t ready to face.The room felt wrong.Too quiet.Too still.The air hung heavy, thick with a metallic scent that clung to the back of her throat and made her stomach tighten. Adrian lay where he had fallen, his body twisted slightly, one arm bent at an angle that made her chest ache to look at. Blood had spread beneath his head, dark against the pale floor, creeping slowly into the edge of the rug. It had stopped moving now. Everything had stopped.Nothing about him moved.Mara had seen death before.She had stood in rooms where life had already left, had learned to recognize the stillness that followed it.But never like this.Never here.Never with the weight of Elara’s shaking body pressed against her, trembling in her arms as if the world had shattered and l

The courthouse smelled like polish and paper.Elara noticed it the moment she walked through the doors — clean, cold, impersonal. Nothing like the penthouse. Nothing like the bedroom where everything had ended.She held her coat closed with both hands, fingers pressed tight against her chest, as if it were the only thing keeping her together. Her steps echoed too loudly against the marble floor, each one sounding wrong, even though no one turned to look at her. People moved with purpose here — lawyers, clerks, officers — their paths clear, their faces set. Everyone knew exactly where they were going.Elara did not.She slid into a seat in the back row of the courtroom and sat down slowly, carefully, as if sudden movement might shatter what little control she had left. The wooden bench was hard beneath her, unyielding, grounding her in a way she hadn’t expected.She lifted her eyes.Mara had not been brought in yet.

The call came on a Tuesday morning.Elara had been sitting at the small dining table in the guest suite, shoulders slightly hunched, hands wrapped loosely around a mug of tea that had long since gone cold. Steam no longer rose from it, but she hadn’t noticed. Her thoughts were elsewhere—fragmented, unfocused—when her phone rang.She stared at the screen.An unfamiliar number.For a moment, she considered letting it go to voicemail. Letting the sound fade. Letting the morning remain suspended exactly as it was.Almost.“Mrs. Cross?” the woman on the line asked. Her voice was calm, careful—the kind of voice trained to deliver information without breaking, the kind that already knew the answer.“Yes,” Elara said.The word felt heavy as it left her mouth. It settled somewhere in her chest, uncomfortable. Like a title she hadn’t earned. Or one she no longer knew how to h

Freedom did not arrive the way Mara had imagined it.There was no rush. No triumphant music swelling in her ears. No sudden surge that made the world feel lighter.It came quietly, almost like a whisper, in paperwork. In signatures. In the final nod of an officer who had learned her name months ago, whose face she barely remembered.“Ms. Quinn,” he said, unlocking the door. “You’re free to go.”Free.The word felt unreal. Heavy and fragile at the same time. It lodged in her chest, fluttering like a bird trapped too long in a cage. Her legs ached as if she had been holding herself upright for years, and yet she had nowhere to go but forward.The gates opened with a sound Mara had memorized.Metal scraping against metal. Heavy. Final. Each clang echoing in her chest as if marking the beat of a heart she’d almost forgotten.She stood frozen for a moment, her duffel bag weighing her shoulder down, the strap digging slightly into her skin. The morning air brushed across her face, crisp and