Elena POV

The first thing that struck me was the silence, not the comforting type that you can wrap around yourself like a warm blanket, but the heavy, oppressive kind that makes your skin crawl and your nerves tingle because you sense something is amiss within it.

I stood at the entrance of his study, my fingers gripping the frame, my breath steady only because I willed it to be. He hadn’t noticed me yet. His head was lowered, shoulders hunched in a way I had never witnessed before, as if someone had extracted the bones from his spine, leaving him empty.

The book was spread open across his lap....