"Don't… you... dare," Adrian said.
Each word dropped like a blade , slow, sharp, and dangerously controlled. The kind of voice that didn't need to shout to promise absolute destruction. It wrapped around the room like smoke, heavy and suffocating.
But Raya didn't back down this time.
Maybe it was because she was already too hurt to feel fear the way she once had. Maybe losing her child had cracked something deep inside her, a fracture that could no longer bend quietly under pressure. Or maybe she had finally realized that loving Adrian Blake came with a price she might never survive paying.
"If I can't dare," Raya said, forcing herself to hold his gaze even as her chest tightened painfully, "then you're not allowed to dare either."
The air in the study grew suffocatingly still, thick with unspoken threats.
