CHAPTER 111 — WHEN THE GROUND SHIFTS
The pressure did not announce itself.
It never did.
It crept in quietly, disguised as momentum, dressed in cooperation and softened by praise. It came wrapped in reasonable language and deliberate calm, carried not by resistance but by agreement. Elena sensed it long before it took shape—felt it in the way voices lowered when she entered a room, in the way conversations bent subtly toward her presence, in how people stopped finishing their own arguments and waited, instinctively, for her conclusion.
That was how the ground shifted.
Not with force.
With accommodation.
She woke before dawn again, long before the estate stirred. Vigilance had replaced urgency; awareness had replaced adrenaline. Outside, the grounds lay still, mist hanging low over stone paths and trimmed hedges, the sky caught in that quiet moment before morning decided what it would become.
