Alex POV
The moment I step back onto campus after break, I can feel it—the whispers, the tension, the way everyone is watching Zara as if she’s some tragic heroine. Their eyes flicker toward her as though she’s delicate glass, just waiting to shatter.
It makes me sick.
She walks in a step slower than everyone else, her driver having dropped her off at the gates like some precious doll that needs protecting. She tucks her hair behind her ear, pretending not to notice the stares. But I see her. I always see her. She thrives on it—the attention, the sympathy, the narrative that bends itself around her fragile shoulders.
Almost kidn*pped. Poor Zara.
What a joke.
The rumors already circulate in soft, pitying tones: how a black car tried to take her, how Zarek saved her, how she was so bra
