Aaliyah had spent the whole afternoon with an uncomfortable feeling, a pressure in her chest she couldn't explain. Every time she looked at Damiano, he avoided her eyes—too fast, too obvious. He was hiding something. And she knew it.
Damiano, for his part, moved as if he were walking on shattered glass. Every word he spoke was measured, every gesture calculated. He avoided being alone with Aaliyah, as if he feared she could read his mind with just one look.
But that distance… that silence… only made Aaliyah's suspicion grow.
Ethan noticed it too.
The guy was getting way too close, like someone who smells blood in the water. He stood closer to Aaliyah than normal, offered to help with everything, made soft comments that sounded a little too much like flirting disguised as something else. And even though Aaliyah didn't seem interested… she wasn't pushing him away either. She didn't know if it was confusion or pure anger at Damiano.
And then there was Estrella.
Estrella had never been good at hiding emotions. She was as transparent as water. And what she was seeing was driving her insane.
Every weird glance between Damiano and Aaliyah, every smile Ethan threw at her friend… it activated a protective instinct she didn't even know she had.
But when Dove Cameron walked into the scene, the tension exploded.
Dove, practically Aaliyah's sister for years, arrived unannounced. Wrapped in expensive perfume, red lips, and that star-like aura that made everyone turn to look at her.
When she noticed the strange dynamic between the three, she frowned.
Dove didn't need more than thirty seconds to understand something was wrong.
"What's going on here?" she asked coldly, her clear eyes locking on Damiano first, then on Aaliyah.
Damiano swallowed hard. Aaliyah pretended to look for something in her bag. Ethan smiled as if nothing was happening. Estrella crossed her arms.
Dove raised an eyebrow.
"Well? Who's going to explain to me why the room feels like a bomb ready to explode?"
No one answered.
Because each of them knew something different…
and each one was determined to keep their own truth hidden.
But Dove wasn't going to let this improvised family fall apart.
And the chapter ended with her murmuring, almost as a threat:
"If none of you will talk… then I'll find out myself."