Dominic's POV
The phone slipped from my hand and hit the desk with a crack.
Elena. Alive.
My assistant's voice seemed to come from underwater. "Mr. Reeves? Your three o'clock is here. Dr. Castellano is waiting in Conference Room B."
I couldn't breathe. For six years, I'd carried her ghost. Six years of searching. Six years of guilt so heavy it crushed my chest every morning when I woke up alone.
And she'd been alive the whole time.
"Sir? Should I send her in?"
"My office." The words came out like gravel. "Now."
I stood and gripped the edge of my desk. My knuckles turned white. The skyline of Manhattan stretched beyond my window—the city where I'd lost everything. Where she'd vanished without a trace after our last fight. The fight that ended with her running into the rain, crying, while I stood there too angry and too stupid to follow.
The police found her car in the river three days later. Empty. They dragged the water for weeks.
They never found a body.
I never stopped looking.
The door opened. My heart stopped.
Elena walked in wearing a black suit that made her look like she was attending a funeral. Maybe she was—the funeral of whatever we used to be. Her dark hair was pulled back so tight it had to hurt. No smile. No warmth. Nothing but ice in those brown eyes that used to look at me like I hung the moon.
"Hello, Dominic."
Her voice was different. Colder. Like she'd spent six years freezing from the inside out.
"Sit." I didn't trust myself to say more.
She sat across from my desk, crossed her legs, and looked at me like I was a stranger. Worse—like I was a problem she needed to solve.
"You're alive." I forced the words past the anger choking me. "For six years, I thought—"
"I know what you thought." She cut me off, smooth as a knife. "That's what I wanted."
The room tilted. "What?"
"I wanted you to think I was dead." She said it so calmly, like she was discussing the weather. "It was easier that way."
I came around the desk fast. She didn't flinch. Didn't move. Just watched me with those dead eyes.
"Easier? Do you have any idea what I went through? What your family went through? Your mother still—" I stopped. Took a breath. "Why?"
"Because I needed to disappear." She stood, and we were inches apart. Close enough that I could smell her perfume—different now, nothing like the sweet vanilla she used to wear. "And you needed to move on."
"Move on?" I laughed, and it sounded broken. "I've spent six years trying to find you. Six years of private investigators and police reports and—" I grabbed her arm. She looked at my hand like it was a snake. "Where were you?"
"Away." She pulled free. "Building a life that didn't include you."
The words hit like bullets. "We were engaged, Elena. We were supposed to get married."
"We were a mistake."
"A mistake?" The anger exploded. "I loved you!"
"You loved the idea of me." Her voice rose for the first time. "The perfect girlfriend who smiled and agreed and never asked questions about your late nights or the lipstick on your collar or the way you looked at my cousin at every family dinner!"
I stepped back like she'd slapped me. "That's what this is about? Jessica? Nothing happened—"
"I don't care anymore." She moved toward the door. "I came here because our companies are partnering on the new children's hospital wing. We're going to have to work together. I wanted to set ground rules."
"Ground rules?" I followed her. "You fake your own death and want to set ground rules?"
She turned, hand on the doorknob. For just a second, something flickered in her eyes. Pain, maybe. Or regret. Then it was gone.
"Rule number one: We're colleagues. Nothing more."
"Elena—"
"Rule number two: We don't discuss the past."
"We need to talk about—"
"Rule number three:" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "You stay away from my son."
The world stopped.
Son.
The word echoed in my head like a gunshot. Son. She had a son.
I did the math before I could stop myself. Six years. She'd been gone six years.
"How old?" My voice sounded strange.
She opened the door. "Goodbye, Dominic."
"How old is he, Elena?"
She looked back at me, and for the first time, I saw fear in her eyes.
"Five." Then she was gone.
Five years old.
I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and pulled up the photo my investigator had sent this morning—the one of Elena outside the hospital, holding hands with a small boy with dark curly hair.
I zoomed in on the child's face.
And saw my own eyes staring back.