Four more months had gone by—four long, infuriating months of hunting ghosts.
Every lead frayed. Every "sighting" collapsed into a stranger. Every whispered clue ended up being smoke, a damn ghost trail that dissolved the second he reached for it. His nights were sleepless, his days a blur of desperate searching and endless phone calls.
The company still demanded his attention, and somehow he managed to keep its heart beating, but his own was running on fumes. He was running on empty, both physically and mentally. He was a man bleeding out in slow motion—still walking, still talking, but every step was thinner than the last.
And finally, his body betrayed him.
One afternoon, in the middle of dictating instructions he wouldn't remember later, his chest tightened, his knees buckled, and he hit the carpet of his office with a dull thud. Blackness swept in, merciful and cruel, shutting him down like a switch.
The Slap
He woke not gently.
A sharp sting lit up his cheek. The taste of iron coated his mouth. His eyes snapped open.
Ysabel loomed above him, palm cocked back, ready to strike again if he dared drift away.
"What the hell, woman?" he barked, jerking upright. His voice was rough, ragged, the sound of a man whose lungs hadn't been used for living in a long time. "Was that really necessary?"
"As long as it takes," Ysabel said flatly. She still had her hand raised, half-theater, half-threat. "Apparently you only listen when pain's involved. Wake up, cousin. I'm not wasting any more time watching you spiral into a corpse."
Before he could retort, she shoved something against his chest.
A photograph.
His heart stuttered.
Elara.
Her golden hair shoved behind one ear, exhaustion turning her features soft, radiant, and devastating. And in her arms—wrapped in hospital blue—a newborn.
A baby.
For a heartbeat, the world collapsed. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't move.
"Where?" His voice was quiet, lethal.
"Veridia," Ysabel said—one of those island principalities that existed on maps more than in minds. Her gaze did not blink. "And don't you dare yell at me. Don't you dare blame me. I kept her safe. I shielded her. You hurt her, Adrian—you don't get to be angry at me for not handing her back to you like some lost package."
Anger flickered, then died, crushed under the weight of her fury.
"You are lucky I didn't bury your ass myself for what you did to her," Ysabel hissed. Her voice was sharp, scalpel-precise. "You're lucky I'm even telling you this. She tried to kill herself, cousin. But she found out she was pregnant. If it were me? I'd have aborted the baby and gone to live in luxury. But she didn't. She chose him. She chose life. So you'd better fucking treat her well, Adrian Vale—or I swear to God I will sharpen my scalpel and make you regret you were ever born."
The word pregnant detonated inside him.
Memories lined up like soldiers to accuse him: the ash in the grate, her hand pressed to her belly that night, the sickness in the mornings he'd dismissed as nothing. He had missed it all.
"The baby... mine?" His brain stuttered, desperate to assemble the obvious.
Ysabel's eyes narrowed, disgust flashing. "You really didn't know. You didn't even see it, did you? Too wrapped up in your guilt to notice the woman in front of you was carrying your child."
The photo blurred in his hands as tears rose—Elara in the delivery room, Gavin pressed to her chest. Proof of everything she endured alone. Proof of what he had thrown away.
"I... didn't know," he rasped.
"You never know," Ysabel spat. Then her mouth curved, wicked with fury and something almost like satisfaction. She leaned closer.
"Now go get your queen. And do you realize how many bastard idiots I shielded her from? She got prettier, cousin. Like—drop-dead prettier." Her brow arched. "She made me question my settings."
For the first time in months, a sound that wasn't anger escaped him—half laugh, half ache.
"I get it."
"Do you?" she snapped, tapping the photo. "Then move."
—
Veridia was all bright air and salt, the kind of place that felt invented to persuade people to forgive the sea. He found her in a small park where the sun threaded itself through leaves and stitched halos onto strangers.
She stood by a stroller, adjusting the blanket over the small rise of their son. Gavin. Adrian's breath snagged. She looked alive in a way that made his chest ache—steady, warmed from within. The woman he had sworn to ruin and then accidentally loved. Only now, she wasn't his.
The first glimpse nearly killed him.She was standing in a park, sunlight crowning her like a halo, her hands adjusting the stroller where their baby cooed. Gavin. His son.Adrian's breath caught in his throat.She looked radiant. She looked alive. The woman he had sworn to ruin and then accidentally loved. Only now, she wasn't his.
And other men knew it.
He saw the way they looked at her as they passed—those quick, hungry glances men thought went unnoticed. Their eyes lingered on her curves, on her lips, on the soft smile she gave Gavin. Every stare was a brand against Adrian's chest.
The anger flared. White-hot.He stayed back, half-hidden, hands balled into fists so tight his knuckles blanched. He wanted to storm over, to tear the eyes out of every bastard who dared look at her like that. But he stayed. Watching. Burning.
A man in a pressed shirt and too much cologne stopped in front of her. He bent slightly, flashing his teeth in what he thought was a charming grin.
"Hello there. You're gorgeous. Can I buy you a coffee?"
Adrian's blood roared.But Elara—his Elara—only smiled politely. She shook her head.
"Sorry, I'm married." She lifted her left hand slightly, showing the glint of her wedding band.
Adrian's heart slammed against his ribs. The sight of that ring—his ring—still on her finger made his throat constrict. Even if it was only armor against these men, it meant she hadn't taken it off. It meant something.
The man backed off, embarrassed, mumbling an apology.
Adrian almost smirked. Almost.
But then came another. And another.One man with flowers. Another with a dog he tried to use as an icebreaker. A college boy stuttering out that he thought she was "the most beautiful woman in the city."
Each one made Adrian's fury climb higher. His jaw clenched, his teeth grinding until his head ached.
And Elara—damn her—handled them all with grace. A gentle smile, a soft laugh, a polite refusal. Always the ring raised like a shield.
She was kind even when rejecting them. Too kind. And every smile she gave them sliced Adrian open.
Because once, those smiles had been his.
Adrian held his ground, every instinct demanding he cross the grass and remove the man from the set of living things. He didn't. He burned. He watched.
Elara shifted the stroller into light, bent to check the baby—his son—and the world fought to be ordinary. A gull called. Somewhere a bus sighed. She kneeled to adjust the blanket, murmuring something only Gavin needed to hear.
Finally, it was the one with too much bravado.A tall man in a leather jacket swaggered up, confidence dripping."Hi. My name's Thomas. You're so pretty, I think I just fell in love. Can I get your number?"Adrian nearly saw red.His body shifted forward before he caught himself. His hands twitched with the need to grab this Thomas by the collar and slam him against the nearest wall.But Elara only smiled again—sweet, effortless."I'm married," she said, showing the ring.Thomas faltered, then laughed nervously. "Ah, my bad.""It's okay." She smiled beautifully.Adrian almost lost it. That smile—that goddamn smile she used to give him—it was his. Not theirs.His chest ached with something ugly, primal. Jealousy. Possessiveness. Regret.
Adrian burned. He stayed back. Watching.
He followed at a distance when she left the park. He couldn't help it. She took the coastal way, the stroller turning easily over pavers. The house suited her: two stories, peeling paint that wanted to be charming, a balcony that caught wind and gossip. Someone had tied wind bells to the eaves; they answered the sea in small, tinny syllables.
Adrian stood in the shadows across the street and listened to the domestic music he didn't deserve: the squeak of the front gate, the soft thump of the stroller against the threshold, the hush of a lullaby that made his ribs feel like poor architecture.
He should leave. He didn't. Night came on like a curtain.
Upstairs a light clicked off. Curtains shifted. For a slivered instant, a gap opened. Her silhouette crossed the frame. She paused. He felt rather than saw the snap of recognition travel through her body.
He turned to go, panic rising—not for himself, for the damage his presence could do.
The front door unlatched. Bare feet on wood. The quick, urgent rhythm of a woman who had secured the locks, checked the windows, set the white noise for a sleeping baby, clipped the monitor to her waistband—who had made sure her house was settled before sprinting into the night.
"Adrian!"
He froze.
"Adrian!" she called again, coming down the steps fast, breath catching.
He kept his eyes on the street, on the glimmer of oil in the gutter, on anything that wasn't Elara running toward him—until her arms wrapped around him from behind, fierce and shaking.
She wrapped her arms around him from behind, fierce and shaking.
"Adrian... is this really you?"
He knew the exact moment she knew it was him: when her cheek brushed the line of his shoulder and she caught the faint, stubborn trace of his cologne—cedar and smoke—and when her fingers grazed the small, rough ridge of the scar on his right knuckle, the one he'd put in their study wall and never let heal pretty.
For months he'd dreamed of this and hated the dream for pretending. Now she was here, monitor wire cool against his wrist where it swung, the bell at the eaves giving a small astonished sound.
He turned and pulled her in, careful of the monitor, careful of the world, careful of everything he hadn't been careful of before.
"Hi," he said, because words felt too big. "Hi, Elara."