The restroom door closed behind her with a heavy, echoing thud, muting the bass that pounded through the bones of Obsidian. The air in here was cooler, perfumed faintly with orchids and something darker amber and smoke that reminded her too much of him. Elena leaned back against the door, head tilting up, her breath catching as if she'd just run through rain.
Her pulse was still racing. Not from the whiskey she'd nursed, not from the music thrumming through the floor. From him.
She had been a fool to think five years would soften him. That time would dull the sharpness of his presence, sand down the edges of the man who had once been everything she swore she couldn't want but couldn't resist either. If anything, Damian Moretti had only become sharper. Broader shoulders, heavier command in the set of his jaw, a confidence that wasn't boyish arrogance anymore but the carved power of a man used to being obeyed.
Seeing him across the floor had been like watching a storm roll in inevitable, electric, terrifying, and yet impossible not to stand in the open and wait for the lightning to strike.
And she had walked straight into the center of it.
Her heels clicked against the marble tile as she crossed to the sink, each step unsteady, betraying the storm inside her. She gripped the counter, forcing herself to lift her gaze to the mirror.
The woman staring back didn't look like the Elena she'd trained herself to become.
Her face was flushed, her carefully painted lipstick smeared slightly at the corner where she'd bitten it to hold back trembling when his eyes had found hers. Her hair sleek when she left the hotel now framed her face in waves, messy, intimate, as though touched by hands she couldn't allow herself to remember.
But it was her eyes that broke her.
Wide. Dark. Vulnerable.
Not the steely, calculating gaze of the Manhattan lawyer who struck fear into boardrooms. No. This was the gaze of prey, cornered and trembling, caught in the predator's den.
She reached for a paper towel, dampened it, pressed it against her neck where her pulse thundered. The coolness steadied her for a moment. But then her hand shifted almost unconsciously lower, brushing the pale crescent scar near her collarbone.
Her breath snagged.
The scar.
Her body remembered before her mind allowed it.
Headlights cutting across darkness.
The screech of tires on wet asphalt.
Her name shouted through the storm.
A hand gripping hers one moment, then slipping away.
And afterward his face. Damian's face. Eyes torn open with betrayal, his voice low and ragged as she whispered the promise she couldn't keep.
The scar pulsed beneath her touch, a reminder burned into flesh. Not all wounds bled on the outside. Some lingered quiet, waiting for the right moment to ache.
She blinked rapidly, shoving the memories back into the locked vault she had lived by for five years. Her grandmother's death had forced her home, yes. But this? Facing him? She hadn't planned for this. Couldn't.
Her reflection blurred as her vision threatened tears. Elena braced herself harder against the counter, nails scraping porcelain.
"You're stronger now," she whispered to the empty room, but her voice cracked on the last word.
Strong? She'd built an empire on strength. Negotiated contracts that made men twice her age stumble. Built walls so high that nothing could scale them. Her name carried weight in Manhattan, the kind of weight her grandmother used to dream she'd grow into.
And yet one look at Damian, and her fortress had collapsed like a paper house in the rain.
Her chest tightened. The thought slithered in before she could block it: Part of you came back for him.
She shook her head violently, earrings clinking against the mirror. "No," she hissed. "I came back for Rosa. For the house. That's it."
Rosa.
Her grandmother's face softened the storm inside her. She saw kind eyes peering through sewing glasses, steady hands guiding fabric beneath a needle, lips pursed in concentration before breaking into laughter at Elena's clumsy attempts. Rosa had stitched more than clothes she'd stitched lives, hopes, pieces of Millbrook itself.
Elena swallowed, the weight of guilt pressing into her ribs. She hadn't been there when Rosa slipped away. Hadn't been there to hold her hand, to say goodbye. She'd let work and fear and pride keep her away. And now Rosa was gone, leaving her only this house and the crushing echo of everything unsaid.
But Rosa's voice lingered in memory, whispering something else too: That boy has shadows in his eyes, mija, but he'd tear down the world to protect the ones he loves.
Elena's breath stuttered. Rosa had respected Damian. Feared for him, yes, but respected him. And Elena had seen that truth once, in moments when his hand had been steady on her back, when his eyes had burned with more than possession with devotion.
She pressed her palms flat against the counter, staring at herself.
"You don't love him," she whispered, but the words fractured, hollow. "Not anymore."
And yet her body betrayed her. The flutter in her chest when his gaze cut through the crowd. The way her skin prickled as though remembering his touch. The dangerous warmth pooling low in her stomach even now, when he wasn't near.
That wasn't indifference. That wasn't forgotten.
That was fire. A fire buried, yes but embers still glowed beneath the ash, waiting for a breath to ignite.
She sank onto the velvet bench against the wall, burying her face in her hands. The music from the club bled faintly through the walls, thumping like a second heartbeat.
Options, she told herself. She had options. She could walk out, call for a car, vanish into the wet streets. She could fly back to Manhattan, throw herself into the Reynolds merger, drown her heart in the noise of the city. She could bury Rosa with distance, the way she buried Damian.
But her feet weren't moving.
Why weren't they moving?
Because part of her still wanted something she couldn't name. Answers, maybe. Or absolution. Or maybe just to hear his voice again not muffled through a door, but close enough to graze her skin.
Her phone buzzed against the counter, startling her. She snatched it up like a drowning woman clutching driftwood.
Assistant (NYC): Elena, where the hell are you? Reynolds is threatening to walk. The board's furious. If you don't get on a plane tomorrow
She ended the call before it finished. Silenced the phone. Tossed it back down.
Her chest rose and fell, a decision crystallizing.
Work could wait.
New York could wait.
He couldn't.
Not anymore.
She rose slowly, hands trembling as she touched up her lipstick in the mirror. Red paint against unsteady lips, armor for a battle she hadn't chosen but couldn't walk away from. She smoothed her dress, inhaled deep, and whispered one final promise to her reflection:
"You survived Manhattan. You can survive Damian Moretti."
But even as the words left her lips, she knew survival wasn't the truth.
The truth was that she didn't fear him. She feared herself feared what she might give, what she might want, what she might still choose despite everything.
Her hand trembled on the doorknob. For a heartbeat, she imagined him waiting on the other side, eyes dark, mouth set in that quiet command that undid her. And God help her, the thought didn't frighten her as much as it thrilled.
She opened the door anyway.
The bass swallowed her immediately, wrapping around her ribs. She stepped out, spine straight, armor of red lipstick and sharp heels in place. But her pulse betrayed her, beating too fast, too loud.
And as she walked back into the storm of Obsidian, Elena knew one thing with terrifying clarity:
She wasn't leaving Millbrook yet.
And Damian Moretti wasn't finished with her.