The Beijing contract was hemorrhaging clauses.
Liam Vance leaned back in his leather throne—because that's what the eight-thousand-dollar ergonomic monstrosity was, really—and watched his legal team squirm through the video conference. Forty-three floors below, the city crawled with people who'd never sit in a room like this. People who didn't matter.
He did.
"Clause seventeen is non-negotiable." His voice could have cut diamonds. "They either accept our terms or we walk. I have three competitors who'd kill for this deal."
On screen, his lead attorney—Harvard, top of his class, utterly disposable—opened his mouth. Closed it. "Mr. Vance, the cultural considerations—"
"Are not my problem. This is business. Get it done."
He severed the connection with a flick of his finger. The screens went black. Silence rushed in to fill the void, broken only by the whisper of climate control and the distant hum of an empire running on his will alone.
Liam rose, moving to the wall of windows that framed Manhattan like a conquered kingdom. Sunset bled across steel and glass. Beautiful. Impersonal. Perfect.
This was power. This was control.
This was everything he'd built after scraping himself out of foster homes that stank of cigarettes and neglect, after clawing his way through business school on spite and stolen wifi, after swearing he'd never be powerless again.
He'd succeeded.
Spectacularly.
The intercom crackled. "Mr. Vance?"
His assistant. Melissa. Not Isabelle—Isabelle had been quietly reassigned to the Singapore office three years ago after she'd misread his interest. Women always did.
"I'm not taking calls."
"Sir, David is here. He says it's urgent."
Liam's jaw ticked. David Reeves didn't interrupt. The head of his security team was a former Secret Service agent who understood exactly two things: discretion and threat assessment. If he was here, physically, instead of sending an encrypted email—
"Send him in."
The door whispered open. David entered, and Liam catalogued everything wrong in three seconds: the tension in his shoulders, the file folder clutched too tight, the way his gaze didn't quite meet Liam's.
David was afraid.
Interesting.
"Unless it's the signed contract from Beijing," Liam said, turning back to his city, "it can wait."
"It's about Elara, sir."
The name hit like a sniper round.
Liam's reflection in the glass didn't move. Didn't breathe. Five years, and the sound of her name still felt like fingers around his throat.
He'd purged her. Systematically. Efficiently. The annulment papers were buried in a vault in the Caymans. The penthouse had been gutted and redesigned. Every trace of her eliminated like she'd never existed.
Except on nights when he couldn't sleep, when the void yawned wide, when he remembered soft hands and softer smiles and the way she'd looked at him like he was something other than the monster he'd worked so hard to become—
No.
He turned, and his face was Arctic permafrost. "I have no ex-wife. The annulment was finalized five years ago. Whatever this is, handle it."
David didn't move. "You need to see this."
He placed a single sheet of paper on the obsidian desk.
Liam stared at it like it might detonate. "I don't have time for—"
"Look at the picture, sir."
The please was silent but deafening.
Liam stalked forward and snatched the paper, ready to fire David for wasting his time, ready to end this conversation and the uncomfortable churning in his gut that came with her name.
He looked down.
Sunshine Valley Junior Chess Prodigy Crowned Champion
Local interest piece. Human interest garbage. A kid grinning at the camera, holding a trophy too big for his small hands. The article waxed poetic about natural talent, about a young mind that saw patterns others missed, about—
The photo.
The world stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped. Like God had reached down and hit pause on the universe.
The boy was maybe five. Wild dark hair that refused to be tamed, a stubborn cowlick at the crown. A grin that was pure mischief and triumph. And eyes—
Grey eyes. Storm-cloud grey. The exact shade Liam saw every morning in the mirror.
His eyes.
His face, softened by childhood but unmistakable. The sharp angle of the jaw that would define itself in adolescence. The arch of the brow. The way the left corner of his mouth quirked higher when he smiled.
My son.
The thought detonated through him like a bomb through bedrock.
The air left his lungs in a rush. The paper trembled in his hand—when had his hand started shaking? The office tilted, axis shifted, gravity inverted. Sound vanished except for the roaring in his ears, a tidal wave of white noise that threatened to drown him.
He had a son.
She'd—
Elara had—
The fury came then. Not hot. Cold. Glacial. The kind of rage that leveled cities and salted the earth.
She'd stolen from him. Lied to him. Taken his child—his heir—and vanished like a thief in the night. For five years, this boy had existed without him. Five years of birthdays and first words and chess tournaments while Liam built his empire on the foundation of a lie.
His son.
Hidden. Kept from him. Raised by—
"Where is she?" The words came out razored. Lethal.
David shifted. "Sunshine Valley. About two hours north. She owns an art gallery. Goes by Elara Hart now, not Vance."
Of course she did. Erasing him. Erasing everything.
"Gallery?" The word tasted like acid.
"Successful one. She's—" David hesitated. "She's done well for herself, sir. The boy's name is Leo. Leo Hart."
Leo.
His son's name was Leo, and he was learning it from a security report like he was researching an acquisition target.
Liam's hand crushed the paper. "Find out everything. Where she lives. Who she associates with. Her finances. Her routines. Everything." His voice dropped to something subterranean. Dangerous. "And get me an address. Now."
"Sir, if I may—there are legal considerations. If you approach this incorrectly—"
Liam's gaze cut to him, and David fell silent. Good. He was remembering exactly who signed his paychecks.
"I'm not 'approaching' anything." Liam moved to the window, staring at his reflection superimposed over the city. His city. His empire. His son, out there somewhere, stolen from him. "I'm taking back what's mine."
The sunset had bled out, leaving only darkness and the glitter of a million lights. Somewhere in that sprawl, Elara thought she was safe. Thought she could hide from him.
She'd forgotten who he was. What he was.
Liam Vance didn't lose.
He turned back to David, and his smile was a predator's promise. "Where," he repeated, each syllable vibrating with lethal intent, "is she?"