Haven smelled like linseed oil and possibility.
Elara stood on the wooden ladder, adjusting the gallery lights above a new installation—abstract chaos in cobalt and gold that somehow made sense when you stopped trying to understand it. Her world in a painting. Beautiful disaster, reframed.
Five years, and she'd built this from nothing. From the ashes of a girl who'd run into the rain with only a jacket and terror. This gallery, this space, this life—it was hers. Clean white walls, warm track lighting, art from emerging voices who needed someone to believe in them the way no one had believed in her.
The way she'd learned to believe in herself.
"Mommy!"
The word hit her chest like it always did, a burst of pure light.
Leo exploded through the back door, his backpack bouncing, his hair—God, that unruly hair—sticking up in twelve directions. Xander followed, laughing, trying and failing to keep up with a five-year-old on a mission.
"Look!" Leo skidded to a stop, thrusting his trophy skyward like he'd conquered nations. "I won! First place! I beat everyone, even the third graders!"
Elara climbed down, her heart doing that impossible swelling thing it did whenever she looked at him. Her son. Her brilliant, perfect, impossible son who'd inherited his father's mind and—thank God—her capacity for joy.
She crouched, taking the trophy with reverent hands. "Leo Hart, chess champion of the universe." She pulled him into a fierce hug, breathing in the scent of him—chalk dust and apple juice and the strawberry shampoo he'd insisted on this week. "I am so, so proud of you, my brilliant boy."
He squeezed back, all sharp elbows and boundless energy. "Can we get ice cream? Xander said we could if you said yes."
"Xander," she said, glancing up at her best friend, "is a traitor who knows I can't say no."
Xander grinned, unrepentant, his blonde hair falling into hazel eyes that crinkled at the corners. "It's a gift. Also, he earned it. You should've seen him dismantle that poor kid's Queen's Gambit. Brutal."
Leo wriggled free, already moving to the display of sculptures near the window. "Can I touch the shiny one?"
"Gentle hands," Elara called, standing. She met Xander's gaze, and something warm and grateful passed between them. He'd been there. Through everything. The pregnancy, the terror, the sleepless nights when she'd been convinced Liam would find them. He'd held her together when she was falling apart.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
"Always." He squeezed her shoulder. "Now, about that ice cream—"
The bell above the gallery door chimed.
It was a cheerful sound. Brass and bright, welcoming customers into her sanctuary.
The air changed.
Elara felt it before she saw anything—a drop in temperature, a shift in pressure, like a storm front moving in. The kind of atmospheric disturbance that made animals flee and people check the sky.
A man entered first. Tall, built like he knew fifteen ways to kill with his bare hands, wearing a suit too severe for an art gallery. His eyes swept the space with clinical precision, cataloguing exits, threats, vulnerabilities.
Security.
Her blood went cold.
Then he walked in.
Liam Vance.
Five years vanished. The gallery disappeared. The life she'd built, the woman she'd become—gone, stripped away in the space of a heartbeat. She was back in that penthouse, small and powerless and so goddamn stupid for thinking she could ever be anything else.
He looked the same. Sharper, maybe. Harder. The suit probably cost more than her monthly revenue. His dark hair was shorter, severe, and those eyes—those storm-grey eyes that Leo had inherited—fixed on her with the intensity of a predator spotting prey.
He filled the doorway. Sucked the oxygen from the room. Made her warm, careful sanctuary feel like a cage.
"Elara," Xander said, his voice low, warning. He'd moved without her noticing, positioning himself between her and the door. Protective. "Who—"
She couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. Her hands had gone numb.
Liam's gaze raked over her, cold and surgical. Taking inventory. Calculating. Then it moved past her, scanning the gallery, and she knew—knew—the exact moment he spotted Leo.
Everything stopped.
His expression didn't change, but something happened behind those eyes. Something seismic. His jaw locked. His hands, hanging loose at his sides, curled into fists.
Leo was oblivious, tracing the curve of a bronze sculpture with one finger, humming something that might've been the Tetris theme.
Elara moved on instinct. She crossed the space in three strides and put herself between Liam and her son, one hand reaching back to touch Leo's shoulder. Shielding him. Claiming him.
Mine. He's mine.
Liam's gaze snapped back to her, and the fury in it could've leveled buildings.
"You." His voice was permafrost. "You have five seconds to explain yourself."
The words hit like a physical blow. No greeting. No acknowledgment that he'd vanished from her life, that he'd planned to divorce her, that he'd never once looked for her.
Just accusation. Just rage.
Because of course. She'd taken something that belonged to him.
"Get out." Her voice came from somewhere deep, somewhere that remembered how to be steel. "You have no right to be here."
"No right?" He laughed, and the sound was razors. "I have every right. You—"
"Mommy?"
The word shattered the moment.
Leo had turned, his small hand gripping the back of her shirt, his face scrunched in confusion. He looked between Elara and the furious stranger who'd invaded their space, trying to make sense of the tension crackling through the air.
Then his gaze fixed on Liam.
Really fixed. Studied.
Those too-smart eyes—the ones that saw patterns, that made connections others missed, that had won him a chess tournament against kids twice his age—tracked over Liam's face. The jaw. The eyes. The tilt of the head.
Elara watched it happen. Watched her son's brilliant, terrible mind make the connection.
"Mommy," Leo said, his voice pitched with curiosity, with innocent wonder, with the knife that would gut her where she stood. "Who is that man?"
He stepped out from behind her, tilting his head, fearless in the way children were when they didn't understand danger.
"He looks like me."
The silence that followed could've stopped hearts.
Liam's expression cracked. Just for a second. The fury bleeding away into something raw and shocked and desperately hungry. He stared at Leo like he was seeing a miracle. Like he was seeing himself.
"Leo," Elara breathed, reaching for him, but it was too late.
Liam dropped to one knee, bringing himself to Leo's eye level, and when he spoke, his voice had changed. Gone soft. Almost reverent.
"Hello, Leo." He extended one hand, and Elara watched in horror as her son—her brilliant, trusting, beautiful boy—reached out and took it. "My name is Liam. And you're right." His eyes lifted to Elara's, and the promise in them was a threat and a vow. "We do look alike."