(Ethan's POV)
The city didn't surrender easily.
It had to be shaped.
From the forty-second floor of Blackwood Tower, Toronto stretched beneath me in clean, obedient lines—glass, motion, and noise arranged like an equation that only power could solve. Traffic flowed because someone had planned every light, every turn. Towers reached for the sky because profit told them to. Even the skyline itself obeyed hierarchy. Money decided height. Influence decided how much sunlight you deserved.
I had learned early that chaos was expensive, and discipline was cheaper. Control kept the world predictable, measurable. Contained.
Behind me, the boardroom hummed with the low, practiced sound of approval. Someone mentioned growth—twelve percent, quarter over quarter.
There was polite applause, sharp enough to flatter, shallow enough not to matter.
I nodded once. It was enough. Praise was just data dressed as admiration.
"This acquisition locks our position for the next decade," I said. My voice carried, even though I hadn't raised it. "We proceed as planned."
No one argued. No one ever did.
When I dismissed them, the executives filed out in crisp, orderly silence. I waited until the door closed before I let out a breath. The quiet afterward felt like the room exhaling with me.
I liked silence. It was honest. It didn't ask for anything.
I moved toward the windows again. The city below looked endless—cars, people, color. Every one of them carrying small worlds I had chosen not to live in. Emotions, mistakes, the kind of longing that ruined plans.
I had built something instead. That choice had made me who I was. It had also taken something from me, though I'd stopped naming what.
Most nights I didn't think about it. Most.
Sleep was the exception.
It stripped away every structure I'd built around myself. It delivered memory like punishment.
Always the same image: a narrow apartment hallway. Cardboard boxes lined up with precision. And Amelia standing by the door with one suitcase in her hand. She didn't cry. That was the part that stayed. She'd just looked at me the way a storm looks at the sea—resigned to drowning.
I hadn't followed her. I hadn't asked her to stay. I'd let her walk out because control meant more than closure.
Men like me didn't chase what chose to leave.
A knock broke the memory apart.
My assistant stepped in, tablet in hand. "Legal just sent the Kingston file. They marked it urgent."
"Send it through," I said.
I sat back at my desk. Numbers, projections, property maps—easy things. Then my eyes caught on a name buried in the middle of a page.
Cross Holdings.
My pulse skipped once.
Cities were full of coincidences. Names repeated. I told myself that. I turned the page anyway.
Amelia Cross — Independent Consultant.
For a moment the world narrowed. My hand went still over the tablet. The office felt suddenly too small, the air too tight.
I hadn't said her name aloud in years. I'd trained myself not to. The past stayed buried because I'd buried it. That was how I survived it.
But something inside my chest shifted, slow and warning, like an old wound testing its own scar.
The rest of the day moved in fragments. I attended meetings I didn't remember walking into. People spoke numbers, and I nodded at the right times. But my mind kept dragging back to that name, the way it used to sound in my mouth when I still believed in things that weren't measurable.
By the time I left the tower, irritation had taken the place of calm. I drove without thinking, the skyline flashing across the windshield like a pulse I couldn't control.
The penthouse greeted me the same way it always did—too clean, too silent, expensive in all the wrong ways. I loosened my tie, poured a drink I didn't want, and watched the city lights blur through the glass wall.
My phone buzzed.
Legal Counsel: We need your direct input on the Cross file. Urgent.
I ignored it.
In the reflection, the man staring back looked composed, carved from ambition. Tailored suit, steady jaw, the kind of eyes that forgot how to linger. I had built him to be untouchable. Amelia had known the version that still had edges soft enough to bruise.
Sleep came late. Shallow. When it did, it brought her voice with it—the quiet way she used to say my name when she thought I wasn't listening.
I woke before dawn with that echo lodged in my throat and the uneasy sense that the ground beneath my life had begun to move.
The confrontation came sooner than I expected.
By the time I stepped into the executive conference room the next morning, she was already there.
For one long heartbeat, time folded in on itself. The years we'd spent apart compressed into the space between two breaths.
Amelia Cross stood near the head of the table, a folder in hand. She was older, yes, but not diminished. Time had carved precision into her, not fragility.
Her hair was pulled back. Her expression calm, guarded. There was nothing left of the girl who once left boxes in my hallway.
She looked up. "Ethan."
My name, simple and even. No tremor. No invitation. Just fact.
Something in my chest went off balance. "Ms. Cross."
Her mouth twitched at that, almost a smile, but not quite. "This project requires cooperation," she said. "I intend to keep this professional."
The word hung between us like a locked door.
I nodded once, but the restraint fractured before I could stop it. "You left without explanation."
She blinked, surprised by the bluntness. "And you never asked."
There was no accusation in her voice. Just truth.
I felt the sting anyway. For all my intelligence, I'd mistaken silence for peace.
I stepped closer, drawn by something more primitive than memory. "Why are you here, Amelia?"
Her eyes softened, then closed for half a second. "Because I have to be."
That was all she said. Then she turned toward the door.
Movement there caught my eye—small, hesitant.
A child stood half-hidden by the frame.
Dark hair. Wide, cautious eyes. The kind of stillness I recognized instantly because it was my own.
Amelia froze.
The boy stepped forward, uncertain. "Mom?"
My body went cold first, then burning hot. Every instinct told me to stay still, that the world had just rearranged itself and the only way to survive was not to move.
Amelia turned toward me. The color drained from her face. Her lips parted, but no sound came.
My heart beat once, hard.
The boy looked at me again. It was like seeing my reflection cut down to its simplest form—the same sharp observation, the same distance behind the eyes.
The air in the room thickened. I took a step forward without realizing it.
Amelia's voice broke the silence. "This meeting is over."
But her tone lacked conviction, and the tremor in her hands told a different story.
I looked at her, then at him, then back again. The resemblance was no longer something I could reason away.
I wanted to speak, but the words wouldn't come. Control was a skill, but right then it felt like a cage.
The boy's gaze met mine for a heartbeat too long. He didn't flinch. Neither did I.
When Amelia reached for his hand, he hesitated before taking it. That hesitation was mine too.
She led him out, closing the door behind them with careful precision, as if silence could rewrite what I'd just seen.
For a long time I didn't move. The city outside blurred again, lines of light bending under the weight of realization.
Everything I'd built—every wall, every rule, every decision meant to keep the past where it belonged—suddenly felt fragile.
I thought control was armor. Maybe it had only been delay.
I set my glass down and pressed a hand to the window, watching my own reflection fade into the skyline.
The man who never looked back had finally turned around.
And the past hadn't just followed. It had returned with eyes that mirrored mine and a question I didn't know how to answer.