Elara had always believed the past stayed where you left it.
Old houses. Old wounds. Old failures.
She'd been wrong.
The records room smelled like dust and forgotten ambition.
Elara stood alone inside a private archival suite Lucas's legal team maintained for "historical reference." The phrase felt obscene now. Entire lives reduced to files, acquisitions, dates, signatures—clean lines that pretended destruction was orderly.
She held a thin folder in her hands.
Caldwell & Pierce Financial Services
Status: Acquired – Dissolved
Year: Fifteen years ago
Her father's firm.
Her fingers trembled as she opened it.
Inside were contracts, internal memos, restructuring plans. Cold language. Strategic phrasing. Words like streamlining, necessary consolidation, acceptable loss.
Loss.
