Dominic's POV
The champagne glass exploded in Dominic's hand.
Pain shot through his palm, but he didn't move. Couldn't move. Blood dripped onto his Italian shoes, staining the leather dark red, but all he could see was her.
Elena.
His Elena.
Standing across the ballroom like she'd never disappeared. Like she hadn't died five years ago in a car wreck that left nothing but twisted metal and his shattered heart.
"Sir, you're bleeding!" A server rushed toward him with napkins, but Dominic shoved past her. His eyes locked on the woman in the navy dress talking to Dr. Harrison near the ice sculpture. Same honey-brown hair. Same delicate hands that used to trace patterns on his chest while they talked about their future.
The future she'd stolen when she vanished.
His heart hammered against his ribs. This was impossible. He'd hired twelve private investigators. He'd spent millions searching every corner of the country. The police report said she'd died in that accident outside the city. They'd found her car at the bottom of a ravine, burned beyond recognition.
But those eyes. He'd memorized every gold fleck in those dark eyes during the three months they'd dated. The three months before everything went wrong.
Before she'd run.
Dominic pushed through the crowd of doctors and donors, ignoring the stares, ignoring the blood still dripping from his hand. People moved aside when they saw his face—they always did. Dominic Blackwood made grown men nervous, but right now he didn't care about his reputation or his company or the fifty-million-dollar donation he'd just written to this hospital.
All he cared about was reaching her before she disappeared again.
"Elena!" His voice cut through the classical music and polite chatter.
She turned.
Time stopped.
Her face went white as hospital sheets. The wine glass in her hand trembled, deep red liquid sloshing against the rim. For three seconds—he counted—they stared at each other across twenty feet of marble floor.
Then she ran.
Dominic's body moved on instinct, years of boxing training kicking in as he sprinted after her. She was fast, even in heels, darting through the crowd toward the side exit. He knocked into a waiter, sending champagne glasses crashing, but he didn't slow down.
"Stop!" he roared.
She burst through the emergency exit, the alarm screaming to life. Dominic followed her into the stairwell, his footsteps echoing off concrete walls. She was two flights below him, her heels clicking frantically against the steps.
"You can't run forever, Elena!" His voice bounced around the narrow space. "I found you once, I'll find you again!"
She stumbled, catching herself on the railing, and for a moment he thought he had her. But she kicked off her heels and ran faster, bare feet slapping against cold concrete.
Dominic's mind raced as fast as his legs. She was alive. Alive. Five years of grief, of blaming himself for pushing her too hard, for being too controlling, for not realizing she'd been planning to leave—all of it built on a lie.
She'd faked her death.
The realization hit him like a punch to the gut. She hadn't just left him—she'd made sure he could never find her. Made sure he'd stop looking. Made sure he'd suffer.
Rage burned through his chest, mixing with something else he didn't want to name. Something that felt dangerously like hope.
He reached the ground floor seconds after her, bursting into the parking garage just in time to see her yank open a silver Honda. Not the BMW he'd bought her. Not anything he recognized.
"Elena, please!" The word tasted foreign on his tongue. Dominic Blackwood didn't beg. But desperation made him reckless. "Just talk to me! Tell me why!"
She froze with one foot in the car, her knuckles white on the door frame. For a heartbeat, he thought she might actually answer. Might explain why she'd destroyed him.
Then he heard it.
A small voice from inside the car. Sleepy. Confused.
"Mommy?"
Elena's face crumpled with something between terror and grief. She looked at Dominic one last time, and in her eyes he saw everything—the secret she'd kept, the reason she'd run, the truth that would change everything.
A child.
She had a child.
"No," Dominic whispered, his voice breaking on the single word. The math crashed through his brain. Five years since she'd disappeared. Five years since that night she'd called him crying, saying she needed to talk, the night before the accident.
The night before she'd run.
Elena slammed into the driver's seat and gunned the engine. Tires squealed against concrete as she tore out of the parking garage, leaving Dominic standing alone in the fluorescent lights, blood still dripping from his hand.
And in the back window of the disappearing Honda, just for a second, he saw a small face pressed against the glass.
A little boy with dark curls.
His dark curls.