Elena's POV

My whole body went still, my breath catching once again because I hadn't heard that voice for a long time and some part of me had spent every single day praying I would never again.

I pushed the door open before my legs could talk me out of it.

The room buzzed with quiet noise. Papers shuffling, low voices, someone muffling something I didn't seem to hear.

A long table stretched out ahead of me, filled with people wearing sharp suits that barely looked up as I walked in.

For one second the room simply held me the way any new face gets held, polite and brief.

Then my eyes found the head of the table, and every other sound in the room drifted away.

It was him.

Adrian Kane.

He sat there like he owned the place, his dark hair was shorter than I remembered, jaw sharper, shoulders wider under a suit that seemed sow just for him.

It seemed like softness had been stripped out of his face and left something colder behind.

My whole body went numb in a second, and immediately I forgot how to move my own legs.

“I'm sorry for the late arrival.” I finally said. “My name is Elena Hart and I'm the representative of Voss Global for this meeting.”

Everyone in the room nodded and finally my legs obeyed my bidding.

I don't remember crossing the room. I just knew I was already sitting on a chair, and someone slid a folder to me while my hands were folding themselves on the table like they don't belong to me anymore.

I kept my eyes down and my face still, on anything that wasn't the man at the end of the table.

“Breathe. You've got this,” I thought to myself.

"Let's get started," someone said, jolting me back to the present and the meeting commenced as though nothing had just changed at all.

As the meeting went on, I nodded whenever it was necessary and gave a response when questions were thrown at me.

But inside, my chest was tight and every few seconds my eyes dragged themselves back up the table, pulled by something stronger than sense.

And every single time I looked at him, he was already looking at me.

Earlier when I walked in, his face went blank with confusion, like a half-remembered song.

But the second time our eyes met, the recognition landed like a slap on his face and his jaw became tight, his gaze flat and cold.

The kind of look that dropped the temperature of the whole room.

Seeing this, I quickly looked back at the folder and didn't look up again.

I have sat through hot meetings before. I have voiced my opinion even when men twice my age underestimated me on sight.

But none of that prepared me for forty-five minutes meeting with him. So I couldn't pretend that my heart wasn't trying to climb out of my chest.

Finally the meeting ended, chairs scraped back and voices rose into chatter. I stood up quickly, the folder clutched to my chest, already looking for the fastest way to the door.

"Elena." Adrian's called out from behind. Low and flat, pitched just for me to hear under the noise of everyone leaving.

I stopped two steps from the door and turned slowly to where his voice came from.

Running would have made it strange as it felt. So I didn't even allow myself to think of it.

After turning to face him, I realized he was still seated, watching the room empty with a patience that made my skin crawl.

Finally the last person left and the door clicked shut behind me. Now it was just the two of us with a very long table between us with tension sitting heavy in the air.

"Adrian."

His name came out of my mouth more carefully than I meant it, like it was something breakable.

He stood up, buttoned his jacket, every movement controlled in a way more dangerous than shouting would have been.

"So you work for Voss Global now. What a small world."

"Well, yes I do and I didn't expect you to be here."

"Would it have mattered?"

I didn't answer, because I honestly didn't know, and because answering felt like handling him something I wasn't ready to give.

He walked around the table slowly, closing the distance one step at a time, and I made myself stay still, meeting his eyes anyway.

Up close, he looked like someone carved out of something darker and cold.

"I heard that you are married," he said, turning the word over like he was testing it. "So you disappeared because you wanted to settle yourself down."

"I don't owe you an explanation."

"No. You don't." His voice stayed calm, but something underneath it had gone jagged. "You left without saying goodbye and built a whole life somewhere and I don't even worth a phone call."

The words hit harder than I expected with a strange, twisted echo of a truth he didn't understand at all.

My face became hot, anger and grief tangling together until I couldn't tell which one was driving my next words.

"Why should I? How does that even concern you?"

“Because—" He stopped halfway, his jaw tightening like some old argument was dying behind his teeth.

"You know what? Never mind.."

"Good.” I replied immediately, my voice shook, just slightly, and I hated that he could probably notice it.

Something flickered across his face, fast and unreadable, it was gone before I could name it.

For one second he looked like he wanted to argue, but then his face closed over like a door shutting, the cold, controlled CEO settling back into place like armor.

"Well, this is a business relationship now," he said. "Let's make this work."

"Sure. Because that's exactly what I want."

"Good. We understand each other."

I turned toward the door without answering any further, relief flooding through me so fast that it nearly buckled my knees.

Before I even reached the door, my hand was already reaching for the handle.

Three more steps and I would be in the hallway, out of this room, out of the reach of those gray eyes. I had almost made it.

"One more thing.” Adrian said from behind.

I stopped with my hand on the handle, my spine straight but I didn't turn around.

He didn't move from where he was, but his voice dropped lower in a way that put every nerve in my body on alert.

"Why are you back here Elena?" he asked.

The floor tilted slightly as the question landed, and for a moment I hoped it would open and swallow me whole.

I turned back to him slowly, my hand still frozen on the handle, mouth already open to give an excuse I didn't have yet.

Behind me, he was looking at me with an expression I couldn't read, not accusation exactly, not yet.

"Tell me, why on earth did you join Voss Global?" he asked, his voice raising a little now.

Elena's POV

My mouth opened before my brain could finish building the lie, and somehow the right words came out anyway.

"Is there any reason why I should tell you about my private life now?" I replied and even managed a small, tired laugh, the kind that suggested this whole conversation was mildly annoying wasting both of our time.

"I hope you will refrain from asking questions that do not relate with this project. Thank you."

Adrian watched me for a long moment, his gray eyes moving over my face like he was reading it.

I stood perfectly still and let him look, because flinching would have told him everything I was trying to hide.

Something in his expression showed that he knew I was hiding something, but he nodded, slow and unconvinced.

"Of course," he said. "Good to see you Elena."

I didn't answer. Because it was the way round for me.

I simply walked out with my back straight and my head up, the way I had trained myself to walk out of every hard room.

I didn't allow my face to crack until I was inside the elevator with the doors sliding shut. My reflection in the polished steel looked calm. But my hands, pressed flat against my thighs, were shaking so hard I had to grip the strap of my bag just to make them stop.

Instead of going to my office, I went straight to the car garage and entered my car before I could breathe properly.

I placed my both hands on the steering wheel, my forehead resting against the cool leather as I counted one to ten.

After six years of careful planning, six years of distance and silence, building something safe. Now just one meeting had nearly knocked it all down in under an hour.

I pulled out my phone with my shaky fingers and called the only person who might understand without needing the whole story first.

Daniel answered on the second ring, already asking questions about how the meeting went but stopped the second he heard my breathing.

"Is everything okay? Why are you breathing like that? What happened?"

"Nothing. Just that I didn't expect the meeting to be that long." My voice cracked slightly on the second word.

"Elena. It's me. Try again. You know that your lies don't work on me."

I signed. Nothing really passes through him.

"Fine. Something came up at the meeting but we will talk about everything tonight when you come back, I promise."

I heard his hesitation sigh on the other end, weighing whether to push or not.

"I'm really okay, Daniel.”

"You don't sound okay. You sound like you're about to throw up in your car."

"I might." And that, at least, was true, and it came out with a small, watery laugh that surprised both of us. "Tonight. I'll explain tonight, I swear."

“Fine… But just know if you try to play smart with me, I'm going to end this friendship without second thought.”

Hearing this, a smile unexpectedly appeared on my lips, making me a little bit better.

“You won't have to do that,” I replied before hanging up the call.

I drove home silently, my mind racing through every version of a future where Adrian Kane found out the truth before I was ready for him to. By the time I pulled into my driveway, my hands had stopped shaking, mostly because I had nothing left to shake with.

Later in the afternoon, I went to pick up Leo at school. Before we even got to the car, he was already talking about a kid in his classroom who claimed to have seen a real live dinosaur bone in his backyard, and the sound of his voice did something to my chest that no amount of deep breathing had managed all day.

I kept nodding throughout our ride home, allowing him to finish the whole story and for that moment, Adrian Kane didn't seem to exist anywhere in the world.

"Can we have the orange chicken?" Leo asked, already climbing onto a kitchen stool the moment we stepped into the house. "The one with the crunchy part."

"Of course darling, we can have the crunchy orange chicken."

After the whole time of preparation we sat down and ate at the counter instead of the table, because that was our Monday tradition, and he told me about his rock collection expanding by two new members while I only half-listened and fully watched his face.

He had Adrian's exact eyes. I'd known that for six years, and had already made my peace with it somewhere around two years ago, but tonight it hit me differently, sharp and strange, like I'm seeing it for the very first time.

I placed him into his bed an hour later with three books instead of the usual two, not ready to let the day end yet.

"You're squishing me mum," Leo mumbled into his pillow, half asleep, as I hugged him one more time than necessary.

"I'm allowed to squish you. I'm your mom."

"That's not an excuse."

"Well, it's my favorite excuse."

He was asleep before I finished the sentence, and I sat on the edge of his bed for a long time, staring at him and listening to him breathe.

Just as I was about to leave his room, my phone rang and an unknown number flashed on the screen.

“Hello.”

I picked it up on the second ring, already wondering who the caller was. But instead of getting an answer, there was an eerie silence on the other end.

Finally a deep voice came through and said, “You should have stayed hidden forever.”

Adrian's POV

I stayed in my office long after everyone else had gone home, the building around me had gone dark and quiet except for the hum of the air conditioning and the glow of my desk lamp.

I hadn't gotten a single real thing done in the last two hours. Every time I opened a file, my mind dragged itself back to that conference room, to the second Elena walked in and my whole body forgot what it was doing at that moment.

I had built a wall around that particular memory a long time ago, brick by brick, seven years of not letting myself think of her name, but she knocked the whole thing down just by standing at that door.

Seeing her again felt like getting hit by a car I never saw coming, the kind of impact that knocks the air out of you before the pain even has time to begin.

I told myself for the fifth time that night working with her meant nothing. I kept repeating it enough in my own head that I almost saved it there.

But when I remembered the way her face had gone pale and still for that one second, everything I believed cracked straight down the middle.

If I was honest with myself, meeting her again wasn't the problem, It was the memory of exactly how much I used to want her.

I hated how easily my eyes had found her across that table, hated how my heart didn't stop beating fast until she was gone.

I dislike that some stupid, stubborn part of me had spent the entire meeting relieved, actually relieved, just to be breathing the same air as her again.

I didn't know what to do with any of that, so I did what I always did with feelings I couldn't let go.

I picked up my desk phone before I had a second thought and called Grace my Executive Assistant .

Grace answered on the first ring the way she always did, even this late.

"I need you to do some research," I said. "A very discreet one. Pull a full background check up on Elena Hart. I need full details including who her husband is.”

"Everything?" Grace asked.

"Yes. Everything."

"I'll have it ready by tomorrow sir. Goodnight, sir."

I also told her goodnight and set the phone down. I reached for a pen and slid open the top drawer of my desk, the same movement I had made a thousand times in this office. But this time, my hand froze halfway inside.

The stone was still there.

Small and gray and smooth from years of handling, it was exactly where I had left it seven years ago, tucked in the back corner behind my old business cards I never bothered to throw away either.

I picked it up slowly and turned it over in my palm, the weight of it strange and familiar hitting all at once, and for the first time in seven years I let myself actually ask the question instead of burying it.

Why had I never thrown it away?

I turned the stone over in my palm again before I dropped it back in the drawer and closed it.

I didn't sleep much that night when I got home. The following afternoon, I drove to my parent's house with a headache I had been nursing since morning.

Family dinner happened every Thursday, a tradition Richard Kane, my father treated like a board meeting and never for once allowed his deteriorating health to cancel. I usually managed to sit through it.

The house was the same as it had always been, too large, too quiet with every surface cleaned by staff who had learned to move through it without being seen.

Richard sat at the head of the table in the wheelchair and my mother Magaret Kane sat at his right hand the way she always had, straight-backed, perfectly composed, her eyes doing some kind of quick search all over me.

Tonight I couldn't concentrate at all. My mind kept drifting to Elena's face and my mother noticed before I could even sit down.

“You seem distracted," she said, before I even unfolded my napkin. Not a question. My mother didn't usually bother to ask questions when a statement would do the same work faster.

"Is something at the office?"

"It's nothing mum.” I kept my voice light, practiced. The same tone I used in meetings when I didn't want to say anything much.

"I'm just overwhelmed with work these days, nothing worth discussing over dinner."

"Hmmm. Overwhelmed with work and you are staring at the wall for five minutes straight?" She set her fork down with a small precise click, folding her hands the way she did when she'd caught the scent of something interesting. "What happened?"

I should have known better not to hesitate, even for a second, but I did anyway, and my mother has never once missed a hesitation in her life.

"Voss Global happens to be our partner concerning the ongoing project. I had a meeting with their representative yesterday, her name is Elena Hart. That's all."

Something flickered across her face, almost gone before I caught it.

"Hart," she repeated, saying the name like she was checking it in her memory. "That does ring a bell. Wasn't there a girl by that name, years ago, when you were still finding your feet at the company?"

"That was a long time ago." I reached for my own wine glass, needing somewhere to put my hands. "It doesn't matter anymore."

"Of course it doesn't." My mother smiled, and it didn't reach her eyes even a little, the same smile she used on board members she was about to outmaneuver.

"I only ask because I would want an old history to distract you now, of all times.”

My father on the other hand hadn't said a word since the conversation started, and when he finally spoke, his voice carried none of my mother's sharpness, just a flat, unhurried weight it always had, even as he was folded into that chair.

"Whatever the history is, it doesn't matter to me. As long as this project deal is still finalizing, I don't want any mistakes from you. I built this company so you wouldn't make any of my mistakes. So don't let me down."

His words immediately left no room for more conversation as he was already reaching for his water glass.

But my mother was not finished with it at all. I could see it in the way her eyes stayed on me more than necessary, filing something away instead of letting it go.

So I intentionally reassured them that there was nothing to worry about, but my father completely ignored me and turned to murmur something to the aide standing by the door about a package he was expecting.

My mother had let go of it too on the surface, but she asked me twice more before dessert whether Elena had family in the city, every question disguised as nothing but curiosity.

I didn't think anything of it at the moment. I had no reason to. I finished my dinner, told them I would call during the week and drove back home, because sitting with them would continue to bring up unnecessary questions.

In my study later that night, I sat down beside my desk with my phone close to my ears. I had been holding it for exactly four minutes.

My hand smoothed over a folder laying on the desk allowed myself to make the most satisfied smile before switching off the lamp.

"Yes I have gotten the folder you sent, you did a great job,” I said, just before hanging up.