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.