The morning sun cut through the thick Manhattan fog, casting long, bright beams of light across the polished marble floors of the St. Jude Medical Center lobby.

Alivia walked briskly down the main corridor. She wore a crisp, perfectly pressed white lab coat over her navy scrubs. In her hands, she held Theodore Duncan’s latest blood work reports. Her eyes were glued to the numbers, her mind calculating the exact dosage of anesthetics needed for the upcoming surgery.

At the exact same time, walking toward her from the opposite end of the intersecting hallway, was a middle-aged nanny holding the hand of a small boy.

Julian.

Julian was wearing a small gray sweater. His face was pale, and his gray-blue eyes darted nervously around the busy hospital. The nightmares from the previous night had left him highly agitated. He was scheduled for his weekly trauma therapy session in the pediatric wing.

Suddenly, the heavy black walkie-talkie clipped to the nanny’s belt blared to life with an urgent, static-filled dispatch from the estate’s security detail. Startled by the sudden noise, she instinctively let go of Julian’s hand for exactly one second to press the communication button and lower the volume.

In that exact, fatal second of distraction, a hospital janitor pushed a massive, squeaky metal laundry cart out from a blind corner. The harsh, grating screech of the wheels against the linoleum echoed like gunfire in the corridor. The sudden, chaotic noise violently triggered Julian’s deeply ingrained trauma.

Panic flashed in the boy’s eyes. He bolted.

He ran blindly around the corner, his small sneakers squeaking against the linoleum.

Alivia was turning the corner, her eyes still locked on the medical file.

Thud.

Julian crashed headfirst into Alivia’s legs. The impact was hard enough to knock the breath out of the small boy. He bounced off her knees and fell hard onto his bottom.

Alivia gasped. The folders slipped from her hands, papers scattering across the floor.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Alivia said immediately.

She dropped to her knees, reaching out to check if the child was hurt. Her hands gently grasped his small shoulders.

Julian looked up.

Alivia’s heart stopped beating. The blood in her veins turned to ice.

She stared into a pair of large, striking gray-blue eyes. They were the exact same shade, the exact same shape, as Collis Duncan’s. But it wasn’t just the eyes. It was the slope of his nose, the curve of his jaw. It was a miniature, innocent version of the monster who haunted her nightmares.

But beneath the terror of recognizing Collis in the boy’s face, something else hit her. A violent, inexplicable pull in her chest. A deep, agonizing ache that felt like her soul was trying to rip itself out of her body to reach him.

Her hands froze on his shoulders. Her fingers began to tremble uncontrollably. She couldn’t breathe.

“Julian! Oh, thank heavens!”

The nanny came rushing around the corner, her face flushed with panic. She dropped to her knees next to Alivia and reached for the boy.

“I am so sorry, Doctor,” the nanny babbled, trying to pull Julian up. “The young master gets so frightened by loud noises. Come on, Julian, let’s go.”

The young master.

The words hit Alivia like a physical blow to the stomach.

Collis’s son.

The realization was a rusty knife twisting violently in her gut. Five years ago, she had given birth in a filthy medical tent, surrounded by blood and fire. Her baby had burned to ashes.

And Collis? Collis had moved on. He had found another woman. He had built a family. He had a beautiful, living son, while hers was nothing but dust in the Syrian desert.

The betrayal, the profound injustice of it all, shattered the icy wall she had built around her heart. Tears instantly flooded her eyes, blurring her vision.

She tried to pull her hands back. She needed to stand up. She needed to run to a bathroom and vomit.

But Julian didn’t move.

Instead of letting the nanny pull him away, Julian reached out with his small, pale hand. His tiny fingers clamped down hard on the crisp white fabric of Alivia’s lab coat. He gripped it with terrifying strength.

“Julian, let go,” the nanny pleaded, pulling his arm. “You’re bothering the doctor.”

Julian ignored her. He stared directly into Alivia’s tear-filled eyes. His own eyes were wide, filled with a desperate, silent pleading.

Alivia looked down at the small hand clutching her coat. A sob caught in her throat.

“It’s… it’s okay,” Alivia choked out, her voice raw and shaking. She looked at the boy, a tear slipping down her cheek and landing on the back of his hand. “Please, sweetheart. You have to let go.”

Julian stared at the tear on his hand.

He reached his free hand into the pocket of his sweater. He pulled out a small, laminated white card. It was a flashcard, the kind used by speech therapists for non-verbal children.

He held the card up, pushing it right into Alivia’s line of sight.

Drawn on the card in messy, uneven black crayon was a crude stick-figure of a woman with long dark hair. Beneath the drawing, written in shaky, oversized childish letters, was a single word he had clearly practiced a hundred times.

MAMA.

Julian pointed a trembling finger at the drawing, and then immediately pointed straight at Alivia’s face.

The world stopped spinning. The ambient noise of the hospital vanished.

Alivia stared at the letters. The words burned into her retinas. It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck her directly in the chest. Her breath left her in a sharp, painful gasp. She was completely paralyzed.

“Julian. Come here.”

The voice was low, cold, and echoed with absolute authority down the hallway.

Alivia’s blood ran cold.

She slowly turned her head. Standing twenty feet away, dressed in a sharp black suit, was Collis. His dark eyes were fixed on them, his expression unreadable, but the air around him was lethal.

Julian flinched at the sound of his father’s voice. His small fingers slowly, reluctantly uncurled from Alivia’s coat.

Alivia scrambled backward. She practically threw herself onto her feet, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand in a frantic, desperate motion. She turned to face the man who had destroyed her life, her heart bleeding from a wound she didn’t even fully understand.

Alivia stood in the middle of the hallway, her chest heaving as she desperately tried to force the air back into her lungs.

She looked down. Julian’s small hand had dropped to his side. The flashcard with the crude drawing and the word MAMA hung loosely in his fingers.

The agony in Alivia’s chest was unbearable. She wanted to scream. She wanted to rip the card from his hand and tear it to pieces. She forced herself to look away from the boy, locking her eyes onto the polished floor tiles.

The nanny quickly scooped Julian up into her arms, murmuring frantic apologies, and scurried away down the corridor, disappearing around the corner.

Collis closed the distance between them. His long, measured strides ate up the space until he was standing less than three feet away from her.

He didn’t say a word about the boy. He didn’t ask why there were fresh tear tracks shining on her cheeks.

Instead, he reached inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He pulled out a thick, sealed white envelope.

He held it out toward her. His face was a mask of cold, corporate indifference.

“Dr. Clay,” Collis said, his voice flat. “This is the retainer fee for the preliminary surgical prep. The rest will be wired to your account upon my grandfather’s successful recovery.”

Alivia stared at the envelope. It was thick enough to hold a check that could buy a small island. It was his way of reminding her of the power dynamic. He was the master; she was the hired help.

She took a deep breath, forcing the tremor out of her hands. She reached out and pinched the corner of the envelope, deliberately keeping her fingers as far away from his as possible. She snatched it from his grip.

“The Duncan family’s reputation for throwing money at problems is well-earned,” Alivia said. Her voice was brittle, laced with a bitter sarcasm she couldn’t hide.

Collis’s eyes narrowed slightly at her tone, but before he could respond, a loud crash echoed from the adjacent intersecting hallway.

A young nursing student had lost her grip on a heavy, motorized surgical equipment cart. The cart, loaded with hundreds of pounds of metal trays and monitors, hit a slight downward slope in the linoleum floor.

It careened wildly around the corner, picking up speed, heading directly for Alivia’s back.

“Look out!” the nurse screamed.

Collis saw it before Alivia even had time to turn her head.

He didn’t think. The reaction bypassed his brain entirely and fired straight from his muscle memory.

He lunged forward. His large hands clamped down hard on Alivia’s upper arms. With a violent, powerful heave, he yanked her forward, pulling her completely off her feet.

He spun them both around, swapping their positions in a fraction of a second. He pulled her flush against his chest and hunched his broad shoulders, turning his back to the runaway cart.

SMASH.

The heavy metal corner of the cart slammed brutally into the center of Collis’s spine.

Collis let out a sharp, guttural grunt of pain. His body jerked forward from the impact, but his arms remained locked around Alivia like a steel cage, absorbing the entire blow so she wouldn’t feel a thing.

Alivia’s face was smashed against the hard muscle of his chest.

Her nose was instantly flooded with the overwhelming scent of cedarwood, expensive fabric, and his raw, masculine heat.

The sensation of his arms wrapped completely around her, trapping her, shielding her with his own body… it was the exact same way he used to hold her when she had a panic attack in the basement. He would lock her in his arms and whisper that he was the only one who could protect her.

It wasn’t a memory. It was a physical flashback.

Pure, unadulterated terror exploded in Alivia’s brain. The trauma response hijacked her nervous system.

“NO!”

Alivia let out a sound that was half-scream, half-sob. It was the sound of an animal caught in a trap.

She brought both of her hands up between them. She placed her palms flat against his chest and shoved.

It wasn’t a polite push. It was a violent, desperate explosion of strength fueled by pure adrenaline.

Collis, caught off guard by the sheer ferocity of her reaction, and still off-balance from the cart hitting his back, was thrown backward.

His grip broke.

Alivia stumbled backward, her heels skidding on the floor. She didn’t stop until her shoulder blades slammed hard against the wall of the corridor.

She stood there, pressed flat against the wall. Her chest was heaving violently, sucking in massive gulps of air. Her eyes were wide, wild, and filled with a look of absolute, naked horror as she stared at him.

It was the look of a victim staring at her abuser.

The hallway went dead silent. The nursing student stood frozen in shock.

Collis slowly straightened up. He ignored the throbbing pain radiating down his spine. He looked at his empty hands, then slowly raised his head to look at Alivia.

He saw the terror in her eyes. He saw the way she was shrinking against the wall, treating him not like a man who had just saved her from a broken spine, but like a monster about to devour her.

No stranger reacts like that.

The storm clouds gathered in Collis’s dark gray eyes. The cold indifference vanished, replaced by a terrifying, hyper-focused intensity.

He took a slow, deliberate step toward her. The predator had finally woken up.