Chapter two

 The Accounting of Ten Years

The gravel drive was silent, save for the chirp of a hidden cricket and the gentle rush of the ocean nearby. Leo, oblivious to the emotional explosion he’d just ignited, simply waited for an answer.

“Mom?” he prompted, nudging his soccer ball with the tip of his sneaker. “Is he a superhero? He has the face for it.”

Vivian swallowed the lump in her throat. She needed to protect Leo first. “Leo, go inside now. Find Mrs. Henderson and tell her I’ll be in soon. This is a private conversation.”

Leo, sensing the shift in his mother’s voice, gave Elias one last curious look before jogging obediently toward the studio door. As soon as the latch clicked shut, the silence became a suffocating pressure cooker.

Elias didn’t move, his eyes still fixed on the closed door. The cold, ruthless CEO was gone, replaced by a man whose carefully constructed decade of emotional detachment had just been pulverized. When he finally turned to Vivian, his face was pale, his jaw clenched, and his scotch-colored eyes were blazing with a pain that cut deeper than any anger.

“Ten years,” he ground out, each word heavy with accusation. “Ten years I believed you walked away, that you never cared. All this time, I’ve had a son. My son.”

Vivian felt the defensive walls she'd spent a decade erecting start to crumble, but she forced them back up. “I made a choice to protect him. I chose a peaceful life for Leo over the toxic circus of the Thorne family.”

“Toxic circus?” He laughed, a short, bitter sound devoid of humor. “You stole my right to be a father, Vivian. Do you know what that choice cost me? What it cost him?”

“And what did your family’s choice cost me?” she shot back, stepping closer, refusing to cower. “I tried to contact you, Elias. I wrote letters, I called your personal line until it was disconnected. I finally accepted the truth: you chose the business engagement. You chose your inheritance and your father’s approval over me. Why would I drag a baby into that mess?”

Elias ran a frustrated hand through his perfectly styled hair, his suit suddenly looking too confining. “You think I abandoned you? My father told me you left a message saying the summer was fun but you were moving on. He showed me forged texts. He convinced me you were a casual fling, a social climber who moved on when the real money—the fiancée—showed up.”

The revelation hit Vivian like a physical blow. A decade of certainty, of believing he was shallow, dissolved into agonizing mutual betrayal. “He lied to both of us.”

“Yes,” Elias confirmed, his voice rough. “And while I was mourning a girl who didn't exist, you were raising my heir without a word. Did you truly believe I wouldn’t want to know?”

“I believed you had made your choice,” Vivian said, tears blurring her vision. “And I decided that if I had to raise Leo alone, it would be on my terms, free from the manipulation that runs through your bloodline.”

He stepped forward again, and this time, the intimacy was terrifying. He didn’t reach for her, but the demand in his posture was absolute.

“That ends today, Vivian,” he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. “I lost ten years. I won’t lose another minute. You will tell him the truth, and I will be his father. You may have the land, but you don't own the right to keep my son from me. I will fight you with every resource I have until I get my family back.”

Vivian stared into the eyes that mirrored her son’s, recognizing the determined, unyielding man she once loved. This wasn't the fleeting summer lover; this was Elias Thorne, the architect of global deals, and he had just made her his new, non-negotiable objective.