FIVE

Amelia's POV

I was still thinking about that question when the car pulled away from the airport.

James. The chairman of the company handling my construction project was James.

I sat in the back seat and stared at the city moving past the window, and let it all settle.

Two years. I had spent two years in London building something from nothing. I had come back to this country with a plan. It had all been a clear, specific, carefully constructed plan. And somehow James Sinclair had managed to plant himself right in the middle of it without either of us arranging it.

Priya was in the seat beside me, tablet open, already moving through the morning schedule. She had the particular stillness of someone who knew they had done something wrong and was hoping it would not be addressed.

It was going to be addressed.

"Priya," I said.

"Ma'am."

"James Holding PLC." I kept my voice even. "When did you know?"

There was a pause. It was short but also telling.

"The contract was finalized three weeks ago," she said carefully. "I flagged it in the weekly report—"

"I read every weekly report, Priya. His name was not in any of them."

She pressed her lips together as she admitted her mistake. "I listed it under the holding company name. JH Construction Group. I didn't—I should have made the connection explicit. I apologize."

I looked at her, and she met my eyes and held them. I respected it. She wasn't deflecting. She was owning her mistake.

"Don't let that happen again," I said. "And I don't care how something is listed officially. If a name I need to know is connected to it, I need to know. Are we clear?"

"Completely clear," she said.

"Good." I turned back to the window. "Leave the contract as it is and don't terminate it. Don't renegotiate. Don't make any changes at all."

"Yes, ma'am. And the site meeting?"

"Schedule it for Friday. I want to meet the project lead in person."

I heard her making the note.

I watched the city outside the window and felt something settle into place in my chest. It was something cold and certain and very, very patient.

I had not come back to hide. I had not come back to heal quietly in a corner while James Sinclair ran his company and moved through a world where my name still meant nothing except his ex-wife. The barren one. The one he threw out.

I had come back because I had built something real and something earned. And I wanted James Sinclair to watch every single second of it.

Not with rage. Rage was exhausting, and it could make you sloppy. What I had was better than rage.

It was intentional.

* * *

The car pulled up to the hotel. The doorman reached for my luggage, and I stepped out onto the pavement and stood for a moment, letting the city settle around me.

A woman passing on the street stopped mid-step and looked at me. And she looked again and proceeded to take out her phone and snap me.

Six months ago in London, was when it started, and it still surprises me each time.

Priya fell into step beside me. "Your suite is ready. You have a call with your London production team at ten, and Mrs. Brooks is expecting you at the apartment by noon."

"I'll go straight to Liam first. "I was already moving toward the entrance. "Push the call to two."

"Of course." Priya tapped her tablet. Also, the Harrington gala. You've been formally invited. It's Thursday evening. Arthur Harrington is hosting. He was the lead investor on your second film."

I paused in the lobby. Arthur Harrington. I remembered him. He was a large, loud man who believed in my project when almost nobody else would put money on an unknown actress with one British film to her name. I liked him.

"Confirm it," I said. "I'll attend."

Priya nodded and made the note.

I stepped into the elevator and watched the lobby doors close. I looked at my own reflection in the mirrored wall. Cream coat, still face, and eyes that had learned not to give anything away.

I thought about James and his face the last time I had seen him—standing in front of his lawyers, barely looking at me. I thought about Isabel wearing my bracelet, the clause in the divorce agreement designed to keep me silent, the money that was never sent, and every single morning in London when I had woken up in a foreign city, pregnant and alone and penniless, and yet chosen to get up anyway.

James Sinclair was about to have my construction company on his books. He would sit across a meeting table from me. He was about to watch me sign contracts and direct projects and be exactly the woman he had called worthless to his mother's face.

And there was not one thing he could do about it.

The elevator doors opened. I walked out.

* * *

The apartment was on the fourteenth floor of a building ten minutes from the construction sites. I had chosen it myself—clean lines, high ceilings, a small second bedroom with a window that caught the morning light.

I heard him before I reached the door.

"No! My one! My one!"

I pushed the door open, and Liam was in the middle of the living room floor in his pajamas, engaged in a fierce negotiation with Mrs. Helen Brooks over a toy car. Liam was two years old and absolutely certain he was winning.

Mrs. Brooks looked up when I walked in. She was a solid, calm woman with silver-streaked natural hair and the expression of someone who had handled considerably worse than a two-year-old's negotiations.

"Morning, love," she said, completely unbothered. "He ate all his eggs. He's been up since five. And he has decided that toy car is his personal property, which it is, so I'm not sure what the argument is about."

Liam turned around and saw me.

"Mama!" He abandoned the toy car immediately and ran at me full speed.

I crouched down and caught him and held him against my chest and closed my eyes for exactly three seconds. He smelled like baby shampoo and warm toast and everything I had worked for.

"Hi, baby," I said.

"Mama's home," Liam announced, as though reporting a fact of great national importance.

"Mama's home," I confirmed. I stood up with him on my hip and looked at Mrs. Brooks. "Any trouble overnight?"

"None." Helen was already moving toward the kitchen. "I'll make you tea. You look like you haven't slept."

"I haven't."

"Sit down then." It was not a suggestion.

I sat, and Liam climbed me like a small, determined mountain and settled with his head under my chin. I held him and looked out the window at the city I had come back to claim.

* * *

Later that afternoon, after Liam had been fed and settled for his nap, I sat at the desk in the bedroom with my laptop open and my phone beside me. I pulled up everything I had on James Holding PLC. Revenue reports. Contracts. Public filings. The company was not doing well—I could see it clearly in the numbers, the kind of slow bleed that looked manageable from the outside and was actually a hemorrhage.

Good.

I had not orchestrated that. I didn't need to. James had managed his own downfall with impressive efficiency. All I needed to do was be present for it. Be visibly, undeniably, spectacularly present while it all happened.

My phone buzzed. Priya, Harrington gala confirmed. Thursday. 8 pm. Dress code: black tie.

I typed back a single word. Good.

I looked back at the financial reports. James's name was on every page as chairman. I thought about sitting across from him at the Friday site meeting. I thought about his face when he realized who owned the project his company was contracted to build.

I almost smiled.

Almost.

* * *

In the next room, Liam was asleep. Mrs. Brooks was reading in the armchair by the window, her reading glasses low on her nose, entirely at peace.

I closed the laptop and went to stand in Liam's doorway. He was flat on his back with his arms out like he was falling, the way he always slept. His toy car was in his hand even in sleep.

I watched him breathe.

This is why, I thought. Not just to make James watch. This. Him. The life he almost didn't have because his father threw us both away.

I was going to build something in this city so large and so visible that James Sinclair would not be able to look anywhere without seeing it.

And I was going to do it for Liam. And for myself. And not for one second for anyone else.

I turned off the hallway light and went to bed.

For the first time in a long time, I slept without dreaming.

* * *

The gala was in three days. James's site meeting was in four.

I was ready for both.