MasukWe sat in silence for a long moment.Rosie slept peacefully in my lap, unaware that her entire existence was the result of impossible circumstances. Calloway remained kneeling in front of me, his hand still holding mine."We both experienced it," I said finally. "The time anomaly. Whatever it was.""Yes.""But differently." I looked at him. "I lived through it. Actually died and woke up three days earlier. Got a second chance to change everything.""And I dreamed it." His thumb traced circles on my hand. "Saw your death play out night after night until I couldn't ignore it anymore.""Two different experiences of the same event.""Or two sides of the same coin." He stood, moved to sit beside me on the couch. Careful not to disturb Rosie. "You were given the chance to live it again. I was given the knowledge to prevent it."The weight of that settled over us."Why?" I asked. "Why us? Why this?""I don't know. Maybe there's no reason. Maybe
Calloway went very still.His gray eyes held mine—searching, calculating, deciding something.Then he stood. Moved to the window. Stood there for a long moment with his back to me, shoulders tense."Calloway?" I adjusted Rosie in my lap. "Did you hear what I said? About the baby? About you knowing?""I heard." His voice was quiet. Too quiet."Then—""The day I showed up at your door." He turned to face me. "You asked me once why that day. Why that specific moment. Why I came when I did."My heart hammered. "You said it was about Damien's debt. About the money he owed you.""That was part of it. But not all of it." He moved closer. Slowly. Like he was approaching something fragile. "Elena, I need to tell you something. And I need you to not interrupt until I'm finished. Can you do that?"I nodded, unable to speak.He sat across from me. Hands clasped. Eyes intense."Three months before I showed up at your house, I started having dreams
"I want to try regression therapy."Dr. Reeves looked up from her notes. We were in her office at the hospital—I'd insisted on continuing sessions even after being discharged. The penthouse felt too big. Too empty. Too full of memories I couldn't access."Regression therapy," she repeated carefully. "Elena, that's not typically recommended for trauma patients. It can be destabilizing—""I need to understand these dreams. These memories." I leaned forward. "You said my brain might be creating false narratives. But what if it's not? What if there are real memories buried somewhere and I just need help accessing them?""Regression therapy won't help you distinguish between real and false memories. In fact, it might make things worse. The line between imagination and reality becomes even more blurred.""I don't care. I need to try something." My hands clenched in my lap. "Every night I dream about dying. About falling. About timelines that shouldn't exist. And I
I was falling.The stairs stretched beneath me—endless, spiraling down into darkness. Each step hit harder than the last, pain exploding through my body with every impact.I tried to scream but no sound came out.Above me, standing at the top of the stairs, Damien watched. His face was cold. Empty. Like I was nothing.Beside him, Sienna smiled."You should have just left," she said. Her voice echoed, distorted. "None of this had to happen.""Please—" I managed to gasp. "The baby—""What baby?" Damien's laugh was cruel. "You really think I'd let you keep it?"His hand came down. Pushed.And I was falling again.Down, down, down.The stairs became walls. The walls became sky. Everything spinning, tumbling, breaking—Blood. So much blood.Pooling beneath me. Warm. Sticky. Spreading across white marble floors that shouldn't be there.I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Couldn't do anything except watch the blood and know—know w
The next morning, Calloway arrived early.I was awake—had been for hours, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember. Trying to find anything in the blank space where two years of my life should be.Nothing came.Just emptiness."Good morning." He stood in the doorway, cautious. Like he was afraid of startling me. In his hands, he held a tablet and a folder."Morning." I sat up, wincing at the pull of stitches. "What's all that?""Memories." He moved into the room, set the tablet on the bedside table. "Or at least, attempts at memories. I thought maybe if you saw photos, videos—heard stories about us—something might trigger."Hope flickered in his eyes. Desperate, raw hope that made my chest ache.I didn't have the heart to tell him I'd been trying to remember all night. That I'd stared at our wedding photo for an hour, willing myself to feel something.Anything.But there was nothing. Just confusion and a hollow sense of loss for somethi
CALLOWAY'S POV Recognition.That's what I was waiting for. That spark of awareness. That moment when her eyes would clear and she'd see me—really see me—and everything would be okay.But it didn't come.Elena stared at me with those beautiful eyes that had been closed for three days. Eyes that looked right through me like I was a stranger.Worse than a stranger.Like I was nothing."Elena?" I moved closer to the bed, keeping my voice gentle. "It's me. It's Calloway."Her brow furrowed slightly. Confusion flickered across her face. But no recognition. No relief. No emotion at all except bewilderment."Who—" Her voice was a rasp. Raw from the breathing tube. She winced, touched her throat gingerly. "Who are you?"The words hit like a knife to the chest."I'm your husband." I reached for her hand. "I'm—"She pulled away. Shrank back against the pillows, eyes wide with something that looked like fear."Don't touch me." Her b
The drive to the Hamptons took two hours. Two hours of tense silence in the back of Calloway's Mercedes, with his driver navigating weekend traffic while I stared out the window and tried not to think about the wall of surveillance photos. I'd left that room without another word. What was the
The pain came in waves. Not sharp enough to scream—but deep enough to steal my breath, curling low in my belly like something tightening from the inside out. By the time Calloway helped me into the car, my fingers were shaking so badly I couldn’t even fasten my seatbelt. “Slow breaths,” he said,
I didn’t sleep.Sleep felt like surrender, and I wasn’t ready to give Natasha Winters even that.The penthouse was silent in that particular way money always made things—no creaking pipes, no distant traffic, no reminders that the world existed beyond glass and steel. Just stillness. Artificial. C
I told myself I wouldn’t think about the email. I told myself it was just one line, stripped of context, pulled from a past I didn’t fully understand yet. That there were a hundred explanations that didn’t involve deliberate cruelty. I told myself a lot of things. Morning sunlight spilled throu







