LOGINIan's POV"You said later. It's later."Elara stood in the doorway of the guest room, arms crossed, Sullivan three days into recovery and finally lucid enough that the house had exhaled for the first time in two weeks. She hadn't come to ask gently."It's paperwork," I said. "Guardianship contingencies. For the children, for SM Group, in case anything happens to you before Claire's found and things are — unsettled.""Show me."I took the folded page from the drawer and held it out, and she crossed the room and took it, and I watched her read it standing up, unwilling to sit for whatever it turned out to be."This names you as interim guardian," she said, flat. "Interim executor of SM Group voting shares. Interim everything, Ian.""Interim. If something happens. That's all it is.""Why would you draft this without asking me.""Because if I asked you, you'd say no on principle before you'd read a word of it, and then something would happen, and Noah and Emily would end up in a courtroom
Elara's POV"Where's the boy?"His voice came out cracked, eyes still shut, tubes still taped to the back of one hand."Which boy?" I leaned closer to the bed."The one who keeps stealing my chess pieces. Small. Loud." His eyes opened halfway, unfocused, sliding past me twice before catching. "Grace?"My stomach dropped. "It's Elara.""Elara." He said it like he was testing whether it fit his mouth. Then, sharper, suddenly present: "Where's the boy.""Noah's outside with Mrs. Adele. He's fine. You had surgery, Sullivan. Do you remember the surgery?""I remember a doctor with very cold hands." A pause, his gaze drifting to the IV line, following it up to the bag, down to the vein. "And I remember telling someone I owed them an apology I hadn't finished.""You finished it. In the hospital, before all this. You told me everything.""Did I?" Not a question, exactly — more like a man checking an inventory he couldn't fully see. His hand moved, found mine on the blanket, gripped harder than
Elara's POV "Seven hours," the surgeon said. "Eight, if the vessel's stickier than the imaging suggests. I won't lie to make the morning easier." "Don't," I said. "I've had enough people manage me gently this month." She nodded once and went through the doors, and the doors swung, and settled, and became simply a wall. Noah sat with his knees drawn up, a puzzle book open and untouched. Emily pressed against my side, her hand closed loosely around two of my fingers. "Is Grandpa Dave going to wake up funny," Noah asked, pencil still. "He might sound strange for a day or two. Tired. Slower than usual." "Okay." He went back to the puzzle, and I watched the pencil not move for a full minute before it finally did. Ian came in an hour later with coffee and two juice boxes produced from somewhere without being asked. Noah took his without looking up. Emily took hers and said, "Thank you, Ian," in the tone she reserved for people she'd decided were permanent. He sat across from me in
Ian's POV The charger was where she said it would be, coiled on the closet floor next to a travel bag with the zip half open. I picked up the charger. The bag's zip caught my eye only because a page had slipped its binding and sat crooked against the lining, and four words showed before I could stop reading them. if you don't remember I stood there with the charger wound twice around my knuckles. Somewhere below, through the floor, I could hear Noah arguing with Emily about whose turn it was to choose the cartoon, and Mrs. Adele's voice smoothing it over without raising itself, the ordinary machinery of a house running despite everything missing from it. I didn't move for what felt like a full minute. I didn't touch the bag. I straightened, left the closet exactly as I'd found it — same angle on the zip, same fold in the strap — and carried the charger downstairs, and my hands did the ordinary thing hands do: plugged it into the socket by her side of the bed, coiled the exce
Elara's POV"The imaging confirms it."Dr. Calloway turned her tablet the way she had four days ago, except this time the pale swollen shape on the screen belonged to me, and I made myself look at it the way I'd made myself look at everything else that week — straight on, no flinching, the flinching done later, alone, if at all."Same vessel family as your father's, though yours sits differently — closer to the areas responsible for memory consolidation. That's not a certainty of harm. It's a location that makes harm more likely than his does." She said it plainly, the way she'd promised. "The Melbourne specialist agrees. Surgical risk is manageable. Memory risk is real. I'd put it at meaningful odds — not a coin flip, but not something I'll pretend away either.""Numbers," I said."He'll want to give you those himself, in person, when he flies up Thursday. I won't hand you someone else's number secondhand." She closed the tablet. "What I can tell you today: it needs to happen soon, s
Elara's POV"It's already out."Ivy said it the second I picked up, no preamble, which told me how bad it was before she'd said a single detail. "Sydney Morning Herald has it. Financial Review's picking it up within the hour. Missing SM Group heiress presumed dead is Dave Sullivan's biological daughter — that's the headline, word for word, someone at the hospital sold the boardroom collapse and the DNA both.""Both.""Both. And they've connected it to the wedding footage from New York, and to the gala five years ago, and someone's dug up the old obituary — yours, from five years back, they ran your photo next to Sullivan's collapse footage like a magic trick." Ivy's voice, usually a wall, had a crack of genuine alarm in it. "This isn't a story anymore, Elara. This is the story. There are three vans outside SM Group New York and I'm told two outside the Sydney office and I don't know what's outside your house because I'm afraid to ask."I looked out my own front window. Four vans. A fi
Elara's POV I followed Ian out of the fashion show and kept my distance, slipping behind a marble pillar in the corridor. My pulse was steady, trained to hide itself; my breath slow. From my hiding place I could hear him—low, flat—answering a call.“You need to hurry up with Camila,” his mother’s
Elara's POV “What are you thinking about, Mum?” Noah’s small voice pulled me from my thoughts.“Nothing much, dear,” I said softly, smiling at him. “I was just remembering the day I gave birth to my lovely triplets. I love you, my children.”“Mum,” Emily said, her eyes sparkling with mischief, “we
Elara's POV My fingers trembled so hard I could barely unlock my phone. One deep breath. One last ounce of courage. Then I hit send — the recording, Ian’s confession, every single shred of betrayal he had thrown at me. I attached it all with a note that burned like poison on my tongue.> “Let’s se
Elara's POV Where the fuck is he? I muttered to myself as I searched the Grand Hall for Ian, my diamond stilettos clicking sharply against the marble floor. Tonight was supposed to be special—our third anniversary and my twenty-fifth birthday. Ian had promised to make it a night I’d never forget







