The Other Woman

Lena’s POV

I stared at the photograph for a long time.

The woman in it looked happy in a way that felt almost naive. Like she had no idea happiness was something that could be taken from you overnight. Like she’d never learned that particular lesson yet.

I put it face down on the table.

“Who else knows you found me,” I said.

Damien’s jaw tightened. That small movement I was already learning to read like a tell.

“My Beta,” he said.

I looked up. “Your what.”

A pause. Brief but loaded. “My second in command. At work.”

Something about the way he corrected himself snagged in my mind like a thread caught on a nail. I filed it away.

“Anyone else.”

“One other person.” His voice changed on that. Flattened out in a way that was different from his usual careful control. This was something else. Something that tasted like a name he didn’t want to say.

“Who,” I said.

He looked at the photograph lying face down between us.

“Her name is Nadia,” he said.

The name landed strangely. Like a sound I’d heard before in a dream I couldn’t quite grab on waking. My stomach moved in a way I didn’t like.

“Who is she,” I said.

“She was.” He stopped. Started again. “After you disappeared she was someone I turned to. Someone I shouldn’t have.”

I looked at him steadily. “You were with her.”

“For eight months. It ended six months ago.”

I waited for something to hurt. Some jealousy reflex, some territorial animal response. Nothing came except a cold and very focused suspicion.

“Why did it end,” I said.

“Because I found out she knew where you were.”

Everything in the room went still.

“Say that again,” I said quietly.

“She knew.” His voice was controlled but only just. “Not from the beginning. But she found out about eight months in and she didn’t tell me. She let me keep looking. Let me spend another year and a half while she sat on the information.”

My mouth was dry.

“Why would she do that,” I said.

He looked at me and didn’t answer and the answer was obvious and I felt stupid for asking it.

She didn’t want him to find me.

Because if he found me everything changed.

“Does she know you’re here now,” I said.

“Yes. She figured it out two days ago.”

“So she knows I’m in this city. She knows this address.”

“Lena.”

“Does she know where I live Damien.”

The look on his face was its own answer.

I stood up. Walked to the window without thinking and looked down at the street below. Normal Tuesday morning. A woman walking a dog. Two kids on bikes. A man reading something on his phone outside the cafe across the road.

The man looked up.

Not at the street. At my window.

Directly at my window.

I stepped back fast.

“There’s a man outside,” I said. “He was looking up here.”

Damien was beside me in three seconds flat. The speed of it startled me. He moved like someone who’d spent a lot of time moving fast in small spaces. He looked down, his shoulder almost touching mine and the shaking in my hands went from low to violent.

“Grey jacket,” I said. “Outside the cafe.”

The man was gone.

Damien stared at the empty spot for a moment. Something moved through his expression that I hadn’t seen yet. Not worry. Not calculation.

Fury. Cold and very quiet.

“Pack a bag,” he said.

“Excuse me.”

He turned from the window. “Not everything. Three days worth. You’re not staying here tonight.”

I stared at him. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t know you.”

“You know enough.”

“I know you humiliated me publicly, your ex girlfriend hid my location for a year and a half and there’s possibly someone watching my apartment.” I held up three fingers. “None of those things are reasons to follow you somewhere.”

He looked at me. And I saw him make a decision behind his eyes.

He reached into his jacket again. Different pocket this time. Pulled out a folded piece of paper and held it out.

I took it.

Unfolded it.

It was a medical document. Worn, official, dated two and a half years ago. I scanned it fast and then went back to the top and read it slowly because the first pass hadn’t made sense.

Patient admitted with severe lacerations to the torso and legs. Evidence of prolonged exposure. Significant blood loss. No identification found. Patient also presented with early stage

I stopped reading.

My hands were shaking so hard the paper rattled.

Early stage pregnancy. Approximately six weeks. Fetal heartbeat present on admission.

I looked up at Damien.

His face was absolutely wrecked.

“I was pregnant,” I said. The words felt like they belonged to someone else. Like I was reading them off a card.

“Yes.”

“What happened to.”

“The records stop there.” His voice was rough. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to find out. The hospital closed two years ago and the records were transferred and I haven’t been able to get full access yet.”

I sat back down because standing wasn’t something my legs were interested in anymore.

Six weeks pregnant. Alone in a hospital with no name and no memory and no one coming.

Something cracked open in my chest. Not memory. Something older than memory. Something that lived in a place the amnesia hadn’t reached.

Loss. Grief without a face. The specific hollowness of something missing that you can’t even name because you don’t remember having it.

I had felt that hollowness for two years.

I had assumed it was the amnesia.

“Was it yours,” I said. My voice came out flat and strange.

“Yes.”

One word. Just one. But the weight of it filled the entire room.

I looked at this man I didn’t remember. This man who had broken me publicly and then spent two years looking for me. Who was sitting in my living room with shadows under his eyes and guilt written into every line of his face.

I wanted to scream at him.

I wanted to throw the medical document at his head.

I wanted to remember. God I wanted to remember. Not for him. For me. For whatever was lost in that hospital with no name and no one holding its hand.

“Pack a bag Lena,” he said softly. “Please. I will explain everything. I will answer every question you have. But not here. Not tonight.”

I looked at the window.

At the empty spot on the pavement where the man in the grey jacket had been standing.

I thought about Ria. About her thirty minute check-ins. About how she had said people who showed up from before either wanted to help or wanted something.

I thought about the hollow place in my chest that had never had a name until sixty seconds ago.

I got up and went to the bedroom.

I packed a bag.