Shadows and Cold Trails

Dominic

Dominic,

I took nothing that belonged to you. Don't look for me. But remember you promised the person who saved you that you would never let them suffer.

You broke your promise.

My breath caught in my throat. My heart stopped beating.

How did Aria know what I had whispered to my savior while I was half-unconscious on the frozen shore seven years ago?

I never told anyone what I whispered on that shore, I was half-unconscious from hypothermia. My heart had nearly stopped. I mumbled two sentences to the person pulling me onto the ice. I never put it in the police report. I never told the press.

 I didn't sleep that night.

At 6:00 AM, I was sitting in the back of my Maybach outside the headquarters of Voss Enterprises. Marcus opened the door for me, handing me a steaming cup of black coffee and a fresh tablet and off we drove, to the office.

"Report," I commanded as I stepped into my private office.

"She didn't leave a single breadcrumb, Mr. Voss."

Marcus stood in the center of my private office, placing a slim black tablet onto the polished mahogany desk. The display showed a blank network diagram; zero nodes, zero flags, zero hits.

I didn't touch the tablet. I sat motionless in my leather chair, staring at the small, handwritten note Aria had left with my legal team. The words written in her neat script burned into my mind like acid.

"What about her bank accounts?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet.

"The half-million-dollar settlement was officially declined and returned to your treasury at precisely 5:12 PM yesterday," Marcus reported, his hands clamped behind his back. "She didn't transfer a single cent to a secondary institution. She closed her personal checking account at First National entirely, withdrawing three thousand dollars in physical paper cash."

"And her phone?"

"Disconnected. The SIM card was destroyed three minutes after she walked out of the family court building." Marcus took a short breath before delivering the rest. "We ran her Social Security number through national credit agencies, housing registries, airline databases, and car rental services. Nothing. She isn't renting under her name, she hasn't flagged any medical insurance, and she hasn't booked transport out of the city."

I stood up slowly, the leather creaking under the sudden movement. "She is a single woman with three thousand dollars in cash in a city of eight million people. She cannot simply evaporate into thin air, Marcus."

"She isn't using digital infrastructure, sir," Marcus replied steadily. "Anyone using cash and staying off main commercial registries is effectively invisible to standard corporate tracing. Unless she opens a bank account or signs a formal lease, we are searching blind."

"Then double the budget," I commanded, stepping around the desk until I stood inches from my security chief. "Hire three independent investigation firms. Put surveillance on every regional transit hub, every low-income housing office, every employment agency in the lower districts. Offer a hundred-thousand-dollar private bounty for any verified lead."

"If we put out a bounty that high, the media will pick it up," Marcus warned. "The board of directors is already asking why your personal security expenditure doubled overnight."

"Let them ask," I snapped. "Find my wife."

"Ex-wife, sir," Marcus corrected quietly.

The word hung in the cold air of the office like a blow to the chest. I turned away, gripping the edge of the marble windows overlooking the city skyline. Down there, somewhere in the gray, rainy sprawl, Aria was alone. She had no corporate umbrella, no family protection, and no money.

And it was entirely my fault.

By eight o'clock that evening, I couldn't stand the quiet of the office any longer. I took my car and drove straight to the penthouse, hoping the movement would stop the relentless noise in my head.

When I unlocked the front door, the heavy scent of jasmine perfume hit me immediately. Lila was sitting on the plush velvet sofa in the living room, wearing a soft cream-colored sweater, a glass of red wine in her hand. The coffee table was covered with interior design catalogues and fabric swatches for the guest bedroom.

"You're late," Lila said, setting her glass down with a gentle click. She gave me a warm, fragile smile and stood up, walking toward me with her usual light, deliberate steps. "I had the chef prepare salmon. I can ask him to heat it up…"

"I'm not hungry," I said, unbuttoning my coat without looking at her.

Lila paused, her smile faltering slightly. She reached out to smooth the lapel of my jacket, but I took a deliberate step back to hang my coat on the brass rack. Her hand dropped into empty air.

"Dominic," she said softly, her eyes filling with instant concern. "You look exhausted. What's wrong? Is work stressful?"

I looked at her; really looked at her. For seven years, I had viewed her as a fragile glass figure that needed to be shielded from every harsh breeze. I had built my whole life around repaying the debt I owed her.

"Where were you the night I was taken to the hospital seven years ago, Lila?" I asked.

The question fell into the room like a stone dropped down a deep well.

Lila blinked, her delicate brow furrowing. "What? Dominic, why are you asking about that now? You know how painful those memories are for me."

"I know," I said, keeping my voice level. "But I want to hear it again. Tell me how you got me out of the water."

Lila took a small, nervous step back toward the sofa, her fingers twisting the edge of her sweater. 

"We were on the ice near the old boathouse. You broke through. I... I grabbed your coat. I dragged you onto the bank and yelled for help until the paramedics came. Then I collapsed, and... and my legs..." Her voice cracked on cue, tears shimmering in her lower lashes. "You know this, Dominic. Why are you making me re-live the night I lost my ability to walk?"

I stared at her pale, weeping face, searching for the raw, desperate strength it would take a sixteen-year-old girl to haul a six-foot boy out of a frozen lake.

"Did I say anything to you on the shore?" I asked softly.

Lila wiped a tear from her cheek, shaking her head quickly. "No. You were unconscious, Dominic. You didn't say anything until you woke up in the intensive care unit three days later."

Cold ice settled directly behind my ribs.

I didn't say a word. I turned on my heel, walked into my private study, and locked the heavy oak door behind me, leaving Lila calling my name in the hallway.

I sat down at the dark desk in the pitch-black room.

I had mumbled two sentences on that frozen bank while my heart was stopping. I had whispered them into the shoulder of the person dragging me through the snow before I lost consciousness completely.

I will never let you suffer. I promise.

Lila had just told me I said nothing.

Which meant the woman who had pulled me out of the ice seven years ago wasn't the woman crying in my living room.

It was the woman currently starving somewhere in the cold city because I had thrown her away.

I grabbed my private phone, dialed Marcus's direct line, and slammed the speaker button.

"Sir?" Marcus answered on the second ring

.

"Forget the high-society registries," I said, my voice shaking with a rage I couldn't control. 

"Check the Caldwell family records from seven years ago. Medical logs, ambulance dispatch times, local clinic intakes. Everything.

Someone altered the narrative of that accident, Marcus, and I want to know who paid for it."