Chapter two

[Peter’s POV}

The clock on my screen read 6:58. Two minutes. Two minutes and I could leave this building, go home, and sit in the dark where no one needed anything from me. I had just reached for the wheels of my chair when my phone buzzed across the desk.

Unknown number. "Mr. Stargard?" A flat, tired voice. "This is the Seventh Precinct. We have your brother here. Luca Stargard. He got into a fight with one of our officers. He's being held." I closed my eyes. Of course. Of course he did. "I'm on my way," I said, and hung up.

My assistant, Daniel, appeared in the doorway before I even moved. He always knew. "Sir, before you go, the contract. The new consultant. She resumes tomorrow, and we need your signature tonight, or we lose her start date."

"Then give it to me." I held out my hand. He hesitated, holding the folder against his chest. "Don't you want to look through her application first? Her record, her reference"

"No." I took the pen. "Mr. Ranord recommended her. In thirty years, that man never once gave me a bad name. He was the most trusted person in this company. If he says she's the best, she's the best." I signed without reading a single line. The name at the top of the page didn't even register.

I was already thinking about the precinct, about Luca, about how tired I was of cleaning up messes that were never mine. "Checking wasn't necessary. Book my car and have the ramp ready." The drive felt endless. By the time Daniel wheeled me through the precinct doors, my jaw ached from clenching it.

***

Funny thing. I sat in a chair with wheels. I couldn't stand, couldn't chase anyone, couldn't throw a punch if my life depended on it. And still, the moment I rolled into that station, the room went quiet. An officer straightened his back. Another looked away. They knew the Stargard name. They knew what it could do to a career, a pension, a future. My legs were dead weight under a blanket, but my name walked in ahead of me and made grown men nervous.

"Mr. Stargard." The desk sergeant came around fast, almost tripping. "We didn't expect you yourself. We could have"

"Where is he?"They brought Luca out. His lip was split, and his knuckles were raw, and he had that look he always wore, as if the whole world owed him something. He smirked when he saw me. "Took you long enough, big brother."

I didn't smile back. I turned to the officer. "I apologize for my brother's behavior. It won't happen again." The words tasted like ash, but I said them cleanly. "Whatever the damage is, send it to me."

Money and manners. That was all it took. They released him. Luca strolled out ahead of me, free and careless, hands in his pockets, while Daniel pushed my chair down the ramp and into the car. I watched my brother move the way I never could, loose and easy, his legs carrying him wherever he pleased. I paid for a fight I didn't start, for a brother who wished I'd never been born, and I did it sitting down.

I didn't say one word to him the whole way home, that night I didn't sleep. I never slept well I lay in the dark and listened to the house breathe around me, this big empty house full of people who weren't my family, and I thought about nothing, because thinking about anything always led back to the same places I couldn't afford to go.

Morning came gray and slow. I let them dress me, lift me, settle me into my chair. By the time Daniel rolled me into the office, I'd already built my walls back up, the way I did every single day. "Good morning, sir," Daniel said, falling into step beside me.

"The new consultant," I said. "Did she come in?"

"Yes, sir. Arrived early. She's settling into her office now."

"Good. Send for her. I want to meet her before the morning runs away from me." I liked to measure people fast. One meeting. One look in the eyes. I always knew within a minute whether someone would waste my time.

Daniel nodded and left. I turned my chair toward the window and let the city fill the glass, all those tiny people down there living their tiny, ordinary lives. I used to think I'd have an ordinary life too. A wife. Children running down a hallway. A mother who was still alive. Legs that worked. I let the thought come, and then I crushed it, the way I always did.

I heard her before I saw her. A knock, quick and nervous. Then footsteps. Then the door banged open hard, too fast, like whoever was behind it had too much life in them to be careful. I opened my mouth to say something sharp, something about manners.

And the words never came. she stood in the doorway with the morning light behind her, one hand still on the door, a smile already half-born on her lips. Dark hair. Bright, hopeful eyes. A face I had spent three years trying to bury so deep it would never surface again.

"Good morning, I'm Claire Mill…"

She stopped. She saw me. I watched the smile freeze on her mouth, watched her eyes drop to the chair, to the wheels, to the blanket over my legs, then climb back to my face. Confusion and joy and shock all crashing together at once.

Claire Miller, the name I'd signed last night without reading. The name I'd trusted Mr. Ranord to hand me, blind, like a fool. Claire. The girl I had loved before I knew what love could cost. The girl I had cut off without a word, whose hundred messages I'd deleted unread, whose voice I'd locked away in a room inside me and thrown out the key. The girl whose father had destroyed everything I ever had.

Three years.  I'd run from this exact moment. I'd crossed an ocean to get away from it. I'd gone silent to make sure it never came. And now she was standing in my office. My own hand had let her in.

"Peter?" she whispered, and the sound of my name in her mouth undid three years in a single second. I gripped the arms of my chair until my knuckles went white. I couldn't rise, I couldn't walk out. I couldn't do a single thing but sit there and let her see me like this.

Of all the people in the world I had just hired the one person I swore I would never see again.