Masuk“I don’t remember losing you.”His fingers tighten around mine, warm, familiar, like they’ve always belonged there. But I remember everything. The silence. The distance. The night I found him in bed with someone I trusted more than him. So I pull my hand away. “You already did,” I say quietly. ******************************* Elena Hart spent three years married to billionaire Alexander Cross, three years of cold indifference, quiet humiliation, and a love that only existed on paper until the night it shattered completely, she walked away without looking back. Divorce papers signed and her freedom within reach, but two weeks later, everything changed. An accident leaves Alexander with no memory of the last five years, no memory of their broken marriage, no memory of the divorce, no memory of the woman he became. To him, Elena is still his wife. And somehow… the only person he wants. Pulled back into the Cross empire under a carefully constructed arrangement, Elena agrees to stay temporarily for her sister’s safety, for her own future, and for a deal she cannot afford to refuse. But the man waiting for her is not the one she left behind, this Alexander is attentive, gentle and devastatingly aware of her in ways he never was before, he remembers how she takes her coffee. Not the nights she cried alone. And the more he gets closer… The more dangerous it becomes, because Elena knows the truth: This version of him isn’t real and when his memory returns, the man who broke her will come back with it. But what she doesn’t know— Is that the memory loss was never real to begin with. And this time, the man she’s learning to trust again… Might be the one rewriting everything.
Lihat lebih banyakElena's Pov
The front door clicks shut behind me. I shift the paper bag higher against my hip, careful not to crush it, and nudge my heels off with the edge of my foot. The apartment is quiet. Too quiet for this time of night. I barely notice. My attention is on the bag, on the warmth still clinging to the paper, on the ridiculous fact that I stood in line for twenty minutes just to get it right. Alexander hates when the bread gets soggy. I listen for footsteps. There are none. No voice. No sign that he even knows I'm home. "That's fine," I murmur, more to myself than anyone else. "It's not like he waits." My bare feet press against the marble floor as I move further in. The house is dim except for the low glow spilling from the hallway lights, clean and untouched, like a showroom instead of a home. Three years, and I still haven't figured out how to make it feel like anything else. I climb the stairs anyway. The paper bag rustles faintly with each step. There's a strange, quiet anticipation sitting in my chest.. not excitement, not really, but something close enough that I don't question it. Maybe tonight he'll notice. I almost laugh at myself halfway up. "Don't start," I whisper. By the time I reach the hallway, the house feels even quieter. The door to the master bedroom is slightly ajar, a thin strip of warm light cutting across the dark floor. I pause, shifting the bag in my hands. "Alexander?" I call lightly. No answer. I push the door open. The bag slips from my hands before I fully process what I'm seeing. The soft thud of it hitting the floor barely registers. For a moment nothing moves, not even me. I stop breathing. Alexander is in the bed. And he isn't alone. Leo turns first. His expression changes too quickly… surprise, then something sharper, something almost guilty. I don't react to it. I don't react to anything. My gaze drifts over the sheets twisted around bare skin, the disheveled pillows, the familiarity of this space warped into something I don't recognize. My best friend. My husband. In our bed. "E-Elena—" Leo starts, pushing himself up, his voice cracking in a way I've never heard from him before. I don't answer. For a suspended second, everything feels distant, like I'm watching it from somewhere outside my own body. My mind doesn't shatter. It simply aligns. The late nights. The unread messages. The way Alexander never looked at me but never quite let me go either. The quiet, creeping sense that I was the only one still pretending this marriage meant anything. It settles into place with a clarity that almost feels like relief. "Say something," Leo says, sharper now, more desperate. "Elena, this isn't—" I turn before he can finish. I don't cry. I don't shake. I just make a clean, quiet movement toward the door. "Elena," he calls again, louder. "Wait—" I don't. I step into the hallway, pull the door shut behind me, and walk. I keep my pace steady all the way to the front door, put my heels on without thinking. The paper bag is still on the bedroom floor. I leave it there. Outside, the night air hits my skin, cool and sharp. I breathe it in, exhale just as slowly, and walk to my car. Nobody follows me. No one calls again. I start the engine and drive. ********* The sun is starting to come up by the time I reach my lawyer's building. I don't remember most of the drive, the city passed in blurred lights and empty streets, my hands steady on the wheel, my thoughts quiet. Not blank. Just settled, like something that had been trying to break for years had finally given up. He answers the door in a wrinkled shirt, blinking at me. "Elena? Do you know what time it is?" "Yes," I say. "I need you to draft divorce papers." That wakes him up fully. He studies my face like he's searching for cracks. "Are you sure you don't want to—" "I'm sure." Something in my tone convinces him. He steps aside. "Come in." The hours that follow move with a strange, deliberate rhythm. Paperwork spreads across the table. Pens click open and closed. Questions asked, answered, clarified. "Assets will need to be carefully outlined," he says, flipping through a document. "Given the scale of Cross Enterprises—" "I don't want anything I didn't bring into the marriage," I cut in. "Elena—" "I mean it." I don't shift my gaze. "I don't want his money. I don't want the house. I don't want the company. I just want out." A brief silence. Then he nods slowly. "Alright." I sign the final page just as the first real light of morning filters through the windows. My signature is clean, practiced. I set the pen down and align it with the edge of the document. "There," I say quietly. He exhales. "I'll have everything filed immediately." "Thank you." I stand, smoothing my hands over my dress out of habit more than necessity. For a second I just look at the stack of papers on the table. Three years, reduced to ink and signatures. "Are you okay?" he asks. I consider the question. Then I nod once. "I will be." ******* Outside, the morning air feels lighter. I step onto the sidewalk, my heels clicking softly against the pavement as I draw a slow breath. The city is waking up around me quiet movements building into something louder, something alive. For the first time in a long time, I don't feel like I'm moving through it alone. My phone vibrates in my hand. I glance down, expecting nothing important. *Unknown Number.* I open the message. *Alexander Cross in critical condition. You are still listed as his emergency contact.* I stop walking. There's no sudden rush of sound or motion. Just a stillness that settles around me, heavy and precise. My fingers tighten around the phone. I read the message again. Then once more. A strange, quiet laugh almost escapes me, but I catch it before it fully forms. "Of course," I murmur. Of course. I just walked away. Just signed the papers. Just closed the door on the past. And somehow…somehow… I'm still being pulled back in. I lift my gaze to the street ahead of me, the early sunlight stretching across the pavement. For a moment I don't move. Then my grip on the phone steadies. And I exhale.Chapter 33 — Victoria's TurnI bring the storage unit evidence to Victoria the next morning, before breakfast, before either of us has had coffee, because some conversations deserve to happen before the day has a chance to build any more armor around either of us.She's already at her desk when I arrive, reading glasses low on her nose, a stack of correspondence half-sorted in front of her. She looks up when I close the door behind me, and something in my expression must give away how serious this is, because she sets her pen down immediately, all business."You look like a woman who didn't sleep," she says."I didn't." I cross the room and set my phone on the desk in front of her, the storage unit photographs already pulled up. "I need you to see this before anyone else does."She reads through the photographed messages in complete silence, her expression giving away nothing until she reaches the final exchange — *Thursday. Everything needs to be finalized by Thursday* — where somet
Chapter 32 — An Uneasy AllianceHe finds me in the study that night, exactly where I expect him to, and for once he doesn't wait for me to set the terms of the conversation."I need you to tell me what you know about Thursday," he says, closing the door behind him. "Not fragments. Not whatever you think is safe to hand me. Everything."I set down my pen slowly, studying him. There's a different quality to his voice tonight, less careful, less managed, something closer to a man who's finally decided the cost of staying quiet has grown larger than the cost of being honest."Why the sudden urgency," I say. "You've spent weeks asking me to trust your silence. Now you want mine handed over on demand?""Because someone's about to leak information about the South Corridor to a journalist, and apparently that same day is the deadline for whatever's actually been orchestrating my life since I woke up in that hospital bed," he says. "If I'm going to be blindsided by something that could destro
The emergency board session gets called at nine in the morning, which is unusual enough on its own to tell me something's gone wrong before anyone explains what. Victoria's already seated when I arrive, her face carefully composed, though I've learned to read the particular stiffness in her shoulders as something closer to alarm than her usual controlled calm. "A journalist reached out to the press office overnight," she says, once the room is full and the door is closed. "Questions about irregular shipping routes tied to Cross Enterprises. Specific enough that whoever's feeding them information has real access, not speculation." My stomach drops. The South Corridor. "How specific," Alexander asks, his voice carefully even, though I catch the tension in his jaw the second the question leaves his mouth. "Specific enough to name Doyle directly," Victoria says. "And specific enough to reference a shell entity connected to a name none of us have said out loud in this room before." D
Chapter 30 — The Second PhoneRenata comes to me two days later, slipping a folded note into my hand during a moment when no one else is watching, the kind of careful, practiced motion that tells me this isn't the first time she's had to pass information without being seen doing it.*Storage unit. Fairview Self-Storage, unit 214. Access code 0819. I don't go there myself... I only ever receive instructions to leave things or collect things left for me. I've never had the courage to look inside anything beyond what I'm told to move.*I fold the note into my pocket and go about the rest of my day as normally as I can manage, though normal has become a difficult word to define lately. At dinner, Alexander asks whether I'm feeling alright, I've apparently gone quiet enough that even he's noticed, which unsettles me more than I let show."I'm fine," I say. "Just tired.""You've been saying that a lot lately.""So have you," I say, and something in his expression shifts, like he wants to p












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