CHAPTER 6

Elena's pov

Three days.

That was how long I stayed in that house after I asked for a divorce. Three of the longest, most suffocating days of my life.

Damien and I didn't speak. We moved around each other like strangers who happened to share the same walls. He left early. He came back late. Sometimes he didn't come back at all.

On the second day, I called a lawyer. A woman named Patricia Cole whose number I had looked up online at two in the morning while Damien slept. She was soft-spoken but sharp, and when I told her everything, she was quiet for a moment before she spoke.

"Mrs. Volkov," she said carefully. "Do you have any evidence of the affair?"

I thought about the ultrasound picture. I had taken a photo of it on my phone before I put it back on the dresser. Smart. Maybe the only smart thing I'd done in years.

"Yes," I told her. "I have evidence."

"Good." Her voice was steady. "Then we have something to work with."

On the third day, I packed a bag. Not everything. Just what mattered. My documents. A few clothes. The small envelope of cash I had been quietly saving from grocery money for the past year without quite knowing why. As if some part of me had always known this day was coming.

I stood in the middle of the bedroom one last time, looking around. Five years. Five years of my life lived inside these expensive walls. And yet nothing in this room felt like mine. Not the furniture. Not the art on the walls. Not even the bed.

Nothing here had ever truly been mine.

I picked up my bag and I left.

I didn't leave a note, I didn't say goodbye. I just walked out the front door and kept walking.

I found a small apartment in Millbrook, two cities away. It was nothing like the mansion. The ceiling had a water stain in the corner. The heater made a strange clicking sound at night. The windows were thin and let in the cold.

But it was mine.

I got a job at a small bakery around the corner from the apartment building. The owner, a large warm woman named Miss Clara, hired me on the spot when I told her I needed work immediately. The hours were long and my feet ached by the end of each shift, but the money was something. It was a start.

I had been in Millbrook for almost three weeks when my phone rang. I was sitting on the floor of my small apartment, eating crackers because my stomach couldn't handle much more than that lately, when I saw Damien's name light up the screen.

I stared at it. Let it ring. Let it ring again. Then I picked up.

"Elena." His voice was different from the last time we had spoken. There was something tighter in it. Something unsettled.

"What do you want, Damien?"

"Where are you?"

"That's none of your business."

"Come home." A pause. Then, low and controlled.

"No."

"Elena—"

"I'm not coming back." My voice didn't shake. I was proud of that. "I want the divorce, Damien. Have your lawyer contact Patricia Cole."

"Who the hell is Patricia Cole?"

"My lawyer." I paused. "Goodbye."

I hung up.

My hands were trembling slightly when I put the phone down, but I pressed them flat against my thighs and breathed through it. In. Out. In. Out.

The baby shifted inside me. Just slightly. Just barely enough.

I pressed my hand to my stomach and closed my eyes, "I know," I whispered. "I know, baby. We're okay."

I went back to work the next morning. And the morning after that. I told no one about the pregnancy yet. Not Miss Clara. Not my lawyer. Not anyone.

I was barely eight weeks along and the fear of something going wrong kept me quiet. The doctor I had seen once in those early days had reminded me that early pregnancy was fragile. That stress was dangerous.

So I kept my head down and worked. I ate what I could stomach. I slept when the exhaustion allowed.

The mysterious texts from A had stopped after that first night. I had replied twice and received no response. Part of me wondered if I had imagined the whole thing. Maybe it was just someone with the wrong number. Maybe it meant nothing.

But then one morning, exactly four weeks after I left Damien's house, something happened that changed everything.

It was early. I was walking to the bakery, head down against the cold morning wind, when I heard footsteps behind me. Quick. Heavy. Too close.

I turned.

Two men. Both large. Both with their faces partially covered. One of them was already reaching for my arm.

"Hey—"

My scream barely left my throat before a hand covered my mouth and I was shoved hard against the wall of the alley I had been cutting through.

My bag fell. My heart exploded with terror.

"Don't make a sound," the bigger one growled against my ear. "You're going to listen very carefully."

I struggled clawed at his arm and felt my elbow scrape against the rough brick wall.

"Stop moving!"

And then, out of nowhere, everything happened very fast.

A figure appeared at the entrance of the alley. Tall. Dark coat. Moving with a kind of quiet, terrifying calm that made both men freeze.

"I'd strongly suggest," a deep, cold voice said from the alley entrance, "that you let her go."

Nobody moved.

Then the voice came again, quieter and somehow more dangerous because of it, "That wasn't a suggestion."

What happened next was a blur of movement. Raised voices. A scuffle. The sound of someone hitting the ground hard. Then silence.

I pressed my back against the wall, gasping, my hands shaking uncontrollably. When I finally looked up, both men were gone.

And the tall stranger was standing a few feet away from me, his gray eyes fixed on my face.

My heart was still hammering. My breath came in ragged bursts. I looked at him, this man who had appeared from nowhere, and something about his face was familiar in a way I couldn't immediately place.

He reached into his coat and held something out to me. My bag. He had picked it up from the ground.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

His voice was calm. Measured. Like he hadn't just sent two men running.

I stared at him, my bag then back at his face.

And then it hit me all at once.

Those storm-gray eyes. That sharp, cold face that I had seen plastered across sports magazines on the checkout counter at the grocery store. The face that appeared on television every time the New York Blades played.

I knew exactly who this man was.

Alexander St. James.

The captain of the New York Blades. Damien Volkov's greatest rival. The most feared man in professional hockey.

And he was standing in front of me in a cold alley, holding my bag, waiting for me to tell him if I was hurt.

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

His eyes dropped briefly to my stomach. Just for a second. Then back to my face. Something in his expression shifted, almost imperceptibly.

"You need to sit down," he said quietly.

And that was the moment my legs finally gave out.