CHAPTER 25

ELENA

Daniel and I stared at each other, and for a moment neither of us managed a single word. My mind had gone completely, unhelpfully blank.

What is he doing here?

Surprise crossed his face first, then hardened into something I recognized instantly. Contempt, the exact flavor he used to reserve for me on his worst nights.

"What are you doing here?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

"Oh." One syllable, loaded with enough arrogance to turn my stomach.

Then the insults started.... the same old script, reminding me of the woman who used to cry over him, who used to beg, who'd once believed every lie he'd fed her like it was scripture. He spoke like that woman still existed somewhere in front of him, waiting to lower her head and cower on cue.

I just watched him talk. I didn't defend myself. Didn't argue back. Didn't even blink, and somehow that silence seemed to get under his skin far more effectively than any comeback could have.

His voice sharpened. I let it. Eventually I tilted my head slightly.

"Are you finished?"

That stopped him cold. Genuinely thrown, for maybe the first time since I'd known him.

"I have better things to do than stand here," I said, perfectly level. "Excuse me."

I turned. Made it two steps before his hand closed around my wrist.

"Don't walk away while I'm talking to you."

I looked down at his hand, then back up at his face. "Who are you?"

His jaw tightened.

"Because as far as I remember, I don't know you from anywhere."

"You know exactly who I am."

I pulled my arm free, gentle and unbothered. "I don't."

The look on his face was almost worth the whole encounter on its own. I walked away without another word and didn't let myself breathe properly until I'd put real distance between us.

My chest was tight. My eyes stung. But it wasn't fear. It wasn't grief, and it definitely wasn't missing him.

It was the strange, disorienting weight of standing in front of the man who'd wrecked a huge portion of my life and realizing I'd felt almost nothing at all.

He looked different now. More polished. More sure of himself, more powerful in a way money tends to manufacture. But I would become even more powerful than him...the difference will be that he spent years building himself out of what he'd stolen from me, while I'll spend mine rebuilding out of whatever pieces he'd left behind.

I wiped my eyes and took a breath. First day. I wasn't handing it over to Daniel Bennett.

---

By the time I made it back to my department, I'd mostly steadied myself. Then a message came through asking me to Dr. Carlson's office, and my pulse spiked all over again.

First real consultation.

Dr. Carlson, my supervisor, looked over my records before glancing up. "You'll be handling a few consultations today, under my supervision. Notes, assessments, recommendations....I'll review everything after."

"Okay," I said, too fast, somewhere between terrified and thrilled.

In the consultation room, I sat behind the desk and immediately fixated on the pens, which weren't lined up straight. I rearranged them..... black, blue, red, perfectly aligned....and asked myself why I was bothering, then did it once more anyway.

Better, This was so weird in an exciting way.

I opened the file in front of me. This was the exact moment I'd spent years dreaming about, back when it felt impossibly far away.

A knock. "Come in."

I looked down at the chart, then up, and froze entirely.

Sophia stood in the doorway, face draining of color the instant she recognized me. I nearly laughed out loud. Of every patient in this hospital, I'd landed my first solo consultation on her....the woman who'd helped dismantle my marriage, now carrying Daniel's child.

Daniel appeared behind her a second later. "Baby, what's...." He stopped mid-sentence. "You again?"

I leaned back in my chair. Interesting.

"Mr. and Mrs. Bennett," I said, gesturing toward the chairs.

"We're not staying," Daniel snapped.

"This is a consultation room."

"I don't want you speaking to my wife."

'My wife'.He said it deliberately, clearly hoping the words would land like a blade. They didn't. Not even close.

"I wasn't aware you got a say on how I do my job."

"You have no right to be here."

"I believe the hospital would disagree."

"Who even gave you the right to call yourself a doctor?"

I almost smiled. Dr. Carlson had. The hospital had. Years of studying and a stubbornness he'd once tried to talk out of me had. Most of all, I'd given myself permission to become the woman I'd once given up on becoming.

I didn't say any of that. I didn't need to.

Sophia's hand went protectively to her stomach. "Daniel, don't let her near me."

"She could do something to the baby."

Who cares about your baby!, I thought, and kept it exactly where it belonged.... unsaid, tucked behind a calm, professional smile. I was starting to enjoy this more than I probably should have.

The door opened. Dr. Carlson stepped in, taking in the scene with one sweeping glance. "What's going on?"

"I need her out of here," Daniel said immediately.

"Excuse me?"

"She has no right to be near my wife."

Dr. Carlson's eyes moved between the three of us. "What exactly did she do?"

"She...."

"Nothing," Sophia cut in. "I just don't want her near me."

"This is Dr. Elena," Carlson said, voice going flat with authority. "One of our residents. She has every right to conduct this consultation under my direct supervision."

"She's can't be qualified to...."

"Enough."

That single word silenced him faster than anything I'd said all morning.

"If you'd prefer another physician, you're free to seek one elsewhere. But this attitude does not belong in Blackwood Hospital."

Silence. Daniel looked stunned. Sophia looked furious.

"Let's go," he told her.

"What? Why should we leave.... she should be the one leaving!"

"Sophia. Enough."

His voice cracked through the room hard enough that Sophia's hand flew back to her stomach, hurt crossing her face for a second before she looked at me. Our eyes met, and I lifted a hand.

"Bye."

Her mouth fell open. Daniel looked like he wanted to say something else and thought better of it, grabbing her arm instead and steering her out. The door slammed behind them.

"Don't let that bother you," Dr. Carlson said.

"I won't."

She gave me an approving nod on her way out, and once I was alone I let out a long breath and leaned back in the chair, smiling despite myself.

It felt incredible. Not because Daniel had been embarrassed, and not because Sophia was furious with me. Because I'd sat across from both of them and understood, clearly and finally, that they no longer had any hold over me at all.

I wasn't the woman who needed their approval anymore. I was Dr. Elena. This career, this life....every bit of it belonged to me now.

By the end of my shift, I was running on fumes and unreasonably happy anyway. I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed out, already composing the story I'd tell Elias about my first day, already thinking about how nervous I'd been on my first day, everything I wanted to tell Adrian.

Everything except Daniel and Sophia. That part was a story to keep to myself.

I stepped outside and stopped cold.

Daniel again, waiting like he had nowhere better to be.

"What do you want from me?"

He looked at me almost bewildered. "How?"

"How what?"

"How are you doing this well." It came out less like an accusation and more like genuine confusion, like the math wasn't adding up for him. "Why are you doing so well?"

Something in me settled into place, calm and certain. "Oh." A faint smile. "You thought divorcing me, ruining my life, meant I'd just stay down?"

He said nothing.

"Newsflash, Daniel.... I'm doing better than I ever did with you." I stepped closer, steady. "And I'm only getting started. You're going to answer for what you did to me. Not today, maybe not tomorrow. But eventually."

"Elena, please, just listen...."

I tried to walk past him. He caught my hand.

"Let go."

"You don't understand."

"I understand perfectly."

"You have to know things weren't...."

"You have a wife. Sophia's carrying your child." He flinched at that, visibly. "That's the whole story, isn't it."

"I made mistakes."

"That's what you're calling it?"

"I never meant for it to go this far."

"You chose every single step of it."

"Elena, I...."

A shadow fell over us before he could finish. Daniel hit the pavement a second later, pulled away so fast I barely registered the movement.

"What the hell...."

I looked up. A massive man in a black suit stood between us, expression carved from stone, an expensive black car idling behind him that I recognized on sight.

Adrian. He must have sent him.

My heart did something complicated.

The man turned toward me. "Madam."

"Madam?"

"I'll take you home now." He didn't so much as glance at Daniel, still on the ground, staring up in disbelief.

I looked at him, then at the man in the suit, and smiled.

"Thank you."

I got into the car. The door shut. As we pulled away I looked back through the window.... Daniel still standing there, confused, humiliated, furious in equal measure.

I leaned back against the seat. My first day had started with fear and a confrontation with my own past, and somehow ended with me driving away from all of it, untouched.

I smiled to myself the whole way home.

It couldn't get better than this.

At least, that's what I thought.