Chapter 2 — Three Years Later

Three years later, Elena Hart returned to London with one suitcase, one exhausted little boy, and a secret that had learned to hold her hand.

Rain glazed the pavement outside King’s Cross station, turning the road dark and shiny under the traffic lights. Taxis crawled along the kerb, buses hissed as they pulled away, and people hurried past with their umbrellas tilted low. Elena stood just beyond the station entrance with Leo’s backpack slipping from one shoulder and her suitcase beside her. The handle had started sticking halfway through the journey, so every few minutes she nudged it down with her foot and pretended it was not another thing she could not afford to replace.

Leo leaned against her leg, one hand tucked inside hers and the other wrapped around Bunny, his one-eared rabbit. Bunny had survived teething, nursery, two washing-machine disasters, and one very serious beach burial. Elena had once offered to buy him a new one. Leo had looked at her as if she had suggested replacing a family member.

“Mummy,” he said, pressing his cheek into her coat, “is it always this loud?”

Elena looked down at him. His dark hair was messy from the train, and his cheeks were pink from the cold, but it was his eyes that caught her every time. Grey. Clear. Much too serious for a child who was not even three.

Adrian’s eyes.

She made herself smile. “Mostly. You get used to it.”

Leo watched a taxi splash through a puddle and frowned. “I liked Grandma’s better.”

“So did I,” Elena said, before she could make it sound lighter.

And she did. The little coastal town had not been perfect, but it had been safe. It had mornings that smelled of sea air and toast, her mother humming in the kitchen on her good days, and Leo running down the hallway in dinosaur pyjamas. It had bills and worry and too many nights where Elena lay awake doing sums in her head, but it had never had marble staircases, charity dinners, or the Blackwood name sitting heavy on her chest.

Leo tugged at her fingers. “Are we seeing Daddy here?”

For a moment, the noise outside the station seemed to fall back.

Elena crouched in front of him and brushed his fringe from his forehead. She had answered versions of this question before, always carefully. Not quite lying. Not quite telling the truth either. Just enough to keep his little world steady.

“No, sweetheart,” she said. “We’re here for Mummy’s work.”

Leo studied her face. He had a way of doing that which unsettled her sometimes, as if he could hear the words she swallowed. “Does Daddy work here too?”

Elena’s fingers paused in his hair. “London is very big.”

“That’s not yes.”

A small, helpless laugh almost escaped her. He was tiny, still warm and soft from sleep, but somehow he always found the gap in her answers.

“No,” she said gently. “It isn’t.”

He accepted it for now, mostly because a man walked past with a paper bag from a chip shop, and the smell of salt and vinegar cut through the wet air. Leo lifted Bunny a little, as if the rabbit had noticed too.

“Can we get chips?”

Elena smiled, grateful for the change of subject. “After we get to the flat.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

The taxi ride to Islington took longer than it should have. Traffic crawled, rain tapped against the windows, and Leo fell asleep within ten minutes, his head heavy against her side. Elena kept one arm around him and watched London pass in pieces: wet shopfronts, black umbrellas, restaurant windows glowing warm against the grey evening.

She had not come back for Adrian. She repeated that to herself more than once while the taxi turned through streets that felt familiar in ways she did not want them to. She had come because her mother’s heart condition had worsened again. Because the hospital appointments were no longer occasional. Because the bills had become numbers Elena could not stretch, no matter how many times she sat at the kitchen table and tried. Because freelance work had dried up at exactly the wrong time.

The interview at Lorne Publishing was tomorrow. If she got the job, she could manage. Rent. Nursery. Medicine. Train fares to see her mother. Maybe even a little left over for the emergencies that always seemed to find her.

She hated needing it this much.

The flat belonged to Mia, who had moved to Manchester six months earlier and still described London rent as “legalised theft with mould.” By the time Elena reached the building, Leo was deeply asleep. The flat sat above a bakery on a narrow Islington street, and the smell of vanilla and warm bread drifted out into the rain.

Elena paid the driver, wrestled the suitcase out, and carried Leo upstairs. The key stuck twice before the door finally opened.

“Come on,” she muttered under her breath. “Please.”

The lock gave.

The flat was small, warmish, and slightly dusty. A faded blue sofa sat beneath the window. The kitchen was narrow, and a little table with two mismatched chairs stood against the wall. It was not much, but it was not Blackwood House.

That alone made her throat tighten.

She laid Leo on the sofa and tucked her coat around him. Bunny was still trapped under his arm. For a moment, Elena stood there and listened to the traffic below, the rain against the window, and the faint clatter from the bakery downstairs. It should have felt ordinary. Instead, London pressed in around her, full of old rooms and old versions of herself.

Then her phone rang.

Mia’s name lit the screen.

Elena answered quickly. “We’re here.”

“Thank God,” Mia said. “I was about to send a search party. A small one, obviously, because I’m broke. But emotionally, I was committed.”

Despite herself, Elena smiled. “Leo’s asleep already.”

“How’s my favourite tiny godson?”

“Exhausted. Slightly offended that Bunny can’t eat chips.”

“As he should be. Bunny has rights.” Mia paused, and Elena knew what was coming before her voice softened. “And you? Are you alright?”

Elena looked around the flat. The peeling paint near the window. The suitcase by the door. Leo asleep under her coat, as if they were still travelling.

“I will be.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” Elena said, rubbing at her forehead. “But it’s the best I’ve got today.”

Mia let the silence sit for a moment. She had always been good at that. Other people rushed to fill quiet spaces with advice. Mia knew when to leave them alone.

“You sure coming back was the right thing?” she asked.

“No,” Elena said honestly. “But it was the only thing.”

“And Adrian?”

His name changed the room. It always had.

Elena turned away from Leo and lowered her voice, even though he was asleep. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“El…”

“He doesn’t.”

“I know you want that to be enough, but please tell me you checked Lorne properly.”

“I checked the role. The salary. The commute.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Elena frowned. “He doesn’t own publishing.”

Mia did not answer straight away, and that pause made Elena’s stomach tighten.

“I’m not saying he owns it,” Mia said carefully. “I’m saying Blackwood Capital owns pieces of everything. Just check before you walk into that building and get blindsided.”

After the call ended, Elena stood with the phone in her hand, telling herself Mia was only being protective. Maybe paranoid. London was full of companies. It was ridiculous to think one small publishing job, one tiny chance at starting again, would lead back to Adrian.

Still, she opened her laptop.

The Wi-Fi took too long to connect. The company website loaded first: clean, friendly, full of book covers and smiling author photos. Safe. Normal. Elena let herself breathe for half a second before finding the corporate information page.

Her eyes moved down the screen.

Lorne Publishing.

Majority stakeholder: Blackwood Capital Group.

Chairman: Adrian Blackwood.

Elena went still.

The job she needed. The fresh start she had promised herself. The one door she had found after months of closed ones.

And Adrian was standing behind it.

A small voice came from the sofa.

“Mummy?”

Elena shut the laptop too quickly.

Leo sat up, rubbing one eye. Bunny dangled from his other hand. “Did you say Daddy?”

Elena’s throat closed around the answer.

Before she could force one out, thunder cracked somewhere over London, sharp enough to make Leo cry.

She crossed the room and gathered him into her arms. “It’s okay,” she whispered into his hair, holding him tighter than she meant to. “I’ve got you.”

But as Leo cried against her shoulder, Elena kept staring at the closed laptop on the table.

She had survived Adrian once. She could survive him again. As long as he never saw Leo.