chapter five

Elowen POV

Four years later

"Ms. Bennett, they're ready for you on board."

I nodded at the airline attendant and glanced down at Noah, who was gripping my hand and staring wide eyed at the massive windows overlooking the tarmac. Five years old and still obsessed with anything that flew. He'd spent the entire flight from Milan with his face pressed to the glass, narrating every cloud like it owed him an explanation.

"Are we home yet, Mommy?"

"Almost, baby."

My chest tightened at the word. Home. I wasn't sure this city had ever really felt like that, not completely, not since the night I woke up alone in a hotel suite that smelled like him and never saw him again. But it was the only home Noah had ever known outside of hotel rooms and rented flats in cities whose languages I was still learning, so I called it that anyway.

The past three years had blurred together in a way that still didn't feel real when I tried to walk myself back through it. Paris. Milan. A six month stretch in Dubai that nearly broke me and then made me. Each project was bigger than the last, each client harder to impress, until eventually they stopped needing convincing and started asking for me by name.

I built it for him. Every late night, every skipped meal, every design I scrapped and rebuilt from scratch at two in the morning because it wasn't good enough yet, I built it so that Noah would never once have to hear what I heard. That he was a liability. That he was somebody's mistake.

He would never be anybody's mistake.

“Mummy when we get down are we going to see daddy”.

My smile lost all its flavour at Noah's question. It was actually the first time he was directly asking me about his dad. He is a very smart kid. He was calm and hardly rants, which was very surprising for a five year old.

How could I tell him that I didn't know much about his daddy,how could I tell him that it was just a one night stand.

“Yes baby hopefully” I said while trying to force a smile.

We came down the escalator into arrivals, and I scanned the crowd out of habit more than expected, half convinced Ava would be late or lost or both. Then I heard it.

"ELOWEN!"

She was already running, dragging Xavier along by the hand like he had a choice in the matter, and a small girl with dark curls bounced on her hip, clinging to her mother's neck and blinking sleepily at the chaos.

"Oh my God, oh my God, you're actually here," Ava sobbed into my shoulder before I even had time to brace for the impact of her hug. She smelled like the same perfume she'd worn since we were teenagers, and something about that steadied me more than I expected.

"I told you I was coming."

"You told me that from three different countries over the last two years, forgive me for not believing it until I could touch you." She pulled back, hands still gripping my arms, eyes raking over me like she was cataloguing every change.

"Look at you. You look like a magazine cover. I hate you a little."

"You look exactly the same," I said, laughing, and it was true. Motherhood had softened her in places and sharpened her in others, but the wildness in her eyes hadn't dimmed one bit.

Xavier pulled me into a hug next, quieter than Ava's but no less fierce. "Welcome home," he murmured against my hair. Then he crouched down to Noah's level, holding out a hand for a fist bump like they hadn't gone three years without seeing each other in person. "Look at you, big man. You got tall on me."

Noah grinned, missing one front tooth, and bumped his fist against Xavier's before immediately turning his attention to the toddler perched on Ava's hip.

"This is Sienna," Ava said, adjusting her daughter on her hip. "Sienna, baby, say hi to your Auntie Mira and your cousin Noah."

Sienna buried her face in Ava's neck instead, suddenly shy, and Ava laughed. "She'll warm up. Give her ten minutes and she'll be attached to Noah's leg, I promise you."

We made our way through the terminal in a tangle of luggage carts and overlapping conversation, Ava talking fast enough that I only caught half of what she said, something about a nursery renovation gone wrong and a mutual friend's engagement I apparently needed to hear about in full detail. It didn't matter that I couldn't keep up. It just mattered that I was standing there listening to her voice instead of hearing it through a phone speaker at three in the morning, jet lagged and homesick in a city that didn't know my name yet.

"So," Xavier said once we were loaded into the car, Noah and Sienna already deep in negotiations over a tablet in the backseat, "are congratulations in order? Ava mentioned something about a shortlist."

I felt the smile pull at my mouth before I could stop it. I'd been sitting on this for two days, waiting for the right moment, and apparently Ava couldn't help herself.

"I wasn't supposed to say anything," Ava said, entirely unrepentant, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. "But I'm your best friend, I have rights."

"It's not confirmed yet," I said. "There's still a final round. But yes. My firm made the shortlist for a development project. A big one."

"How big?" Xavier asked.

"Ashford Global big."

The name landed in the car and Ava actually gasped, twisting around in her seat despite the seatbelt digging into her collarbone. "Shut up. The Ashford Global? As in the biggest luxury development company on this side of the continent Ashford Global?"

"That's the one." I still couldn't quite believe it myself. Every designer in the industry had been talking about this project for the better part of a year, an entire luxury district being built from the ground up, and somehow, impossibly, my firm's name was on the shortlist alongside firms twenty years older than mine with client lists I used to only dream about.

"Do you know who's behind it? Like, the actual owner?" Xavier asked, glancing at me through the mirror.

I shook my head, watching the city lights blur past the window, that same restless flutter of nerves and disbelief still sitting low in my stomach. "No idea. It's all been handled through their development board so far. Whoever he is, he's a ghost. My assistant says even the other firms competing don't know who's making the final call."

Ava made a small sound, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. "A mystery billionaire. Very on brand for the universe to do this to you."

I laughed it off, because what else was there to do, but something about the words settled strangely in my chest, an itch I couldn't quite place. I didn't know why. I had no reason to think it was anything more than coincidence, one more powerful stranger with more money than sense building something enormous out of glass and steel.

I had no idea, sitting in the backseat of that car with my son's hand curled around mine, exhaustion and excitement tangled together in my chest, just how close I was about to get to finding out exactly who he was.