chapter 41

NIKOLAI POV "Nikolai. This is Rafael Moreno."My father said it with confidence, making an introduction like he had made a hundred times before, gesturing between us like he was presenting a gift."Rafael's family and ours go back a long way. His father and I did business together back when you were still in school." My father clapped Rafael on the shoulder. "He'll be taking over one of our subsidiaries under the new structure. I expect you two will be working closely together."I stared at him.I kept my face still — that part I could do, that part had been trained into me since before I could tie a tie properly — but underneath the stillness something was happening I didn't have a name for. The man in front of me. The man whose name I had been chasing for weeks. The man who had taken Arianna, who had given her a son, who had been the reason she chose to disappear from my life rather than stay in it.And my father was standing here with his hand on his shoulder like they were old fr

Dernière mise à jour : 2026-06-17

Chapter 42

NIKOLAI pov:Rafael stood up and shook my hand. This time the smile came easier, like he’d decided to just move on from whatever had passed between Viktor and me.“We meet again.”“Indeed.”I held his hand a second longer than I needed to, then let go and nodded at the empty chair next to him.“Mind if I join you?”Viktor hadn’t sat back down. He stood there half-turned toward the table, jaw clenched tight—the way I’d only seen a few times in twenty years. I looked at him, letting the question hang in the air.“How do you two know each other?” I asked. “Small world, bumping into both of you here.”Rafael answered before Viktor could steer things away. “Oh…Viktor’s daughter. I dated her, actually. Years ago.” He said it casually, like it was something that no longer meant anything to him.Viktor cleared his throat sharply, the kind of sound a man makes when he’s trying to cut someone off.Too late.I nodded slowly and took a seat.“I hope I’m not intruding,” I said, settling in like I

Dernière mise à jour : 2026-06-18

Chapter 43

ARIANNA. POV The door opened and Nikolai walked in.He had food. Noah was asleep on the bed, one arm thrown over his face, breathing deep and even. I had been sitting in the armchair watching him when Nikolai came in.I stood and crossed to Nikolai and took the bag from him."Thank you." I smiled when I said it. "You didn't have to do this."He looked at me."How are you?" I asked. My eyes moved over his face. "You look really good today."Something happened in his expression that I hadn't been prepared for.He smiled. Not the controlled half-smile he usually gave me. Not the cold smile from the early days when he was making a point. A real one, like something had happened today that he was still feeling around the edges of.That smile made me nervous in a way I couldn't immediately explain.Nikolai in a bad mood I could read. Nikolai cold, Nikolai controlled, Nikolai angry — I had maps for all of those. Nikolai quietly pleased about something I didn't know about was a different coun

Dernière mise à jour : 2026-06-19

chapter 44

ARIANNA POV I paced around the room. The room was smaller than the one Nikolai had been keeping me in. There were no personal touches, no attempt at comfort, just a bed and a lamp and four walls. But it had one thing the other room hadn't had, a window. I crossed to it for the third time and pressed my hand flat against the glass and tried the latch. It was locked from the outside. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass and breathed.Noah was in the room next door, and was still asleep when Nikolai brought me here, still asleep as far as I knew, but that wasn't going to last. He woke up at the same time every morning, and when he woke up and found my bed empty and a room he didn't recognise and no one he knew…. I didn't let myself finish that thought.I had to move very very fast.Rafael.That was the problem sitting in the centre of everything. Nikolai was having drinks with him tomorrow and Rafael had no idea who Arianna Costa’s so claimed son was. None. He had probably lo

Dernière mise à jour : 2026-06-20

chapter 45

ARIANNA POV "Arianna."Mrs. Kate stood in the doorway with one hand pressed to her chest, her eyes moving over me and then down to Noah and then back up."I'm fine," I said before she could ask. "I don't have time to explain. I need your phone."She stepped back and let us in without a word.The apartment was exactly as I had left it — the same small lamp, the same smell of tea and something faintly floral. Noah's head was still on my shoulder, heavy and warm. He had been silent the whole taxi ride, which was so unlike him that it had scared me more than his crying would have.I set him down on the couch and he sat there looking around with the wide, processing expression of a child catching up to events."Stay right here," I told him. "Don't move."He nodded.Mrs. Kate handed me her phone. I took it and dialled my father's number from memory — the same number I had been calling since I was a teenager, the number I had memorised. My thumb stopped.I looked at the screen, and the numb

Dernière mise à jour : 2026-06-21

chapter 46

ARIANNA POV I couldn't move.It's been five years since I had stood in front of this man and five years since I had made myself believe he was gone from my life as completely as I was gone from his. I had faked my death and in doing so had also buried him, buried the version of my life that included him, that needed him, that had called his name in the dark when things got hard and known he would pick up.He stood in Mrs. Kate's doorway and looked at me and I looked at him and neither of us moved for a long moment.He had changed. He looked like a man who had been sorry for a very long time.He walked toward me slowly. He didn't run to me the way part of me had spent years imagining this would go. He just walked, steady and certain, and stopped in front of me.And I hugged him.The anger was there, I felt it sitting in my chest. The anger of three years watched from a distance, of all those nights I had believed I was completely alone, now it just went. I don't know where it went. I