CHAPTER ELEVEN

Aria’s POVI had forgotten what it felt like to wake up with a heavy heart of how to sort the next bill. Arthur had made life more easier for me and Bryan.It wasn’t a dramatic change, not the kind of transformation that comes overnight. It had crept in slowly over the weeks since that first hospital bill was sorted by Arthur, and the subsequent financial assistance, especially after the first visit to Arthur’s estate. The relief that came with it was a feeling I haven’t experienced in the last five years. Mornings still started the same way. The alarm at six-thirty. The scramble to get Bryan fed, dressed and out the door with his backpack and his lunch box and whatever stuffed animal he decided needed to accompany him to school that particular week. “Mom, Arthur said next time I can feed the koi,” Bryan announced over breakfast, spooning cereal with the enthusiasm of someone delivering breaking news. “He has actual koi in a real pond.”“Did he,” I said, smiling into my coffee.“He

CHAPTER TWELVE

Xavier’s POVI came back from Thailand with several unread reports, a fourteen-hour time difference still sitting behind my eyes and the particular exhaustion of a man who had spent three weeks closing a deal that should have taken two while fielding daily calls from Kingsley Sinclair about a wedding timeline I had no interest in discussing from a different continent.The penthouse felt too quiet when I landed. Too organized, like a space maintained rather than lived in. I had a driver, a housekeeper who came twice a week, and a refrigerator that contained exactly the things my nutritionist had approved, but nothing I actually wanted to eat after a fourteen-hour flight.I stayed at the penthouse for two days before I decided to visit the estate. I hadn’t called ahead, I rarely did when I came to the estate, it was still my grandfather’s house more than any other definition and it was also the closest place to home since my father died. Calling ahead to your own home felt like a formal

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Xavier’s POVI told myself, on the drive back to the penthouse that evening, that I was overthinking it.Resemblances happened. The world was full of people who shared the same jaw structures and eye shapes with strangers they had no connection with whatsoever, it was pure biology, the finite number of ways a human face could arrange itself across a global population. I had read somewhere once that every person on earth had at least seven people who shared their approximate facial architecture. The number made coincidence not just possible but statistically expected. I told myself all of this very clearly and rationally.I sat in my penthouse at eleven in the evening with a glass of scotch I hadn’t touched, staring at the city through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and my mind drifted to the little boy again. the way he tilted his head.I had a photograph on the shelf in my study, one of the few personal items I kept in the penthouse. It was a picture of my father taken when he was ar

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Aria’s POVThe Beaumont Group Tower was exactly the kind of building that made you straighten your posture without being told to.Forty-two floors of glass and steel rising above the financial district like what had decided the skyline needed restructuring and had simply gone ahead and done it. The lobby alone was made of marble floors, a reception desk that stretched the width of a small apartment, lighting that somehow managed to be both dramatic and tasteful without trying too hard. The category of people who worked here operated in a different level of existence from the one I was coming from.I signed in at the security desk in my navy blue dungaree work uniform with the company logo engraved almost invisible on the chest. I was directed to the facilities manager, a brisk woman named Helen who met me in the lobby with a laminated access schedule.“Quarterly service,” she confirmed, scanning the paperwork my cousin’s company had submitted. “You’ll start on the lower basement level

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Xavier’s POVI had been in the middle of a sentence when I saw her. It was her eyes that made me almost stop mid-sentence.Her eyes were dark, expressive, the kind that carried whatever their owner was feeling whether she intended them to or not. But they had caught mine in that corridor with a directness that didn’t flinch, and something in the two seconds before she looked away had moved through my chest like a current finding a wire it hadn’t known was there.I moved through it quickly and kept walking but the current stayed. I sat through two hours of afternoon meetings and felt it the entire time, not in a way that showed, just present, the way a sound stays in a room slightly longer than the source of it. Her face kept surfacing with a persistence that had nothing polite about it. The way she held the clipboard against her chest like a shield she didn’t realize she was carrying. The exact moment her eyes had came back to mine before she looked away.I knew that feeling of almos

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Xavier’s POV“Ivanna,” I said, straightening slightly in my chair, the warmth in my voice arriving a beat later than it should have.“You sound surprised to hear from me,” she said, a teasing edge under the words that didn’t quite mask the sharper tone underneath.“Long day,” I said. “What is it?”“I heard you were back from Thailand.” She gave a deliberate pause and continued. “You didn’t bother to call or check on me.”“It’s been a heavy landing week. Work backed up faster than I expected.” I defended myself.“Of course it did.” She let the silence stretch just long enough to make her point without needing to state it directly. “My father would like to schedule dinner. Just the four of us; you, me, him, and Arthur. And to pick up where the Grandview evening left off.”The Grandview evening. The same one I had been avoiding for years now. I was not following that thread right now, not with Ivanna’s voice in my ear.“I’ll check my calendar,” I said.“Xavier.” Her voice dropped, losing