THEN A LITTLE BOY RAN INTO MY ARMS CALLING ME MOMMY

The next morning, someone knocked on my H๏τel-room door.

I knew who it was before I opened it.

Vanessa stood in the hallway.

My father beside her.

And Adrian behind them.

His expression was unreadable.

Vanessa wasn’t.

She looked like she’d been crying.

“Claire…”

I stepped backward.

She took one step toward me.

Adrian immediately moved between us.

The gesture was so instinctive that I almost laughed.

Five years ago, he had done the same thing.

Except back then, he had always stepped between Vanessa and anything that upset her.

Even me.

I folded my arms.

“There it is.”

His eyes met mine.

“What?”

“That habit.”

Vanessa’s face crumpled.

“He never loved me.”

Adrian’s expression sharpened.

“Vanessa.”

“He searched for you,” she continued. “For years.”

“Enough.”

“He kept your room exactly the same.”

“Enough.”

“He never married me.”

The hallway went silent.

I looked at Adrian.

He said nothing.

Vanessa wiped her tears.

“You were the only woman he ever wanted.”

Something inside me should have softened.

It didn’t.

Wanting someone didn’t erase what had happened to them.

Before anyone could speak again, a small voice echoed across the H๏τel lobby downstairs.

“Mommy!”

My heart changed instantly.

I turned.

A little boy came running across the marble floor.

Three years old.

Dark hair bouncing over his forehead.

Tiny shoes slapping against polished stone.

“Mommy!”

I dropped to my knees.

“Eli!”

He crashed into my arms.

I laughed, holding him so тιԍнтly he squealed.

“Where did you go?”

“You were gone forever!”

“I was gone for five minutes.”

He pulled back with enormous seriousness.

“It was a hundred minutes.”

I kissed his forehead.

Behind me, nobody spoke.

I lifted him into my arms.

And then I felt the silence.

I looked up.

Adrian was staring at my son.

Not at me.

At him.

Eli had Adrian’s stubborn chin.

The same dark hair.

The same gray-green eyes.

Adrian took one slow step forward.

“How old is he?”

My arms тιԍнтened around Eli.

“Three.”

His gaze never moved.

“Three?”

“Three and three quarters!” Eli announced proudly.

Vanessa covered her mouth.

My father went completely still.

Adrian’s face had gone pale.

Then Eli twisted in my arms and pointed toward the H๏τel entrance.

“Daddy!”

A tall man in a charcoal coat walked inside.

He smiled when he saw us.

“Hey, buddy.”

Eli reached toward him.

The man crossed the lobby and kissed the top of his head.

Adrian watched every movement.

His eyes went from the little boy…

to the man Eli called Daddy…

then slowly back to me.

I had seen Adrian Mercer negotiate million-dollar deals without blinking.

I had watched men twice his age lower their voices when he entered a room.

But I had never seen him look afraid.

Not until that moment.

His voice was barely audible.

“Claire…”

I said nothing.

His eyes returned to Eli.

Those gray-green eyes.

That familiar chin.

The face he’d spent five years trying to forget.

Five years ago, I had disappeared because I believed there was nothing left for me in Chicago.

Now Adrian stood ten feet away, staring at the son he had never known existed.

And the cruelest part wasn’t that Eli looked like a Mercer.

It was that Eli already belonged to someone else.

Someone who had been there.

Someone who had stayed.

Someone my son called—

“Daddy.”

Adrian’s jaw тιԍнтened.

For the first time since I had known him, the most powerful man in the room had absolutely nothing he could buy, threaten, or command.

Because five years had given me something he could never take back.

A life without him.

And a little boy who had never once needed to ask where his father was.