I picked up the coffee. It was perfect. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” He paused. “So what now?”
“Now?” I looked at the bay. The fog was lifting. “Now we run Zenith Group. We turn Vidia into a Wen city. And we forget that Ethan Key ever existed.”
“Can you do that? Forget?”
I thought about the four years. The soup I’d made. The hospital chairs. The gray scarf I’d knitted that he’d never worn. The photo of us together that I’d kept on my dressing table, treasuring it like a love letter he’d never written.
He’d thrown it in the trash. I’d rescued it. I still had it somewhere.
“No,” I said honestly. “But I can learn.”
Ryan smiled. It was a nice smile—warm, uncomplicated. The kind of smile that didn’t come with conditions. “Then let’s start with lunch. I know a hot pot place. It’s a dive, but the food’s amazing.”
I almost said no. Almost told him I had meetings, spreadsheets, a company to run. But then I remembered the last time I’d had hot pot—sitting alone in a tiny restaurant while Ethan ate Japanese food with Stella, never once asking what I wanted.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
—
The fog lifted over the bay. And somewhere in Vidia, a man who’d had everything knelt alone in his empty mansion, holding divorce papers he’d signed a lifetime ago, wondering how he’d ever been so blind.
The doorbell rang at midnight.
Ethan Key was on his knees.
“Aurora,” he whispered through the intercom. “Please. I have nothing left. No company. No Stella. No pride. Just the memory of your soup and the way you used to smile at me.”
I watched him on the security camera. He was crying. The great Ethan Key, Vidia’s golden boy, weeping on my doorstep like a child.
“Aurora,” he said again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please. Just open the door.”
I pressed the intercom button. “Mr. Key, you’re trespassing. If you don’t leave in thirty seconds, I’m calling 911.”
“Aurora—”
“Twenty-nine seconds.”
He stayed. He stayed until I counted to zero. He stayed until the police arrived and pulled him to his feet. He stayed even when they handcuffed him for drunk and disorderly, even when they read him his rights, even when the cruiser’s doors slammed shut.
And I watched it all from my window, the ringless finger pressed against the cold glass, remembering every slight and every kindness and every moment in between.
Four years. Forty million dollars. Twenty-nine missed calls.
And one man on his knees, finally learning what he’d lost.
The cruiser drove away. The fog rolled back in. And I went to bed alone, exactly the way I’d chosen.
In the morning, Ryan brought coffee. One sugar, no cream.
“Ethan’s out on bail,” he said. “His lawyer’s trying to keep it out of the papers.”
“Let him try.”
