The late afternoon sun caught on the windows of the daycare, throwing long shadows across the sidewalk as Reina adjusted Ezra's backpack on her shoulder. She had meant to cross the street quickly, avoid the black car, avoid him.
But Damian Stone wasn't the kind of man you could avoid. Not when his gaze had already locked on you like a predator tracking prey.
She stopped at the curb. Ezra wriggled in her arms, impatient. "Mommy, why are we stopping?"
Her voice stayed even. "We're just… waiting for the light."
The light was green.
She stepped onto the crosswalk anyway, each step deliberate, trying to tell herself this was fine, that Damian's sudden appearance was just coincidence. But the slow, measured way he straightened from the car as they approached told her it wasn't.
When they reached him, she kept her expression neutral. "Following me now?"
"I was in the area," he said smoothly, though his eyes had already drifted down to Ezra.
Reina shifted her grip on her son as if to block Damian's view. "We're busy. Goodbye."
But Ezra, curious and fearless, craned his neck toward the stranger. "Hi," he said brightly.
Damian's eyes—those sharp, assessing steel-gray eyes—softened for a fraction of a second. "Hi," he echoed.
Ezra grinned, showing his tiny gap between his front teeth. "Are you Mommy's boss?"
Reina's spine went rigid. "Ezra—"
Damian's mouth curved faintly, but his gaze never left the boy's face. "Something like that." His voice was calm, but there was a subtle strain under it now, like a man trying not to give away what he'd just noticed.
Ezra tilted his head, studying him with a strangely familiar intensity. "You have eyes like mine."
The words hit the air like a dropped glass.
Reina felt her stomach clench. She wanted to laugh it off, say something sharp, but Damian's expression froze in place—and she saw it. Recognition. Calculation. And something dangerous threading in.
"Do I?" he asked softly.
Ezra nodded with absolute certainty. "Mommy says my eyes are special. Like storm clouds."
Damian's lips pressed into a thin line, his gaze flicking briefly to Reina. "Storm clouds," he repeated, almost to himself.
Reina forced a smile that felt like glass splinters in her cheeks. "Alright, that's enough chatter. We have to go." She started walking, but Damian's voice followed her.
"Reina."
She stopped, turned halfway.
His eyes were on her now, narrowed, sharp. "We'll talk soon."
It wasn't a request.
---
They were halfway home before Ezra piped up again. "Is he nice?"
"No," she said without hesitation.
"But he looks nice."
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. "Looks can lie."
Ezra considered that for a while, then asked the question she dreaded. "Do I know him?"
Her throat closed. "No, baby. You don't know him."
---
That night, after Ezra was asleep, Reina sat at her kitchen table with the lights off, the city's glow bleeding in through the blinds. She could still see Damian's face in that moment—how his gaze had gone from casual curiosity to sharp suspicion in a heartbeat.
Three years she'd kept Ezra hidden. Three years of staying under the radar, of cutting ties, of building a new life from the ashes of the old. And in less than a minute, Damian Stone had looked at her son and seen something she'd prayed no one else would notice.
Her fingers clenched around her coffee mug.
If Damian had even the faintest suspicion… he wouldn't stop.
---
Damian couldn't sleep.
He sat in his penthouse office, the city sprawled below like a web of lights, Ezra's words looping in his head.
You have eyes like mine.
The boy's face. The way he tilted his head, the stubborn set of his little jaw. Damian had seen that expression before—in a mirror, in old photographs, in memories he'd tried to bury.
He opened the encrypted file on his laptop. A single folder sat there, untouched for years: Sabrina.
Inside, hundreds of photos. Their wedding day. The trip to Santorini. A shot of her laughing in the kitchen, flour on her cheek.
And one picture in particular—Sabrina standing on their balcony, sunlight catching the silver in her storm-gray eyes.
He clicked between the photo and the memory of the boy.
Same eyes. Same impossible color.
It was ridiculous. Reina Blake was not Sabrina Stone. Sabrina was dead. He had stood over the wreckage of her car, seen the blood. The police report had been conclusive.
And yet…
Damian leaned back, staring at the ceiling. If Reina was Sabrina, then t
he boy—Ezra—
He exhaled sharply, pushing up from his chair. He needed answers, and he needed them now.