Sienna's POV
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The moment my feet touched this city's ground again, my chest tightened like someone had wrapped a fist around my heart and squeezed.
Three years.
Three years since I ran from this place with tears on my face, a one-way ticket in my shaking hand, and a secret I didn't even know I was carrying yet.
Now I was back.
And I was not the same woman who left.
"Mommy, you're walking too fast."
Leo's small voice pulled me back. I looked down at my son — three years old, curly hair going in every direction, his little sneakers squeaking against the airport floor — and I slowed down. His hand was warm in mine. Steady. Real.
He was the reason I came back.
He was the reason I survived leaving.
"Sorry, baby," I said, squeezing his hand. "Better?"
He nodded seriously, like he'd just accepted an apology in a board meeting. I almost smiled. Almost.
The arrivals hall was loud and crowded. People rushing, luggage rolling, names being called. I kept my head up and my face calm because that was the only armor I had right now — looking like I belonged here, looking like I wasn't terrified, looking like coming home didn't feel like walking into a burning building I once called mine.
My father was dead.
His company — Vale Enterprises, built from nothing, grown into one of the most powerful names in this city — was supposed to come to me. That was what his original will said. That was what he promised me the last time we spoke on the phone, three months before he got sick.
But I wasn't here when he died.
And someone made sure that absence was very expensive for me.
My stepsister Mira now held the controlling shares of Vale Enterprises. Mira, who smiled at weddings and stabbed you at funerals. Mira, who had been stealing from the company for two years while I was abroad rebuilding my life with a law degree and a baby boy and absolutely nothing else.
Cole — my ex, her now-fiancé — was sitting pretty as Head of Strategy.
The two people who broke me were now running everything my father built.
I had six weeks to take it back. Six weeks until the court heard my will contestation. Six weeks to prove that what happened to my father's estate was wrong, while also fighting a corporate merger that Mira had quietly agreed to before I returned — a merger that could legally erase Vale Enterprises before I ever got my hands back on it.
Six weeks.
I had survived worse. I had survived finding out I was pregnant alone in a foreign city. I had survived three years of building something from nothing.
I could survive six weeks.
"Mommy." Leo tugged my hand again. "Look. That man is on the big screen."
I looked up.
And my blood ran cold.
The screen on the far wall of the arrivals hall was playing a news segment. A business award ceremony. Men in suits, polite applause, cameras flashing.
And in the center of it all — standing like he personally owned not just the stage but the entire concept of standing on stages — was Damien Mercer.
He was accepting an award. His face was carved from something that didn't understand warmth. Sharp jaw. Eyes that looked like they were always calculating something. He held the award like it was simply returning to its rightful owner.
I had seen his face in newspapers. On the covers of business magazines. On the screens of televisions in hotel lobbies across three countries while I was abroad, always announcing something — a deal closed, a company acquired, a rival crushed quietly and efficiently.
Damien Mercer. CEO of Mercer Corp.
The most feared name in corporate circles.
My company's greatest enemy.
And the man whose merger proposal was sitting in my bag right now, threatening to swallow Vale Enterprises whole before I could save it.
My stomach didn't just drop. It fell through the floor.
"Why does he look like he's always angry?" Leo asked, his little head tilted to the side, staring at the screen with huge curious eyes.
"Because some people just look like that," I said, pulling him gently. "Come on."
I walked faster. I needed to get out of this hall, get to the hotel, call my lawyer, and remind myself why I came back. I had a plan. I had documents. I had three years of quiet, focused, calculated preparation.
Damien Mercer was a problem I had already accounted for.
He was just a corporate opponent. Nothing more.
I told myself that very firmly.
I did not look back at the screen.
I did not see that Leo had turned his head over his small shoulder and was still staring at the man on the screen.
I did not see the way my three-year-old boy tilted his head to the side again — slow, still, studying — in the exact same way the man on the screen had just tilted his.
Same angle.
Same stillness.
Exact.
I didn't see it.
I was already walking away.
-
We got outside. The city air hit me — sharp, familiar, unwelcome. I kept moving toward the taxi line, Leo bouncing beside me now, already over the screen, already asking if the hotel had a pool.
My phone buzzed.
Petra.
"I'm at the hotel. Leo better be in one piece. Also — Sienna. I need to show you something when you get here. Don't panic when you read it. But also maybe sit down before you read it."
I stared at her message.
Petra did not say "don't panic" unless there was a very good reason to panic.
I typed back fast.
"What is it?"
Three dots. Typing. Stopped. Typing again. Stopped.
Then:
"Just get here."
My heart started doing something loud and unpleasant in my chest. I picked Leo up, flagged the nearest taxi, and got in. Leo pressed his face against the window watching the city blur past.
I stared at Petra's last message.
Just get here.
Petra had helped me disappear three years ago. She had been there the night everything fell apart — the night I found Cole and Mira together, the night I ended up at a masked underground bar just to feel like I didn't exist for a few hours, the night I left the country before morning.
She knew everything about me.
Every secret.
Every scar.
Except one.
The one I had been carrying since Leo was born — the one that had nothing to do with Mira or Cole or the company.
The one about a masked stranger in a black jacket, a bar with no names, and a night I had spent three years trying very hard not to think about.
My phone buzzed again.
One more message from Petra.
Four words.
And when I read them, the taxi suddenly felt very small, the city outside the window very loud, and my carefully built, carefully planned, carefully controlled return to this city cracked straight down the middle.
Four words.
"I found his name."