The city was a living organism—breathing through the arteries of traffic, pulsing beneath glass and neon.But inside Alexander Knight's penthouse, time had stopped.
The night had stretched long and airless. He sat behind his desk, tie undone, sleeves rolled to his elbows, as though formality itself had become unbearable.
Outside, the skyline gleamed like a blade—sharp, cold, and distant. The rain that had threatened all evening finally arrived, trailing down the windows in thin, uncertain lines.
He barely noticed.
The screen in front of him glowed with the same four words he'd been reading for hours:
Selene Ward — Father: Not listed.
The phrase burned through every layer of his composure.It wasn't just omission. It was erasure.
He took a slow breath, fingers tightening on the edge of the desk. His reflection in the glass was unreadable—eyes hooded, jaw drawn tight.
He had been through this before: betrayal, deceit, vanishing acts. But this—this was different. This was her.
The woman who once slept in his arms, skin to skin, every breath a surrender she swore she'd never give.And then she was gone. Without a word. Without a trace.
Until a child with his eyes looked back at him from across a café.
Zane.
That name now lived in the center of his chest, restless and heavy.
He had asked his private division to dig deeper—not as a lover, but as a man unwilling to let truth hide from him any longer.
The report lay open before him, each page a piece of her life he hadn't been invited to know.
Apartment, east district.Employment: Estrella Design House.Status: Single mother.Dependent: Zane Ward (age 6).
Six years. The math did its own cruel arithmetic.
He poured himself a drink he didn't taste and turned the next page.
The file was clinical—dates, signatures, documents—but the last attachment wasn't.
A photograph.
His breath caught for the first time in years.
Selene stood at what looked like a charity fair—her hair swept up, a soft wind moving through the frame. Her head was turned slightly toward two children beside her.
Zane he recognized instantly. That same quiet strength in the boy's stance, that same particular tilt of the chin that had always belonged to him.
But the second child—
A girl.
Zara.
Her smile was smaller, edged with a kind of shyness, as if she'd learned early that silence could be power too. Her eyes, dark and gleaming, were not his. They were Selene's—gentle but impenetrable, carrying whole stories without saying a word.
Underneath the photo, a caption read:Zane and Zara Ward at the Estrella Foundation Event.
He stared until the paper trembled between his fingers.
Boy and girl.Two children.Twins.
The room seemed to shrink around him.
He pressed his hand to his mouth, not in disbelief but to keep something raw from escaping—an unnameable sound that didn't belong to a man like him.
For a moment, he couldn't move. Couldn't think. Only feel.
The boy's posture. The girl's eyes. The faint sunlight on Selene's hair.The unbearable rightness of what should have been impossible.
He forced himself to sit. To breathe. To analyze.
But reason buckled beneath recognition.
Six years ago, she had left him.Six years ago, she had vanished without a trace.And now, two six-year-old children stood beneath her shadow, wearing echoes of his face.
He swallowed hard. "No…"
The word was barely sound. It was denial in its most fragile form.
He had built an empire out of control. But this—this was chaos wrapped in human form.
He rose, pacing across the glass floor as though distance could silence the truth screaming inside him. His reflection followed—fractured, distorted, almost mocking.
She'd hidden them.Hidden his children.
He slammed his palm against the window, the sound hollow but sharp. The lights outside flickered against the glass like camera flashes—relentless, exposing, cruel.
He turned back to the desk, to the photograph that had already become a brand in his mind.
Zane's quiet curiosity.Zara's reserved grace.
He could already see the stories forming—their laughter, their questions, their lives—without him.
His hand curled into a fist.
It wasn't just betrayal. It was theft.
Not of wealth, but of time.Of years he hadn't known he'd lost.
He pressed the intercom. His voice was steady, but cold."Damian."
"Yes, sir?"
"Everything you have on the Wards—schools, schedules, guardians, travel routes. I want observation, not interference. Discretion above all."
"Yes, sir. Any timeframe?"
"Immediate."
"Understood."
The line went dead.
Alexander sank back into his chair, exhaustion cutting through him like a clean blade.
His empire stretched across continents. Men obeyed him without question. Markets shifted with his breath. But this—two children, a woman's silence—had undone him in a way nothing else ever had.
He picked up the photo again, studying every contour.
Zane's protective stance beside his sister. Zara's small hand tucked discreetly into Selene's coat pocket.He noticed that—how even the girl, barely six, knew instinctively how to hide, how to guard what mattered.
That was Selene's doing.
She had taught them to live unseen.
He closed his eyes, his throat burning. For a heartbeat, anger drained into something dangerously close to grief.
He had imagined a thousand reasons why she left him.But never this one.
Never that she'd been carrying their children.
The thought struck like lightning—swift, white, absolute.
He rose again, restless. The city outside was slowly paling with dawn. Light brushed over steel and glass, and for a brief second, it felt like everything was holding its breath.
He whispered the names under his breath, testing their weight.
"Zane.""Zara."
They felt foreign and familiar all at once.
He touched the edge of the photograph, his thumb tracing the faint outline of their faces.
Two small lives—his and hers combined—growing in the quiet spaces where he'd never looked.
There was no undoing this.
No negotiation. No compromise.
For the first time in his life, Alexander Knight didn't want control.He wanted truth.
He wanted to see them—to see her.Not as punishment, but as necessity.As something in him demanded to be complete.
The storm outside began to fade, replaced by the fragile silver of morning.
He poured another glass of whiskey, though the taste no longer mattered.
In the reflection of the window, the city looked almost merciful—its chaos softened by light.
He exhaled slowly, his breath fogging against the glass.
"I will find you, Selene," he murmured. "And this time, I won't let you run."
It wasn't a threat.It was a vow.
One born not of fury, but of hunger—an ache for what had been taken, for what might still be his.
Somewhere in that faint dawn, the line between longing and obsession blurred into the same quiet heartbeat.
And for the first time in years, Alexander Knight felt alive again.