The storm had broken hours ago, but its remnants hung over the city, heavy, glinting, metallic. From the penthouse's glass walls, Alexander watched the clouds drift low enough to touch the skyline.
He had built this tower as proof that he could rise above everything that had once undone him. Yet this morning, every window felt like an accusation.
Below him, the city bled silver in the rain. Somewhere among its lights were the two faces that refused to leave his mind, the boy with his stride, the girl with his eyes.
Zane. Zara.
Names that tasted like thunder on his tongue.
His assistant's voice broke the silence. "She's here, sir."
Alexander didn't turn. "Send her in."
The door opened with the sound of a secret being broken.
Selene walked in. The storm seemed to follow her — faint rain still clinging to her hair, her coat darkened at the edges, her face pale with exhaustion and something sharper than fear.
She didn't wait to be invited to speak. "You had no right to summon me."
He finally turned, the movement deliberate, quiet. "And yet you came."
"I came," she said, "because your people wouldn't leave my house. Because my children..."
"Our children."
Her breath caught. "Don't."
He stepped closer, slow, each word low and precise. "Say it, Selene. You've hidden them from me for six years. You've lied. You've built a life without ever once thinking I'd learn the truth."
"I thought you didn't care for truth," she said, voice trembling with quiet rage. "You only care for control."
He exhaled, a sound that was almost a laugh but not quite. "And you think control is what this is?" He gestured toward the storm, toward the skyline, toward the silence between them. "Do you have any idea what it feels like to see your face staring back from a stranger's child?"
Her reply came sharp. "They're not strangers. They're mine."
He moved closer, his shadow overlapping hers. "Ours."
"No." Her voice cracked, but her eyes did not. "You forfeited that word the day you told me love was a distraction. The day you turned what we had into a contract."
His jaw tightened. "You left before I could ask you to stay."
"Because you would have thrown me away the next morning," she said, bitter laughter breaking through the ache. "Don't rewrite the past to make it noble."
He took another step. The space between them was breath-thin now. "You think I wouldn't have chosen you?"
"You didn't."
The silence that followed was almost physical, a pulse, a drag of air, the slow collapse of everything he'd built to keep her at distance.
He reached out before he could think better of it. His hand found her wrist. Warm. Alive. The same pulse he'd once known too well fluttered beneath his thumb.
"Alexander..."
"You kept my children from me," he said, voice breaking through restraint. "You stole six years of their lives. Six years of mine."
Her chin lifted. "I saved them from a man who didn't know how to love anything he couldn't own."
He drew in a sharp breath. "That's what you think I'm doing now?"
"I don't think," she said quietly. "I remember."
For a moment, there was nothing but their breathing, his rough, hers measured, the kind of silence that held too much truth to bear.
Then, through the glass wall, thunder rolled again, a deep sound that seemed to echo their war.
He released her wrist. The mark of his touch lingered, faint and burning.
She stepped back, gathering her coat as if it were armor. "If you think I'll let you near them..."
"I don't need your permission," he said. The quiet of it was worse than shouting.
Her eyes flashed. "You'll take them from me?"
"I'll claim what's mine."
"Mine," she repeated, the word trembling, desperate. "You think possession makes you a father?"
"It makes me responsible."
"Too late."
The words struck like a blade, small, but it cut deep.
He moved past the desk, every motion precise. He picked up a folder, one of many his investigators had compiled overnight, and placed it in front of her.
"Read it," he said.
Selene hesitated, then opened it. Her eyes moved over the photographs: Zane walking home from school, Zara in a field of yellow flowers, her own figure bent to tie a shoelace.
The invasion was complete. Documented. Unforgivable.
Her hand shook as she turned the page. "You followed them."
"I protected them," he corrected, voice low, dangerous in its calm. "There's a difference."
"They didn't need your protection."
He looked at her sharply. "Everyone needs mine."
The arrogance in his tone snapped something in her. She slammed the folder shut, the sound like glass cracking.
"You don't even realize how you sound, do you?" she whispered. "You talk about protection when you mean power. You talk about responsibility when you mean ownership. You don't see people, Alexander. You see acquisitions."
He stood very still. Then, softly, "And what does that make you?"
Her eyes filled, not with tears, but with fury that had nowhere left to go. "The mistake you couldn't control."
That did it. His composure fractured, visible only in the faint tremor of his hand as he reached for her again, not to hurt, but to hold, to make her listen.
"I didn't lose control," he said. "I lost you."
She laughed once, brittle, tragic. "And now you want to make up for it by taking what I love most?"
He shook his head. "Not taking. Acknowledging. They're mine too, Selene. I'm not some ghost in their story. I exist."
"Existence isn't fatherhood."
"And absence isn't protection."
Their words collided like heat against steel.
For a moment, they just stared at each other, two people caught between hate and longing, both refusing to break first.
Then, as if summoned by fate's cruelest precision, a knock came at the door.
Damian entered quietly, his eyes flicking between them. "Sir," he said carefully, "there's been a development. The children are downstairs."
Selene froze. "What?"
"They were waiting in the lobby," Damian said, lowering his gaze. "Your driver must have… misunderstood."
Alexander's breath stilled. "They're here?"
Selene's voice shook. "You had no right..."
He didn't wait for her to finish. He moved to the elevator.
"Alexander, don't you dare..."
But he was already gone.
The elevator doors opened to the marble lobby, where two small figures stood side by side. Zane in his neat blue jacket, Zara holding his hand, her eyes wide at the gleaming hall.
When they saw him, they both went still.
"Mom said we're meeting someone," Zara whispered to her brother.
Zane nodded but didn't speak. His gaze locked on Alexander, the faint recognition of something he couldn't name flickering there.
Alexander approached slowly, each step deliberate. He had negotiated billion-dollar contracts, faced presidents, kings, and rivals, but this, this small moment, made his pulse unsteady.
He knelt to their level. "Zane. Zara."
Zara tilted her head. "You know our names."
He smiled faintly. "I do."
Zane frowned. "Who are you?"
He hesitated. He could have said a friend. He could have lied. But lies had cost him everything once.
"I'm someone who should have been here a long time ago," he said.
Zane studied him, suspicion and curiosity wrestling in his young face. "You sound like Mom when she's sad."
Alexander almost laughed, or cried. He wasn't sure which. "Maybe because I've missed her, too."
Zara's eyes softened. "You're sad."
He swallowed. "A little."
Before he could say more, Selene appeared at the end of the hall, breathless, pale.
The children ran to her immediately. Zane clung to her coat; Zara wrapped an arm around her waist.
Selene's voice trembled. "You had no right to bring them here."
"They're my children," he said, rising to his full height.
She looked up at him, tears finally slipping past her control. "And you're a stranger to them."
"Not for long."
"You think you can just appear and claim them because your blood says so?"
He stepped closer. "Because my heart does."
Her breath caught, a tremor of pain, not softness. "You don't get to say that now."
Zane looked up between them. "Mom?"
Selene forced a smile, smoothing his hair. "It's all right, baby. We're leaving."
But Alexander's voice cut through the air, low and absolute. "You're not."
Zara blinked. "Are we in trouble?"
Selene knelt, hands trembling as she held her daughter's face. "No, sweetheart. We're going home."
He watched them, something tightening in his chest. The picture of them, fragile, fierce, defiant, was almost too much.
When she stood again, he said it.
"They're mine."
The words were not shouted. They were whispered with the calm certainty of a man who had never lost a battle.
Selene flinched. "Say that again and I swear,"
"I will fight for them."
"You'll destroy them."
"No," he said, stepping close enough for her to feel his breath. "I'll destroy anyone who keeps them from me."
The words hung there, cold, irrevocable.
Even Nathan, standing by the door, looked away.
Selene stared up at him, disbelief and heartbreak warring in her eyes. "You're doing this out of guilt, not love."
He shook his head. "I don't know the difference anymore."
She exhaled shakily. "Then you'll lose them before you ever earn them."
He didn't answer. His gaze lingered on the children, their faces half-turned toward him, uncertain, waiting.
Then, softer than the silence itself, he murmured the vow that would change everything:
"No one hides my blood from me again."
The words landed like a verdict.
Selene's expression fractured, not anger now, but something rawer: the grief of knowing the war had just begun.
The elevator chimed behind them, waiting like a judge.
Neither moved.
The rain began again outside, thin and merciless, tracing the glass like tears the sky refused to hide.