Lucien Drake saw the kid by accident.
It was late afternoon, and the city had softened just enough to hide its teeth. He walked through the glass corridor that connected two Drake Group headquarters buildings while checking a contract on his iPad.
The hallway looked out over a public plaza below.
Families would sometimes meet there, with nannies pushing strollers, parents carrying tired kids home, and tourists taking pictures. Lucien had walked down this hallway many times without noticing anything.
He stopped today.
He noticed something moving quickly.
A woman was kneeling by a fountain, quietly laughing as she dried a child's hands. The boy was probably no older than a year. Maybe even less. He wobbled as he stood there, his fat fingers gripping the side of the stone bowl.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Lucien should have kept walking.
Instead, his eyes stayed locked.
The kid looked up.
The woman looked up at the sky and then at the woman with dark, deep eyes. The shape of his brow. The way his eyelashes are angled. When he concentrated, a small line formed between his eyebrows.
Lucien's chest got tight.
He leaned closer to the glass without meaning to.
No.
It couldn't be done.
The boy laughed loudly, and Lucien's reflection in the glass looked back at him. He was still, calm, and pale.
The likeness hit like a punch.
Not really.
But close enough to make you feel uneasy.
Lucien moved back.
His tablet slipped out of his hands and hit the floor with a loud crack.
The sound echoed loudly through the empty hallway.
An executive who was walking by looked over. "Mr. Drake?"
Lucien didn't say anything.
He was looking down at the plaza.
The mother picked up the baby and turned away, blending in with the crowd.
Gone.
Lucien stood still for a long time after they had disappeared.
Without a word, he returned to his office.
He told his assistant to "cancel my remaining meetings" as he walked by. "Don't bother me."
"Yes, sir."
He heard a soft click when the door closed behind him.
Lucien poured himself a drink.
He didn't touch it.
Instead, he stood by the window, his mind playing the scene over and over again with perfect clarity.
The eyes.
It wasn't because of pride. He had seen enough kids to know that the resemblance could just be a coincidence.
But the way the kid looked up—serious, alert, and not scared—hit a nerve he didn't know he had.
Lucien shut his eyes for a moment.
You are making things up.
He opened them up again.
The pain didn't go away.
His phone rang an hour later.
Lucien didn't say hello; he just said, "Report."
"We found out who sent the anonymous messages to your ex-wife," his head of intelligence said. "They went through several servers." "Whoever sent them knows how to hide."
Lucien held the phone tighter. "Any ideas?"
"One," the man said carefully. "The genesis point is on the coast. A small town with "no major corporate presence."
Lucien's heart rate slowed down.
He asked, "How sure are you?"
"The man said, "Seventy percent." "After that, the trail goes cold."
Lucien didn't say anything.
A town on the coast.
Quiet and alone.
He suddenly saw the picture of the child in his head.
"Please send me everything," Lucien said. "And don't tell anyone about this."
"Yes, sir."
The call is over.
Lucien stayed standing with the phone in his hand.
He still didn't know what he was looking for.
He had been losing something since the night Elara left him, and it was still slipping through his fingers.
The air in the seaside town smelled like rain and salt.
I carefully pushed the stroller down the promenade, being careful not to bump it as the wind picked up. My baby had just fallen asleep, and his little chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
I stopped at the railing and moved the blanket around him.
His eyelashes were long. Dark.
People sometimes said lovely things about his eyes.
The nurse at the clinic had said once, "They're striking." "He'll break hearts."
I smiled nicely but didn't say anything.
I quickly learned which truths I should keep to myself.
A woman who was walking by looked into the stroller and smiled. "He's beautiful."
I said, "Thank you."
She left without saying anything else.
That was the town for you: kind, distant, and not interested in going deeper.
I looked around without thinking.
Not a single familiar face. There are no long looks.
But a strange fear settled in my chest, as if the world had changed just a little.
I pushed the stroller home faster than I usually do.
Lucien Drake looked at the picture on his screen when he got back to the city.
It was blurry. From a distance. The image was a security feed from the plaza's network of cameras.
The child was difficult to see.
But when Lucien zoomed in, he couldn't breathe.
The angle was wrong. The light is awful.
But—
The eyes looked at him again.
He quickly closed the picture.
"Coincidence," he said softly.
He said it again, this time more strongly.
"Coincidence."
His hand shook as he put the tablet down, though.
That night, Lucien didn't drink.
He didn't sleep either.
He spent hours looking through medical records, timelines, and dates that didn't help. Every path led to the same place: nothing.
Elara was gone.
There was no activity at the bank.
There was no digital trace of her presence.
There were no known friends in her life.
She had made plans for it.
That knowledge upset him more than anything else.
He didn't think she was as strong as she was.
Lucien made a choice in the morning.
"Book a flight," he told his helper. "I have to go to a conference."
The assistant looked at his calendar. "Which city, sir?"
Lucien stopped.
He said, "A coastal region." "Small. "Be quiet."
The helper nodded. "I'll make plans."
As the man walked away, Lucien turned his attention back to the window.
The city was coming to life.
And somewhere else, a child with familiar eyes was growing up without him, whether that connection was real or just in his head.
Lucien wasn't sure which answer scared him more.
I stood in the doorway of my seaside apartment's nursery and watched my son sleep.
It was a simple room. The colors are soft. No pictures.
I knelt down next to the crib and gently ran my finger over his tiny palm.
I said softly, "We're safe." "No matter what happens, we're safe."
He moved, and for a moment his brow creased before smoothing back out.
The same fold.
My heart stopped.
I stood up straight and turned off the light.
The waves kept rolling in on the outside, unaware of the connections that were growing stronger between two lives that would never meet again.