POV Jocelyn

The elevator’s hum was the only sound in this marble mausoleum of wealth and emotional dysfunction.

I stood there with Mia curled into my side like she was trying to burrow back into my ribs where she’d be safe from rich people and their toxic bullshit.

Her arms wrapped around my waist with the desperation of a six-year-old who’d figured out that sometimes grown-ups make terrible decisions.

My borrowed suitcase sat beside us—Helena’s old thing that still smelled like fabric softener and false hope. It looked pathetically small to contain the wreckage of whatever the hell I’d been trying to build here.

“Please don’t go, Mommy.” Mia’s voice cracked like a snapped violin string, and something in my chest shattered along with it.

I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself not to cry.

I had to be strong. For her. For me. For the version of myself that had survived six years of single motherhood without falling apart.

Then I heard footsteps. Measured, heavy, familiar enough to make my spine straighten involuntarily.

Zayden stood at the end of the hallway looking like he’d run here, breath uneven, jaw clenched tight enough to crack diamonds.

When he finally spoke, it came out like gravel under pressure. “Stay.”

One word. Just one fucking word, and my entire nervous system went haywire.

I turned slowly, wary as a cat who’d been kicked too many times.

“Why?” My voice cut through the tension like a scalpel. “So your fiancée can insult me in front of my child again? So she can remind us exactly where we don’t belong in your perfect little world?”

His shoulders dropped an inch. He stepped closer, and I caught that cedar scent that made my brain do inappropriate things.

“I ended it.”

The words didn’t register at first. “What?”

“I ended the engagement,” he said again, slower this time, like I might be having a stroke. “With Vivienne. In front of my grandfather.”

I stared at him, blinking hard.

Part of me didn’t believe it. Part of me didn’t know if I wanted to believe it, because hope is a dangerous fucking drug when you’re already addicted to disappointment.

“Why now?” I asked.

He took another step forward, green eyes flickering with something raw and old and broken.

“Because I hated you for lying,” he admitted, voice low and hoarse. “But I hated myself more… for not recognizing you.”

My heart did this stupid fluttering thing that had no business happening in the middle of what was basically an emotional war zone.

“I remember your eyes,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Your voice. Your laugh. I remember you. From that night.”

The air shifted, thickened with seven years of unspoken truth and desperate longing.

He reached for me.

And for one insane moment—just one moment where logic took a vacation—I let him.

Our lips met like a storm collapsing in on itself. Desperate, aching, two broken halves clawing their way back to something that might have been love once upon a time.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t safe. But it was real in a way that made my bones ache.

His hands found my face, my back, my hips like he was trying to memorize the geography of seven years’ worth of absence.

But when they drifted lower, muscle memory kicked in and I pulled away, breathing hard. “No.”

He froze like I’d slapped him.

“You don’t get to fix this with heat,” I said, voice shaking with fury and want and complete emotional exhaustion. “Fix what you broke, Zayden. Not just with me. With Mia. With the truth.”

He looked like I’d punched him in the solar plexus. But he nodded. Once. Slow and grounded and meaningful in a way that suggested he might actually understand.

I left him standing in that hallway like a statue of regret and expensive cologne.

That night, he didn’t sleep.

I know because I watched the lights in his study stay blazing past midnight from the guest room I refused to call mine. Mia was finally asleep, tiger plush tucked under her chin, looking peaceful in a way that made my chest tight.

But when the clock crept toward two AM, I heard the front door slam with the finality of a gunshot.

I pressed my face to the window and watched.

Zayden stood in front of the main house like a man walking into battle. No hesitation. No looking back. Just pure, concentrated determination wrapped in a thousand-dollar coat.

The wrought iron gates creaked open like something out of a gothic novel.

And he walked straight through them—shoulders squared, no ring on his finger, ready to burn down his entire legacy for a woman and child he’d known for six weeks.

Inside that mansion, I knew Vivienne was probably lounging by the fire like a satisfied cat, wine glass in hand, assuming he’d come crawling back with apologies and jewelry.

She was about to get the surprise of her entitled fucking life.

Because Zayden Wolfe—the man I’d fallen for in a single night seven years ago, the man I’d been too scared to trust with the truth—was finally choosing us over everything else.

Even if it meant losing everything he’d ever known.

The Wolfe ring—symbol of power, legacy, blood money—hit the flames like a period at the end of a very expensive sentence.