The fear was gone.
In its place was calculation.
“You were recovering,” she said. “You were unstable after the crash. Elena was a risk.”
“A risk?”
“To the company. To your inheritance. To everything your father built.”
Sebastian stared at her.
“She was carrying my child.”
Claire’s mouth tightened.
“And she knew it.”
The terrace erupted in whispers.
Leo stepped back.
Sebastian reached for him, then stopped, afraid of frightening him.
“Leo,” he said softly, “will you take me to your mother?”
The boy nodded.
Claire grabbed Sebastian’s arm.
“If you walk out now, you are choosing a stranger’s story over your family.”
Sebastian looked at the photograph in his hand.
Then at the boy.
“No,” he said. “I’m choosing the part of my family you buried.”
The Clinic Near the Tracks
St. Mercy Clinic was not the kind of place Sebastian had ever entered.
Not because he was cruel.
Because wealth builds routes around suffering.
The clinic sat between a pawn shop and an abandoned warehouse, its green door chipped at the edges, its waiting room crowded with people who looked too tired to explain why they deserved help.
Leo ran ahead.
“Mom!”
Sebastian followed him down a narrow hallway.
Room 6.
The door was half open.
Elena lay in a narrow bed beneath a thin blanket.
For a moment, Sebastian could not move.
Twelve years had changed her.
Her face was thinner. Her hair shorter. Her hands too fragile against the white sheet.
But it was Elena.
Alive.
Her eyes opened when Leo climbed onto the bed.
“I found him,” Leo whispered.
Elena turned her head.
Then she saw Sebastian.
Her lips parted.
All the years between them filled the room at once.
“Sebastian.”
He gripped the doorway.
“Elena.”
