The officer rapped on the car window, worry written across her face as she looked in at Eliana.
Eliana had both arms wrapped around her stomach, cold sweat beading across her forehead.
“Ma’am?
Ma’am, can you hear me?
Are you okay?” the officer called out, glancing anxiously at her partner.
Eliana knew, somehow, without needing to be told.
The signs had already been there early warnings of a miscarriage, days ago.
And now, after throwing herself clear of one impact, then absorbing a second one straight through the driver’s seat…
Was she losing the baby?
She wasn’t ready.
Not for this.
A wave of pure panic swept through her, raw and sudden.
She was terrified, genuinely terrified of losing this child.
“Ma’am!
Ma’am, please, open the door!”
The officer’s voice again, more urgent now, pounding on the glass.
Eliana’s vision swam.
She forced her hand to the door, managed to pull it open through the pain
and then everything went dark.
…
Elsewhere.
The Cole Group tower blazed with light late into the night.
Nathaniel was buried in proposal reviews.
He’d had back-to-back meetings all day.
Dozens of decisions still needed his final sign-off.
He’d been at it since early afternoon without a break.
His expression had gone from focused to visibly strained.
In the massive conference room, no one dared make a sound.
He tapped the report in his hand once, lightly, with two fingers.
“Who’s the project manager on this one?” His voice stayed level calm, even but it landed like a blade regardless.
“Mr.
Cole, that would be me.” A middle-aged man rose from his seat, already sweating.
Nathaniel looked at him, lips barely parting.
“Explain.”
The man wiped his brow again.
“It’s well, the thing is” He stumbled through half-formed excuses, none of them coherent.
He danced around the real issue, offering a string of justifications that amounted to nothing.
Enough.
Nathaniel cut him off before he could finish.
The man was visibly shaking now, fear plain on his face.
“Mr.
Cole, please one more chance, I promise I can turn this around”
Nathaniel’s frown deepened, and beside him, his assistant picked up on the cue instantly.
“Mr.
Quinn,” the assistant said sharply, “you made a long list of guarantees when you pitched this project.
Who exactly should we be blaming for the outcome, if not you?”
“But I” Quinn tried again.
The assistant cut him off cold.
“No more excuses.
This project had full backing from the Cole family, a serious allocation of resources, and it still collapsed.
Do you understand why that happened?”
Quinn tried to push back further, but Nathaniel simply slid a document across the table toward him.
“A project this small, and this much corruption baked into it,” Nathaniel said, voice flat and cold.
Quinn’s face went white as he scanned it.
He opened his mouth, trembling, but the assistant waved him silent.
The conference room door opened, and Cole Group’s internal compliance officers stepped in and escorted him out.
“Mr.
Cole, Mr.
Cole, I was wrong, please, Mr.
Cole”
His pleading faded down the hallway, and the room settled into absolute silence.
Nathaniel swept a cold glance across the remaining executives, message clearly delivered.
“The meeting was adjourned.”
He said the words and walked out without another glance back.
His assistant followed him into the private office.
Seeing Nathaniel drop into his chair, rubbing his temples, the assistant immediately signaled a staffer to bring coffee.
Nathaniel closed his eyes, exhaustion settling into every line of his body.
Bone-deep tired.
Mentally, physically, all of it.
An organization the size of Cole Group would always have problems buried somewhere in its structure.
He understood that much.
What he didn’t understand was why the past few days in particular had drained him like this.
Footsteps approached, and something settled onto the desk in front of him.
“Nathaniel, drink some warm water.
It’s late, take care of yourself while you work.
I added a little something to help you unwind.”
For half a second, he thought he heard a familiar voice say it.
He opened his eyes and found his assistant standing there instead, bowing slightly.
A cup of coffee sat on the desk, not water.
His mouth pressed into a thin line.
“You’d prefer the coffee, Mr.
Cole?” his assistant asked, catching the shift in his mood immediately.
Nathaniel frowned, unable to name the tangle of feelings sitting in his chest.
“Normally your wife handles the warm water,” the assistant said, a little apologetic.
“I couldn’t find whatever blend she usually uses, and you looked exhausted, so I figured coffee would do.”
Right.
Eliana usually handled that.
Nathaniel shut his eyes again, the headache sharpening.
“Should I call her, just to check?” the assistant offered carefully.
“No need,” Nathaniel said.
The assistant nodded and the office fell quiet again.
Uncomfortably quiet.
He couldn’t remember the office ever feeling this silent before.
Irritation flared, sharp and sudden.
“What happened this month?” Nathaniel broke the silence.
“You mean the workload, Mr.
Cole?” the assistant asked.
“Mm.”
“It’s well,” the assistant said carefully, “a lot of the smaller issues, like Quinn’s situation today, used to get filtered and resolved by Mrs.
Cole before they ever reached your desk.
Only the bigger items made it to you directly.
So without her handling that layer, everything’s landing on you at once.”
Nathaniel opened his eyes and looked at him.
The assistant read the look and added, awkwardly, “That’s on me, Mr.
Cole.
I should have managed the backlog better.”
Nathaniel didn’t press the point, just shook his head.
“Where’s the Winslow family contract?” he asked instead.
The assistant’s head dropped lower.
“My apologies, sir, the team hasn’t finished the prep work on that yet.”
Nathaniel sighed and waved him out.
The assistant exhaled in relief and left quickly.
Nathaniel stared at the closed door.
He already knew the real answer.
Ever since the divorce paperwork had gone through, a whole layer of things Eliana used to quietly manage had simply gone unhandled.
The office sat in silence except for the faint ticking of a clock.
The sharp, bitter smell of coffee hung in the air.
Steam curled up slowly from the cup, and somehow that alone deepened his frown further.
He picked up his phone and looked at the message he’d sent Eliana about the weekend visit to the family house.
Still no reply.
He remembered her flat, immediate refusal on the phone.
Still sulking, apparently.
Just as he was staring at the screen, a knock came at the door.
He looked up to see Vivian’s smiling face in the doorway.
“Nathaniel.” She stepped in, still smiling.
“I came to keep you company.”
He pocketed his phone and nodded.
Vivian’s eyes flicked briefly to his phone, though she said nothing.
She thought it over, then sat down beside him, clearly wrestling with something.
“What’s wrong?” Nathaniel asked, catching her mood.
“Nathaniel, did Eliana come see you today?” Vivian asked, hesitant.
He gestured for her to keep going.
“I posted a video this afternoon, officially announcing I’m joining Voice of Heaven.”
She watched his face carefully as she spoke.
“I only meant to follow the same path she once took, but the comments got a lot uglier than I expected…”
She hesitated again before pushing through.
“Did she say anything to you about it?
Confront you?”
Nathaniel’s brow furrowed.
This afternoon?
He’d been in meetings the entire day, completely offline.
He glanced up at the clock.
9:15 p.m.
“There’s something else, too…” Vivian added.
“I left the studio around 8:45, and something felt off the whole drive over.
By the time I parked downstairs, I realized paparazzi had apparently been trailing me since I left the building.”
She looked genuinely apologetic, pulling out her phone to show him.
The photos tracked her entire route leaving her flower studio, all the way to walking into the Cole Group tower.
Captioned: #VivianBlakeSpottedEnteringColeTowerLateAtNight, Confirming a Public Relationship With Nathaniel Cole?#
Underneath, a wave of comments mocked the idea that Eliana’s days as Mrs.
Cole were numbered.
“Nathaniel, I’m so sorry, this is my fault,” Vivian said, eyes reddening.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
He waved it off, signaling it wasn’t worth worrying about.
He’d already been planning to go public with Vivian once the cooling-off period officially ended anyway.
Just a matter of timing, really
His phone suddenly buzzed violently against the desk.
The clock ticked forward.
9:20 p.m.
Nathaniel picked it up and saw Eliana’s name on the screen.