The tears wouldn’t stop.
They just kept coming.
Why was it that everything she tried to hold onto slipped away regardless?
Family.
Love.
The Hart name.
And now her child.
None of it stayed.
She’d fought for every piece of it, and every piece had dissolved through her fingers like sand no matter how tightly she gripped.
So powerless.
Eliana pressed a hand to her stomach, then closed it into a fist.
Not strong enough.
Not yet.
She couldn’t count on staying in anyone’s orbit, couldn’t lean on anyone as a permanent shelter.
She needed to build her own.
She wanted her career back in her own two hands, fully.
She wanted to reclaim what was left of the Hart family’s territory.
She wanted the truth about her father’s death.
And her mother…
She had to push through all of it, with everything she had, until the pain finally stopped catching up to her.
She cried until there was nothing left.
Eventually the pain dulled into something quieter.
Numb.
Numb was fine.
Neither joy nor grief just fine.
With that thought settled, she found she could keep going.
By the time Chloe and Jonathan came back, Eliana had already pulled herself together.
“Here, Eliana, try this.” Chloe popped open a thermos with a smile.
“Tell me if you like it.”
Eliana took it, a savory rice porridge with vegetables and meat, the smell warm and inviting.
Under Chloe’s hopeful gaze, she took a bite.
The flavor lingered pleasantly.
“It’s really good,” Eliana said.
“Eat as much as you want, then,” Chloe said, studying her pale face.
“Get your strength back.”
Eliana nodded firmly.
She would get better.
Jonathan, standing nearby, filled her in on a few updates from his calls that morning.
While the three of them talked things through, elsewhere…
Nathaniel opened his eyes on the couch.
Yesterday’s suit jacket lay draped over him like a blanket.
The ashtray on the coffee table sat overflowing with cigarette butts.
This was his apartment near the office, the place he crashed at during brutal stretches of work.
Since marrying Eliana, he’d barely used it at all.
His head throbbed with a dull ache, and he reached for his phone on autopilot.
He scrolled through his messages, passing dozens without registering them, until he landed on his thread with Eliana.
His last message still sat there, unanswered: Told Grandpa yesterday you weren’t feeling well.
But you’re coming to the family house with me this weekend.
No exceptions.
He frowned and tossed the phone aside.
He sat up, rubbed his temples, and padded barefoot toward the bathroom.
He turned on the tap, splashed cold water across his face.
Trying to shake off the fog.
For some reason, the sensation dragged up, a memory a similarly bleary morning, years earlier, after a brutal string of all-nighters at the office.
Back then, she’d been right there beside him through every one of those stretches, working through the company’s transformation alongside him, shoulder to shoulder.
He remembered that morning clearly splashing cold water on his face, exactly like this, while Eliana stood beside him holding out a clean towel.
The second he turned around, she’d wiped his face down like she was drying off a puppy, ruffling his damp hair after.
He’d frowned, pulled the towel off and she’d reached up instead, massaging slow circles into his temples.
“Feel any better?” Her voice, soft, still echoing somewhere in his memory.
Hearing it, even now, something in his exhausted chest had eased, just slightly.
“We should hear back today,” she’d said.
“Nate, what do you want for dinner?
I’ll cook.”
He’d eaten at Michelin-starred restaurants across the globe for work, for every other reason under the sun and none of it had ever beaten what she made him in that kitchen.
Simple.
Homemade.
Warm enough to matter.
Before he could even answer her question that day, his phone had rung.
The news had been good.
Better than he’d dared hope.
He’d set the phone down, turned, pulled her into his arms, and spun her right there by the sink.
The suddenness of it had startled her when he set her back down, her eyes had gone wide and skittish, like a deer caught mid-flight.
Adorable.
He’d laughed, low and quiet, and kissed her.
Splash…
Back in the present, water still ran from the tap into the sink.
Years later, Nathaniel looked up at his own reflection.
Water dripping off his face, his hair.
Eyes bloodshot, exhausted, hollowed out.
Standing there completely alone.
He shut off the tap, grabbed a clean towel from the cabinet, and dried himself off.
He tossed the towel into the hamper, crossed to the closet, and pulled out that day’s clothes.
Shirt, slacks, jacket he reached for a tie and stopped short.
No spare ties in this apartment.
When Eliana had still been in his life, she never once let that slip.
His jaw tightened.
The image surfaced unbidden her face last night, mid-fall, disbelief and hurt written across it in the half-second before she hit the ground.
Ding-dong!
The doorbell.
He opened it to find Vivian standing there.
Frail as ever, but she lit up with a warm smile the second she saw him.
“Morning, Nathaniel!
I brought you flowers, look!”
She held out a fresh arrangement, blooms fragrant and vivid, framed against her own soft, fragile smile.
The kind of image built to inspire tenderness.
Protectiveness.
Ethan’s words from the night before surfaced in his mind, delivered in that cold predawn wind
“If you want Vivian, then be with Vivian, fully.
Stop keeping one foot in Eliana’s life.”
“Nathaniel.
The only decent thing left is to let her go.”
Nathaniel’s jaw tightened further.
The condescension in Ethan’s voice, the lecturing tone it turned his stomach even now.
Was this Eliana’s angle now?
Recruiting Ethan to guilt him into line?
Tantrums.
A staged accident.
And now leaning on Ethan to pressure him further.
He hated the feeling of being maneuvered like this.
I hated it.
“Everything okay, Nathaniel?
You don’t like the flowers?” Vivian asked softly.
He snapped back to the present and took the bouquet from her hands.
“No I do.”
If Eliana thought she could corner him into anything, she’d learn quickly that Nathaniel Cole didn’t bend to pressure.
“I really do like them,” he told Vivian.
Vivian only had six months left.
Whatever was driving her illness, taking care of her was his responsibility.
Full stop.
“Good.” Vivian’s smile widened.
They left the apartment together.
Photographers were already waiting outside.
Within the hour, a new headline was trending citywide
*”Nathaniel Cole and Vivian Blake spotted leaving his apartment together; the notoriously polished CEO stepped out without a tie for once.
Slipped his mind, or something else going on?”
The accompanying photos captured everything: Vivian arriving with flowers that morning, the two of them walking out of the building side by side.
It set off an immediate wave of speculation.
Opinions online split every which way but this time, something was different.
This time, Eliana had officially responded.