~Sophie's POV~
The door clicked shut behind me.
I didn't turn around. My charcoal pencil had already slipped from my fingers, landing somewhere on the studio floor, and I couldn't make myself reach for it.
The air had changed. That was the only way I could describe it — one second it was just the quiet of my loft, and the next something had shifted in it, and I knew before a single sound followed that I wasn't alone.
And then there was the scent.
Rainwater. Pine. Something underneath both that I had spent seven years trying to forget and never managed to.
"Did you really think you could run from me forever, Sophie?"
I turned slowly.
Dominic Steele was standing in the shadow near the door, still in a suit, tie loose at the collar. He looked older than I remembered. Harder. The kind of face that had stopped leaving room for doubt somewhere along the way.
But it was his eyes that kept me from moving. Gray and steady and fixed entirely on me just like he did all those years ago.
"Dominic." My voice came out quieter than I wanted it to. "You shouldn't be here. You're getting married."
"To hell with the marriage," he said, and crossed the room.
He covered the distance before I could step back, his hands finding my waist, and then I was up, my back hitting the edge of the drafting table, blueprints sliding off the edge and hitting the floor. He didn't look at them. Neither did I.
He pressed close, chest against mine, and the heat coming off him made it hard to think clearly.
My wolf had gone very still in the back of my mind. Not afraid. Waiting.
"Tell me to leave," Dominic said. His face had dropped to the crook of my neck, and I felt his breath against my skin. "Look me in the eyes, step-sister, and tell me you don't want this."
His lips brushed against my pulse point. A sound escaped me before I could stop it, soft and humiliating, and seven years of distance collapsed like it had never existed.
My hands found his hair without asking my permission. "I hate you," I said. My voice broke on it.
"I know," he murmured.
His hands moved up my sides. His lips hovered over mine. I closed my eyes.
"Mommy?"
I was upright before the sound finished registering.
My cheek had been pressed against the drafting paper. The studio was quiet. The Los Angeles sun was going down through the windows, cutting long orange lines across the floor.
No Dominic. No pine and rainwater.
My heart was hammering. I pressed a hand to the back of my neck and found it damp.
A dream. I let out a slow breath. Seven years, and my own head still wouldn't leave it alone.
"Mommy, I'm hungry."
I turned my chair.
Ethan was standing in the doorway of the home office, rubbing one eye, his stuffed wolf tucked under his arm. Six years old, and he still looked half-asleep in a way that made something in my chest loosen every time.
I stood and walked over to him, crouching down to his level. "Hey, sleepyhead." I smoothed down his hair. "Mommy lost track of time. You want pizza?"
His eyes lit up. He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped.
His gaze had drifted past my shoulder.
"Who is this?"
I looked back.
The Forbes issue was sitting right next to my coffee mug. I had bought it two days ago for a market research article and made a point of not looking at the cover. I hadn't moved it.
Dominic Steele looked back at me from the front page. Older. Colder. The headline read: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET: HOW DOMINIC STEELE CONQUERED THE FAMILY EMPIRE.
Ethan leaned closer, his brow creasing the way it did when he was working something out. "Mommy," he said slowly. "He has eyes just like mine."
The air went out of me.
It was true. It had always been true. Ethan had my features, my nose, the curve of my mouth. But the dark hair, the jaw, and those gray eyes — those belonged to someone else entirely.
I reached past him and flipped the magazine face down. My hands were not steady. "He's just a businessman, baby. A very far-away businessman." I stood. "Come on. Coats. The pizza parlor isn't going to wait for us."
Ethan gave the overturned magazine one last look, then nodded and let me guide him out of the room.
---
Later that night, after the pizza was done and Ethan was on the living room floor with his puzzle, I stood at the kitchen island with a glass of red wine and let myself breathe.
The loft was mine. I had made it mine. When I had arrived in Los Angeles at nineteen, I had one suitcase, a broken heart, and nothing else to show for the life I had left behind. Camille had seen to that. She had dismantled everything carefully, and my mother Vivian had let her, because keeping face at a cocktail party mattered more than her daughter.
But that was before Mrs. Chen. Before the late nights and the grinding and the slow, quiet accumulation of a reputation built on work nobody could take credit for but me.
Now I was Sophie Hart. Twenty-six. My own clients, my own business, my own name on the lease of a place like this.
I didn't need a single thing from anyone in New York.
The intercom buzzed.
I frowned and checked the clock. Almost nine. I walked to the receiver and pressed it. "Hello?"
"Delivery for Ms. Sophie Hart," a flat voice said through the speaker. "Requires a direct signature."
I buzzed him up.
The envelope was thick, cream-colored, heavy in my hands. No return address. Just a gold embossed seal on the back that made the hair on my arms rise.
Steele & Associates. Legal Department.
I tore it open.
Most of it was dense legal language, the kind designed to take twice as long to read as it needed to. But the cover letter was plain enough.
Dear Ms. Hart,
It is with deep regret that we inform you of the passing of Mr. Richard Steele. He succumbed to his long-term illness yesterday evening at his estate in New York. As a named beneficiary in his final will and testament, your presence is legally mandated at the formal reading. The funeral and subsequent reading will take place in three days. Enclosed is a first-class flight ticket and your itinerary. Failure to attend will result in the immediate forfeiture of your inheritance and the termination of Richard Steele's final wishes regarding your family.
The letter slipped out of my hand and hit the floor.
Richard.
My eyes stung. I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Richard, who had remembered my birthdays when my own mother forgot them. Who had sat with me in his study and asked about my sketches like they mattered. Who had been warmer to a girl he had no obligation to than most people managed with their own children.
He was gone.
The grief hit, and then just as quickly the fear came up under it and swallowed it whole.
Three days. New York.
My mother would be there, circling whatever Richard had left behind. Camille would be there, the same way she was always there, watching for any opening. And somewhere in that city, in the offices of whatever empire he had spent seven years building —
Dominic.
---
After Ethan was asleep, I stood in the doorway of his room for a long time.
His wolf nightlight cast a blue glow across his face. One hand was curled loosely under his cheek. He looked peaceful in the specific way that only children managed, completely unconscious of everything waiting outside the door.
I had built seven years around keeping that peace intact. Every decision, every late night, every client I took on to make sure the numbers held — it had all been for this. For him.
Richard's dying wish was the only thing on earth that could make me walk back into that city.
I owed him that much.
But I looked at Ethan's face — at the jaw and the gray eyes that weren't mine — and the cold that settled into my chest had nothing to do with grief.
I could go back. I could face all of it.
But if Dominic looked at Ethan's face the way Ethan had looked at that magazine cover — if he started asking the same question —
I wouldn't just be facing the past. I would be handing him everything he needed to take my son apart from me.
And Dominic Steele, from everything I knew of him, did not let go of things he decided were his.