Lili watched through the glass, her heart shattering into a thousand pieces. She pressed her hand against the window, her fingers trembling. The nurses had told her he was awake, and she had fought the pain in her chest just to sit up and look at him.
"Leo," she mouthed against the glass, a tear sliding down her cheek.
Inside Room 701, Leo's gaze drifted toward the window. He saw the girl in the hospital gown, her face pale and her eyes filled with an intensity that made his chest ache with a phantom weight. He looked at her, his brow furrowing.
"Who is she?" Leo asked, pointing a trembling finger toward Lili. "Is she... with you?"
Luca looked at Lili, then back at his brother.
"That's Lili, Leo. She's... she's the woman you love. She was in the car with you. You saved her life."
Leo looked back at Lili. He saw the way she was crying, the way she looked at him like he was her entire world. He felt a strange, electric jolt in his mind—a flash of emerald silk and the scent of rain—but it vanished as quickly as it came, leaving behind nothing but cold, white static.
"I'm sorry," Leo whispered, his voice devoid of the command and passion that had once defined him. "I don't know her. I don't remember any of this."
Lili collapsed back onto her pillows, the physical pain of her injuries finally eclipsed by the agony in her heart. He was alive, yes. But the Leo who had pinned her to the marble wall, the Leo who had kissed her on the balcony, and the Leo who had walked away from an empire for her... he was gone.
She was the "New Girl" all over again. Only this time, the man she loved was a stranger who didn't even know her name.
Outside, in the hall, Arthur Vance stood by the elevator, watching through the glass. He was in a wheelchair, his own face pale from his heart attack. He saw his son's confusion and Lili's despair. A dark, twisted shadow of a smile touched his lips.
The accident hadn't killed them, but the silence in Leo's mind had done something much worse. It had given Arthur exactly what he wanted: a clean slate.
Lili lay in her hospital bed, the sharp, rhythmic beep of the monitors feeling like a hammer against her skull. Her body was a map of pain—broken ribs, a fractured leg, and deep lacerations—but the hollow ache in her chest was far worse.
She looked through the glass partition
into Room 701.
Leo was sitting up now, propped by pillows. He was looking at a digital tablet Arthur had given him, nodding slowly as his father whispered in his ear. Every time Lili tried to catch his eye, Leo would look away, his expression flickering with a mix of confusion and a strange, polite discomfort. To him, she was just the girl in the next room who cried whenever he looked at her.
"Lili, you need to eat something," Luca said softly, sitting by her bedside with a plastic tray of untouched hospital food.
"I can't, Luca," she whispered, her voice cracking. "He doesn't know me. He looks at me like I'm a stranger he met on a bus. How can he forget... everything?"
"The doctors say it's retrograde amnesia caused by the brain swelling," Luca explained, his eyes red-rimmed. "It might be temporary. It might stay this way. But Lili... there's something else."
He lowered his voice, glancing toward the door to ensure the guards Arthur had posted weren't listening. "My father is already rewriting history. He told Leo that the accident was caused by a 'disturbed fan'—you. He told him that Sienna is at home recovering from the shock of his 'betrayal' and that you were the one who forced him off the road."
Lili's breath hitched, a sharp pain flaring in her chest. "He's making me the villain? After I saved his life?"
"He's taking advantage of the blank slate, Lili," Luca said, his jaw tightening. "He wants the CEO back. He wants the merger back. And he knows that if Leo doesn't remember loving you, he can turn him back into a machine."
Lili looked at her bruised hands. She felt small—smaller than she had ever felt as the "New Girl" at Evergreen. She didn't have the Vance millions. She didn't have a legal team.
She didn't even have her scholarship anymore. All she had was a memory of a man who no longer existed.
"What am I supposed to do, Luca?" she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "I can't fight his father from a hospital bed. I can't make him love me again if he doesn't even know my name."
She felt a sudden, terrifying urge to just give up. To let the silence win. To go back to her small town and pretend the last year was a fever dream. But then, she remembered the letter he had written her.
I love you. That is my only truth.
Even if he didn't remember it, the truth was still there, buried under the bandages and the trauma.
That night, when the heavy sedatives usually kicked in and the floor nurses were at their quietest, Lili did something reckles
Ignoring the agony in her leg, she swung her feet over the side of the bed. She gasped, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead as her fractured ribs protested. Using her IV pole as a crutch, she dragged herself toward the heavy glass door that connected their suites.
The door was heavy, but it wasn't locked from the inside. She pushed it open with a low groan and hobbled into Room 701.
Leo was awake. He was staring out the window at the city lights, his silhouette tall and imposing even in a hospital gown. He turned at the sound of the door, his eyes widening as he saw the girl from the next room shivering in the doorway, her hospital gown stained with a fresh drop of blood from her reopened bandage.
"You... you shouldn't be out of bed," Leo said, his voice hesitant. "The nurses said you were badly hurt."
Lili didn't stop. She moved toward him until she was standing right in front of his chair. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she touched the edge of the gauze on his forehead.
"Leo," she whispered, her eyes searching his for a spark, a shadow, anything. "Please. Just look at me. Not as a patient. Not as a fan. Just look at me."
Leo froze. Up close, the scent of her—faint lavender and hospital soap—did something to his mind. A jagged, painful flash of green silk and a rainy balcony flickered behind his eyes. He gasped, clutching his head as a wave of nausea hit him.
"I... I feel like I know you," Leo gasped, his breathing turning ragged. "But every time I try to find you in my head, it's like walking into a wall of fire."
Lili leaned in, her forehead resting against his, just as it had on the night of the gala. "Then don't look in your head, Leo," she whispered, a single tear falling onto his hand. "Look at your heart. Because I'm still there."
Before he could answer, the heavy main door of the suite swung open. The lights flared to life.
Standing in the doorway, his face twisted in a mask of pure, patriarchal fury, was Arthur Vance. Behind him stood two massive security guards.
"Get her out of here," Arthur roared. "Now!"