Chapter 10
Then came the question everyone pretended not to ask.
Elena.
What was she to me now?
Mother of my child.
Former lover.
Woman I had failed to find.
Woman carrying six months of fear because men around me treated my life like a chessboard.
I did not ask her to move in.
Did not propose.
Did not convert guilt into romance.
That would have been another kind of pressure.
Instead I asked:
“What do you want?”
She laughed softly.
“People keep asking that like it’s new.”
It was.
“What do you want from me?”
“Truth.”
Fair.
“Access to my own medical decisions.”
Obviously.
“No Sloan people near my appointments.”
Done.
“No Caradonna guard outside my bedroom door.”
That hurt my instincts.
Accepted.
“And no one calling the baby heir.”
That surprised me.
Then made sense.
The child had already become political before birth.
Boy or girl, everyone would assign meaning.
She wanted none.
“Agreed.”
Elena watched me carefully.
“You can do that?”
“Yes.”
“Even if it’s a son?”
“Yes.”
I almost laughed.
“I run the family. I can disappoint traditional men professionally.”
She smiled for the first time that night.
Good.
Then:
“And us?”
Harder.
“I don’t know.”
She appreciated that answer more than promises.
We started with breakfast.
Not a relationship.
Breakfast.
Then appointments.
Then conversations about what happened before she left.
She told me I had treated our first relationship like something private because private meant less complicated.
She heard temporary.
I had not meant that.
Intent again.
It did not erase impact.
We had both walked away instead of asking.
May you like
Then larger forces filled the silence.
That was the pattern I was beginning to hate most.
