Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Crack in the Ice
The pristine, silent hotel suite had become a cage. I paced its length like a panther trapped in glass, my breath fogging the windows that looked out over a city I suddenly despised. The ghost of those eyes wouldn't leave me—they floated in my peripheral vision, in the reflection of the dark glass, in the steam rising from coffee I couldn't drink.
It's the grief. It's madness.
It was her.
The two thoughts warred inside my skull like a brutal civil war. I had hallucinated before—glimpses of her in crowds, the scent of her perfume in empty rooms, the phantom weight of her beside me in bed. But this was different. The physicality of it. The brush of wool against my hands. The warmth of her through that cream-colored sweater. The cloud of her breath in the cold air. The startling, living awareness in her gaze before it shuttered with fear.
Eight months. Two hundred and forty-three days since the river. Two hundred and forty-three nights of dreaming of eyes I thought I'd never see again.
And now those eyes had looked at me from the face of a stranger wearing a red scarf and a name I didn't know.
I couldn't breathe. I needed air, but the city air was tainted with the possibility of her. I needed a fight, but my enemies were all dead or scattered. I needed... I needed the truth.
A knock.
Leo entered, his face carefully neutral, his posture the perfect blend of loyalty and patience. "The car is ready for the airport, boss. The jet is fueled. Milan is expecting us by evening."
I didn't turn from the window. "Cancel it."
"Sir?"
"Cancel everything. Indefinitely."
Leo was silent for a beat, processing. "The Zurich holdings... the meetings in Milan... the Geneva acquisition—"
"Can wait." My voice was flat, absolute. "Or burn. For all I care." I finally turned, and whatever Leo saw in my face made him go still. The dead emptiness that had haunted me for eight months was gone, replaced by something feverish, unnerving, intensely alive. "I saw her, Leo."
Leo's expression tightened—not with disbelief, but with the careful pity of a man who had watched his boss disintegrate and reassemble too many times. "Boss..."
"Don't." The word was a low snarl, cutting him off. "Don't tell me it was a ghost. Don't tell me I'm imagining things. I felt her. I looked into her eyes. She looked back at me, Leo. For one second, she knew me. And then she ran."
I dragged both hands through my hair, pacing again, the energy in my body too vast to contain. "I need you to find out who is in this city. Anyone connected to her. Anyone connected to my world. I want surveillance on every private clinic, every high-security residence within a twenty-mile radius of the Bahnhofstrasse. Focus on properties purchased or leased in the last eight months. Shell companies. Offshore accounts. Anything with ties to the Graces or Julian Thorne."
Leo's eyebrows shot up. "The Graces? Marcus Grace buried his daughter with full media spectacle. He's been milking that tragedy for political capital for half a year. The funeral, the eulogies, the sympathy votes—he built an entire campaign on her death."
"Exactly." I turned to face him fully, and the cold, ruthless logic that had built my empire was reassembling itself from the wreckage of my grief. "It's the perfect cover. What better way to hide a living asset than to publicly mourn a dead one? What if the body in the river was never Aira?"
The theory was outrageous—a conspiracy theory spun from heartbreak and desperation. But as I spoke it aloud, pieces began to click together with sickening, plausible finality. The rushed identification. The Graces' iron control of the scene, barring me from any independent examination. The way they'd sealed the coffin before anyone could ask questions. Julian Thorne's sudden, complete disappearance from the public eye around the same time. Julian, who had always wanted her. Julian, whose family had tried to destroy her in every way possible.
"It's thin, boss," Leo said carefully. But his eyes had sharpened, the loyal soldier seeing his commander emerge from the fog of war. "Really thin. Even for us."
"Then make it thick." My voice was absolute. "I don't care about subtlety anymore. Use money. Use threats. Use whatever you need. I want names, addresses, flight manifests, credit card swipes. I want to know if Marcus Grace, Lucas Grace, or Julian Thorne have so much as crossed into this country in the past eight months. And I want it yesterday."
Leo nodded once—that sharp, military acknowledgment I'd seen a thousand times—and turned toward the door.
He never made it.
My phone vibrated on the marble table beside me. An unknown number. Swiss prefix.
The world stopped.
I snatched it up, my heart slamming against my ribs with a violence I hadn't felt in months. "Royce."
A pause. Then a voice I knew—smooth, cultured, dripping with the smug certainty of a man who believed he'd won.
"Mr. Royce. I believe you had a rather... startling encounter today."
Julian Thorne.
The name detonated in my skull like a bomb. Rage, white-hot and pure, surged through every nerve, burning away the last of my uncertainty. Julian was here. Julian was calling me. Julian knew.
"What have you done with her?" My voice came out deathly quiet—the calm before the kind of storm that leveled cities.
"Done?" Julian's tone was infuriatingly calm, laced with the pity of a victor addressing a broken opponent. "I saved her, Rowan. From the monsters your world sent to destroy her. From the river your family threw her into. She's safe. She's recovering. She's happy."
Each word was a precise, surgical cut. My grip on the phone tightened until I heard the casing creak.
"Where is she?"
"That's not your concern anymore. She doesn't remember you, Rowan. She doesn't remember the blood, the fear, the child you got on her before getting her killed. To her, you are nothing. A blank space. A bad dream she thankfully woke up from."
The air left my lungs. The room tilted.
She doesn't remember me.
"Let me talk to her." The words came out rough, scraped raw from somewhere deep.
"No." Julian's voice hardened. "Seeing you would traumatize her. She's fragile. Her mind created a safe space—a blank slate where the horror of her past doesn't exist. She thinks she's home, with her family and the man who loves her. The man she was meant to be with."
The admission landed like a physical blow.
"You brainwashed her."
"I protected her!" Julian snapped, the calm fracturing for the first time. "I gave her a clean slate. Something you could never offer. She's happy, Rowan. For the first time since you dragged her into your nightmare, she's at peace. She laughs. She walks in the snow. She drinks hot chocolate by the fire and asks when I'll be home for dinner."
His voice dropped, becoming almost gentle—and that gentleness was more brutal than any cruelty.
"She doesn't know about the baby, Rowan. That's gone too. Erased. The trauma was too great. Her mind protected her by deleting everything connected to you. The marriage. The love. The loss. All of it. Gone."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Could only stand there, frozen, while the world I'd rebuilt from ashes crumbled again.
"Walk away," Julian said quietly. "Go back to your kingdom of corpses. She's not yours anymore. She never really was. You had your chance, and you destroyed it. Now she's mine. And I will spend the rest of my life making sure she never remembers the nightmare of loving you."
The line went dead.
I stood trembling, the dial tone a mocking buzz in my ear. Then a sound tore from my throat—something raw, inhuman, a scream of pure rage and grief that shattered the silence. I hurled the phone across the room. It exploded against the marble wall, fragments raining down like shrapnel.
She's happy.
She doesn't remember me.
The baby is gone from her mind too.
The words were more devastating than any news of her death. Death was an ending. This was an ongoing torture—a living hell where my wife breathed the same air, walked the same earth, existed in the same world, and had no idea I'd ever existed.
She was alive.
She was alive.
And she was in the arms of another man, believing herself loved, believing herself safe, believing herself home—while I stood alone in a hotel room in a foreign city, the ghost of her touch still burning on my hands.
Leo stood frozen in the doorway, his face carefully blank, waiting.
I turned to him, and whatever he saw in my eyes made him go still. The dead, hollow ghost of the past eight months was gone. In its place stood something older, darker—the predator fully awakened, the protector unleashed, the avenger who had finally found his target.
"Change of plan," I said. My voice was like ground glass—rough, dangerous, absolute. "We're not looking for properties anymore. Julian just gave us the proof we needed."
Leo nodded slowly. "He's here."
"He's here. And he has her." I moved toward the window, staring out at the city that held my wife captive. Snow was falling again, soft and silent, blanketing the rooftops in white. Somewhere out there, in one of those warm, glowing houses, she was drinking hot chocolate by a fire, laughing at something Julian said, believing herself loved.
She doesn't remember me.
She's happy.
Walk away.
"Find him," I said quietly. "Track that call. Tap every line. Pull every favor, burn every contact. I don't care what it costs. I want to know exactly where he's keeping her."
"And when you find him?" Leo asked.
I turned, and my smile was terrible—the smile of a man who had spent eight months in hell and just discovered the devil's home address.
"When I find him, I won't just take her back. I will burn his entire world to the ground around him. I will make him watch as everything he's built turns to ash. I will make him understand, in the most visceral way possible, what happens to men who take what belongs to me."
I walked to the door, pausing beside Leo.
"And when she remembers—because she will remember, Leo. No amount of brainwashing or protection can erase what we had. When she remembers, I will be there. Waiting. Ready to spend the rest of my life proving that I deserve to stand in her light again."
I stepped into the hallway.
Behind me, Leo pulled out his phone and began issuing orders. The hunt had begun in earnest now. Not for vengeance. Not for justice. For her.
My wife.
My love.
My Aira.
Wherever you are, hold on. I'm coming.
And this time, nothing—not Julian, not your family, not even your own erased memory—will keep me from you.
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