Prologue #2
Elena's carefully constructed composure crumbled. Tears she'd held back for five years spilled down her cheeks as she took in every detail of his face—the new lines around his eyes, the way his jaw had hardened, the shock and pain and something that might have been hope warring in his expression.
He looked older, more weathered, but underneath the successful businessman's exterior, she could still see traces of the man who'd held her in his kitchen while she promised to love him forever.
Sarah glanced between them with obvious confusion. "Sir? Shall I—"
"Close the door," Reed said, his voice rough with emotion. "Hold all my calls."
Sarah nodded and quickly retreated, leaving them alone with five years of silence stretching between them.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Elena clutched her coffee cup like a lifeline, while Reed stared at her as if she might vanish if he looked away.
"You're supposed to be dead," he said finally, the words falling into the quiet office like stones into still water.
"I know," Elena whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Reed."
He took a step toward her, then stopped, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "Sorry?" The word came out raw, wounded. "Elena, I went to your funeral. I stood beside your grave. I mourned you for two years."
The pain in his voice nearly brought her to her knees. "I wanted to tell you—"
"Tell me what?" Reed's composure cracked, revealing the anguish he'd carried for five years. "That you were alive? That everything I felt, everything I grieved, was a lie?"
"It wasn't a lie," Elena said urgently, setting down her coffee and taking a tentative step toward him. "My feelings for you were never a lie. What we had was real."
"Was it?" Reed's blue eyes, once so warm when they looked at her, were now cold as winter sky. "Because the woman I loved wouldn't have let me believe she was dead for five years. The woman I loved would have found a way to tell me the truth."
Elena flinched as if he'd struck her. "You don't understand the position I was in. The people who were after me, after the technology—they would have killed you to get to me. They would have destroyed everyone I cared about."
"So you destroyed me instead," Reed said quietly, and the broken way he said it shattered something inside Elena's chest.
"I saved you," she protested, her voice rising despite her efforts to stay calm. "I saved your life by staying away."
Reed laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Saved me? Elena, you didn't save me. You gutted me and left me to bleed out for five years."
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with pain and accusation.
Elena wanted to run to him, to throw her arms around him and somehow make him understand that every day away from him had been its own kind of death.
But the distance he was maintaining, both physical and emotional, told her that the Reed who had whispered his love against her forehead was gone.
In his place stood a stranger who looked like the man she loved but spoke to her like an enemy.
"Reed," she began, her voice breaking. "Please. Just let me explain—"
"Explain what, exactly?" Reed's voice was dangerously quiet now, the kind of controlled calm that spoke of barely leashed fury. "Explain why you let me grieve for a ghost? Explain why you've suddenly decided to resurrect yourself now, five years later?"
Elena straightened her spine, drawing on the strength that had kept her alive through years of hiding and running. "Because they found me again. Because the technology I created is being used to destroy innocent lives. And because I need your help to stop them."
Reed stared at her for a long moment, something shifting in his expression. "You need my help," he repeated slowly.
"Yes."
"After five years of radio silence, you show up in my office using a fake name because you need something from me."
Elena winced at the bitter accuracy of his assessment. "It's not like that—"
"Then what is it like, Elena?" Reed moved to his desk, putting more distance between them. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're only here because you need something. Just like last time."
"That's not true," Elena said desperately. "I'm here because you're the only person I trust. You're the only one who can help me stop this before more people die."
"Trust?" Reed's eyebrows rose in disbelief. "That's rich, coming from someone who faked her own death."
Elena felt the familiar weight of guilt settle on her shoulders, heavier than ever in the face of his pain. "I know you hate me—"
"Hate you?" Reed's voice cracked slightly. "Elena, I don't hate you. I wish I could hate you. It would be so much easier than this."
The raw honesty in his words made Elena's breath catch. For just a moment, she could see past his anger to the hurt beneath—the same hurt she'd carried every day since she'd been forced to leave him behind.
"Then help me," she said quietly. "Help me fix this, and then I'll disappear again if that's what you want. You'll never have to see me again."
Something flickered across Reed's face—pain, maybe, or regret. But when he spoke, his voice was steady and professional. "Tell me about the threat."
Elena blinked, surprised by the sudden shift to business. "What?"
"You said people are dying. You said the technology is being misused. Tell me about the threat." Reed's expression had shuttered, becoming unreadable. "That's why you're here, isn't it? To discuss business?"
Elena realized with a sinking heart that Reed was retreating behind the walls she'd once helped him tear down. The successful businessman was taking over, pushing aside the broken-hearted man who'd just confronted his dead girlfriend.
"Reed—"
"Dr. Martinez," he corrected pointedly, using her false name like a weapon. "I assume you have a presentation prepared? Evidence? Data?"
The formal tone was like a slap, but Elena forced herself to respond in kind. If this was the only way he would listen to her, then she would play by his rules. For now.
"Yes," she said, opening her portfolio with hands that only trembled slightly. "I have everything you need to understand what we're dealing with."
But even as she began laying out documents on his conference table, Elena couldn't shake the feeling that she'd already lost the most important battle. She'd come here hoping for forgiveness, or at least understanding.
Instead, she'd found a man who looked like Reed Star but spoke to her like a stranger.
And despite the professional mask he was wearing, she could see the truth in his eyes: the man she loved was still in there somewhere, still hurting, still angry.
Still alive, just like her.
The question was whether they could find their way back to each other before the people hunting her found them both.
Reed listened with patience as they went over everything, then he said, "I can't help you."
She was floored. "What?"
He stood and moved to the door. "Please go. I can't help you."
She couldn't comprehend that he'd actually said no. "But, did you not hear the presentation?"
He grimaced. "Go."
She scrambled to get her things together, then rushed past him, hating the fact she had to hold back the tears that wanted to be released. Hating the fact she had thought he would understand. Hating the fact... that she still loved him.
Chapter 2
Reed stood frozen in his office doorway, watching Elena's retreating figure disappear around the corner toward the elevators.
Every muscle in his body screamed at him to call her back, to run after her, to tell her he was sorry.
But he couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think past the roaring in his ears.
He'd done it. He'd actually sent her away.
The woman he'd mourned. The woman he'd loved. The woman whose ghost had haunted every relationship he'd attempted for the past five years.
She was alive. She was real. And he'd just thrown her out of his office like she was nothing.
Reed maintained his rigid posture until the elevator indicator showed it was descending—fifteen, ten, five. When it reached the lobby, something inside his chest exploded.
He stumbled back into his office, closed the door, and let out a sound that came from somewhere so deep inside him he didn't recognize it as his own voice. It was raw, primal, the howl of a wounded animal that had been shot and left to bleed.
The door burst open almost immediately.
"Mr. Star? Sir, are you—" Sarah's worried voice cut through his anguish.
"Leave! Now!" Reed shouted without turning around, his hands braced against his desk as he fought to stay upright.
The door clicked shut, leaving him alone with five years of carefully suppressed grief clawing its way to the surface.
No. No. No. This can't be true.
The memory crashed over him like a tsunami—standing beside that coffin in the rain, watching it disappear into the earth while believing Elena's body was inside.
The weight of the dirt hitting the wood.
The finality of it. The way something inside his soul had died that day and never come back to life.
The wound inside his heart that had finally begun to scar over had been ripped open, and blood was oozing out of him.
As a SEAL, he'd been good at compartmentalizing things like violence and death and horrible things.
But this... this was different. This was Elena, alive when she should be dead, real when she should be memory.
He put a hand over his heart and began to pace, sucking in deep breaths, trying to use the techniques his team psychologist had taught him years ago.
But he wasn't calm. He wanted to punch the window in front of him, wanted to destroy something, anything, to make the external world match the chaos inside his chest.
But he knew that was imbecile thinking.
Reed fell back on his training and dropped to the floor, pumping out push-ups even though it had been years since he'd officially trained for operations.
He'd never given up the running, lifting, push-ups that kept him sane.
The physical exertion was the only thing that could quiet the storm in his mind.
One. Two. Three. Elena's face when she said she loved him.
Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. The way she'd looked at him in his kitchen five years ago.
Thirty. Forty. Fifty. The sound her voice made when she whispered his name.
After pumping out fifty, he got to his feet, chest heaving, and grabbed his phone. There was only one person who would understand this kind of pain. Only one person who'd seen him at his worst and still called him brother.
Walker answered on the second ring. "Reed? What's wrong?"
"She's alive," Reed said without preamble, his voice hoarse from the sound he'd made earlier.
Silence stretched across the line. Then, carefully, "Who's alive?"
"Elena. Elena Vasquez. She just walked out of my office."
More silence. When Walker spoke again, his voice was cautious. "Brother, Elena's been dead for five years. You went to her funeral. Maybe you should—"
"She's not dead!" Reed exploded, then forced himself to lower his voice. "She was just here. In my office. Using a fake name, but it was her. She's alive, Walker. She's been alive this whole time."
Walker was quiet for a long moment. "Okay. I'm listening. What did she say?"
Reed began to pace again, the words pouring out of him. "She said she had to fake her death. Said there were people after her, after the WATCHDOG technology she created. She said if they'd found her, they would have killed anyone she cared about—including me."
"So she let you believe she was dead to protect you."
"That's what she claimed." Reed's voice was bitter. "She said the technology is being used now. That people are dying. She had evidence, documents, everything laid out like some kind of corporate presentation."
"And?"
"And what?"
"Reed." Walker's voice was patient but firm. "What did the evidence show?"
Reed stopped pacing and rubbed his face. "I don't know. I couldn't... I couldn't focus on anything except the fact that she was sitting there breathing when I buried her five years ago."
"So you didn't actually listen to what she was telling you."
"I listened enough. She needs help. She came to me because she's in trouble and she needs someone with resources to save her."
Walker was quiet again. Then, with a trace of his old sarcasm: "And you told her to take a hike."
"I told her I couldn't help her."
"Why?"
The question hit Reed like a physical blow. "Because... because she destroyed me, Walker. Because I spent two years in therapy trying to learn how to function without her. Because she let me grieve for nothing. Because—"
"Because you're scared."
Reed cursed under his breath. "I'm not scared."
"Brother, you just told me the woman you've been mourning for five years walked back into your life and asked for help, and you threw her out without even listening to what she had to say. If that's not fear, I don't know what is."
"She left me," Reed said quietly, the words cutting his throat on the way out. "She made the choice to leave me believing she was dead. For five years."
Walker was silent for a long time. So long that Reed started to wonder if the call had dropped.
"Bro," Reed finally cried out, "what should I do?"
Walker hesitated. "What do you want to do?"
"I don't know."
"Yeah, you do," Walker said gently. "Deep down, you know what you should do."
Reed cursed again, louder this time. "I have to go."
"Walker, so what are you going to do?"
Reed sucked in a long breath, his eyes falling on something he hadn't noticed before. On his conference table, where Elena had been laying out her documents, was a single business card. "Track down where she's at, then go talk to her."
"Did she say where she's staying?"
Reed grunted, moving closer to the table. The card was simple, expensive-looking. No name, just an address for a hotel downtown. "No, but she left a card with an address."
"Cool," Walker said, and Reed could hear the approval in his brother's voice. "Call me if you need anything."
Reed sighed, pocketing the card. "Yep."
He grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, his heart hammering against his ribs. Five years ago, Elena had walked out of his life to protect him from people who wanted to kill him.
Today, he'd watched her walk out again because he was too much of a coward to face what her being alive meant.
But maybe—just maybe—it wasn't too late to stop being a coward.
The elevator ride to the lobby felt like the longest thirty seconds of his life. But this time, Reed wasn't watching the numbers go down with relief.
This time, he was going after her.