Chapter Two
Grant Carter was about ninety percent sure this trip was actually a mental health check disguised as a Christmas vacation.
As the taxi wound its way through the snow-covered roads leading into Zermatt, he watched the towering Alps pass by outside the window and couldn’t help but shake his head. Mac, Nico, and Rafe, former teammates of his, had claimed they wanted to spend the holidays together before Mac’s wedding.
Grant wasn’t buying it. Not completely, anyway.
The truth was, his friends had been keeping a close eye on him.
Ever since leaving the SEAL team two years ago, he had thrown himself into building his company with the same intensity he had once devoted to missions.
The business was thriving. Unfortunately, his social life, vacation time, and work-life balance had all died tragic deaths in the process.
He couldn’t blame. The last two years had been a chaotic transition for Grant.
One minute, he had been leading his team on a critical mission overseas, and the next, he was lying flat on his back in a sterile military hospital, staring at the acoustic ceiling tiles. At the same time, orthopedic surgeons mapped out the extensive spinal damage.
The injury hadn’t taken away his legs or his sharp mind, but it had stripped him of the active duty career that had defined his identity for nearly half his life.
Medical retirement was a bitter, jagged pill to swallow, but once the initial shock wore off, he did what he was taught to do.
He adapted, improvised, and pushed forward.
Using years of operational experience and lessons learned in the field, he had launched Carter Security Technologies.
The company initially specialized in tactical surveillance and threat-detection software, but quickly expanded into advanced security networks used by governments and corporate giants alike.
Somewhere along the way, the business exploded into a global enterprise, and suddenly, financial magazines were attaching heavy labels like “billionaire” and “industry titan” to his name.
Neither label sat right with him. Truthfully, he had been a hell of a lot happier back when his biggest daily headache was whether one of the guys had done something stupid enough to get the entire team yelled at, because at least back then, he never had to face the day alone.
The driver rounded a final turn, and the snow-draped village of Zermatt suddenly unfolded in the valley below like a scene cut straight from a vintage holiday postcard.
Grant let out a low whistle.
The driver smiled. “Beautiful, yes?”
“That’s one word for it,” Grant replied.
During his time in the military, Grant traveled all over the world.
He had crossed deserts, jungles, and mountain ranges that most people only saw in photographs.
He had stood in places so remote they didn’t appear on maps and watched sunrises from more countries than he could count.
But this? This was something else entirely.
Nestled deep within the Swiss Alps, Zermatt felt like a hidden gem the rest of the world had somehow overlooked.
And towering over everything was the Matterhorn.
Grant had seen countless photographs of the Matterhorn, but none of them captured the sheer, towering scale of the peak as it loomed over the valley, looking like a massive, jagged tooth of granite and ice cutting into the dark sky.
A few minutes later, the vehicle pulled beneath the hotel’s entrance.
Grant stepped out and took a deep breath. Crisp mountain air filled his lungs, carrying with it the faint scent of wood smoke, fresh pine, and something delicious drifting from one of the nearby cafés.
For a moment, he stood there taking it all in. He watched as guests moved in and out of the hotel, many carrying shopping bags from the nearby shops or cups topped with whipped cream.
Laughter and snippets of conversation floated through the air as people lingered outside, seemingly in no hurry to be anywhere else.
The entire place felt relaxed, festive, and a world away from the boardrooms and endless meetings that had dominated his life for the last two years.
Maybe the guys had been right to drag him out of the office. A real vacation in the Swiss Alps was exactly what he needed to shake off the lingering stress of the corporate grind.
As he entered the lobby, he was impressed. The inside was every bit as striking as the exterior. The entire place hummed with a soft, easy holiday energy.
Grant wasn’t normally one to get caught up in nostalgia, yet something about the festive warmth immediately pulled his thoughts toward Amelie.
Her name surfaced in his mind without warning, the way it always did whenever something made him stop and appreciate the world around him, because that is what Amelie would have done.
Almost thirteen years had passed, and his jaw still tightened with a mix of frustration and lingering affection whenever she crossed his mind.
It wasn’t that he regretted loving her. He doubted he ever would. But the lack of closure was a constant, quiet ache. One day, she had just vanished from his life without a trace.
He had spent years searching for her, exhausting every resource, contacting mutual high school friends, former classmates, and neighbors, but every lead had turned out to be a dead end.
That had made her disappearance even harder to understand.
Amelie didn’t have a large family network to retreat to.
She had grown up in foster care and, once she turned eighteen, had largely gone her own way.
Not because her foster family had been cruel, but because, as she used to tell him, they had never really felt like a family.
Which was probably why she had spent so much time at the Carter house growing up and why his parents had unofficially adopted her long before they ever started dating.
The front desk attendant handed him his room key.
Grant thanked her and headed toward the elevators.
His room was one of the suites on the top floor, overlooking the village.
As Grant stepped out of the elevator, the sound of hurried voices echoed down the hallway. A second later, two boys rounded the corner side by side, moving with that aggressively fast stride children use to technically obey the “no running” rule while still moving at a dead sprint.
“I’m telling you, we’re late,” one of the boys insisted.
“We’re not late,” the other retorted, looking over at the other one instead of watching where he was going. “Mom has a five-minute buffer—”
The boy closest to Grant didn’t even get to finish his sentence as he ran straight into his chest.
“Oof!”
The kid bounced back, and Grant instinctively reached out to steady him by the shoulders.
Both boys froze instantly, their banter cutting off mid-sentence.
Up close, Grant stared into a pair of vivid, striking green eyes—a shade so rare and familiar it sent a jolt of recognition straight to his chest. He looked at the other boy and saw the same eyes staring back at him. They were twins.
For a moment, all three of them stared at each other. The boy he had caught looked completely stunned, his mouth slightly open as if he had forgotten what he was about to say. Beside him, the other boy wore an almost identical expression.
Grant blinked and shook off the strange feeling.
“You okay, kid?” he asked, releasing his grip on the boy's shoulders once he was certain he had his balance.
The two boys exchanged a glance.
It lasted less than a second, but Grant could have sworn an entire conversation had just taken place without a single word being spoken.
Years of working alongside teammates had made him good at reading people, and whatever silent communication had passed between them had been immediate and practiced.
The twin standing before him nodded.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” he said. “Sorry, I ran into you. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”
“No harm done,” Grant said, taking a small step back.
Another look passed between the boys.
Then the second one nudged his brother with an elbow.
“We should probably go. If we’re gone much longer, Mom is going to assume we got kidnapped and send out a search party.”
Tyler snorted. “Like she did in Prague.”
“That happened one time.”
“You followed a street performer.”
“He was juggling flaming torches.”
“You followed him across three city blocks.”
“I was observing.”
“Mom had the police looking for you.”
Trevor winced. “Okay, when you say it like that, it sounds bad.”
“Because it was bad.”
Grant was grinning, holding back his laugh as he listened to the boys.
“Well, you two better get moving before your mom actually does send out a search party,” he said.
“Yeah, we should go,” Trevor replied.
The twins turned to leave, but after only a few steps, Tyler glanced back over his shoulder.
“Maybe we’ll see you again.”
The comment was innocent enough, but the look the other boy shot his brother was immediate.
A look that clearly said, What are you doing?
Grant frowned slightly as the two boys continued down the hallway.
The strange exchange lasted only a second before they started whispering to each other again.
A moment later, both glanced back in his direction before disappearing around the corner, their hushed conversation continuing as they went.
Okay, that was a little weird, Grant thought to himself.
For some reason, Grant found himself watching the empty hallway for a second longer than necessary before finally shaking his head and heading in the opposite direction toward his room.
When he entered his room, he took off his coat and laid it on the sofa before walking over to the glass doors leading to the balcony.
Opening the door, he stepped out and rested his forearms on the railing.
He looked up at the moon sitting above the Matterhorn.
The sight stirred a memory he hadn’t thought about in years.
Back when they were teenagers, he and Amelie had spent countless evenings stretched out on the hood of his truck, talking beneath the stars and moon for hours.
They had talked about everything—the places they wanted to see, the careers they hoped to build, and the future they were certain they would share.
A smile tugged at his lips before quickly fading.
God knew he had tried to move on. Over the years, he had gone on dates.
But none of them had panned out. No matter how much time passed, every road seemed to lead back to the same place—back to Amelie.
Eventually, he had stopped pretending it was a coincidence and accepted the truth.
His heart had made its choice a long time ago, and despite his best efforts, it had never let her go.
Shaking the thoughts from his head, he glanced at his watch. Shit, he needed to be downstairs in fifteen minutes for dinner.
Shaking his head, Grant pushed away from the balcony and headed back inside. Whatever the guys had planned for the next few days, he was looking forward to spending time with them. Work could wait, regrets could wait, and for the first time in a long while, he planned to enjoy himself.
With that thought in mind, he headed for the door.