Chapter 9 #2
My finger stopped on that photo, slowly tracing her face again and again. The photo paper felt cold and smooth, nothing like her real skin—warm and soft.
"Too clean," I said quietly.
"What?" Evan didn't catch it.
"This resume." I looked up at him. "Too clean to be real."
A woman who'd survived drowning, seven years to build a new identity, become a renowned designer, gain industry recognition...
Every step flawless. Like those fake blue eyes.
Evan was silent for two seconds, then nodded. "Indeed... if you hadn't told us in advance, we wouldn't have thought she was that woman from seven years ago..."
"Layla." I cut him off. "Her name is Layla Gray."
"Yes, Alpha."
I continued flipping through the file. Studio address, main clients, design works, awards... all the surface information, the polished details anyone could find. And the emotions rising in my chest were complex enough to nearly suffocate me.
Wild joy. Guilt. Longing.
And anger. A dark, obsessive anger that even I found shameful.
She was alive. She'd been in this city for seven years. She'd changed her name, her identity, even the color of her eyes.
And then? Then she'd pretended to be a stranger in front of me, looked at me with those fake blue eyes, and coldly said, "Sir, you've mistaken me for someone else."
Such a casual dismissal, shutting me out of her world.
Seven years, alone, losing her original identity. How had she survived that freezing seawater? How had she given birth alone, raised him? How had she lived so well... without me?
I almost felt ashamed of that last thought.
But she didn't seem to need me anymore. To her, I was dispensable now. The love that belonged to me—intense, genuine, eternal, mine alone—when I'd grown as accustomed to it as oxygen, it vanished.
Turns out suffocation hurts this much.
"You know I don't need this surface-level information." Impulse was burning through my reason.
Evan sighed, pulling out a stack from the bottom of the file.
"Already prepared." He spread them out before me. "Private investigators, surveillance footage, some obtained... illegally."
The first page was a hospital surveillance screenshot.
The image quality was grainy, but I could clearly see a woman sitting on a hallway bench.
Layla.
She wore cheap maternity clothes, belly swollen, head down, hands wrapped around her abdomen, shoulders trembling.
She was crying.
Date stamp: seven years ago, November.
My breathing stopped for a second. My fingers gripped the photo's edge so hard my knuckles went white.
She was pregnant with our child, sitting alone in a strange hospital hallway, crying silently.
What made her cry? The tight finances, the loneliness of no companion, the hardship of learning design from scratch, pregnancy discomfort, or that she should have had a mate?
And I... I was handling Alpha business in the pack, strategizing at business negotiation tables, swearing at my father's grave that I'd never be bound by a fated mate. How fucking ironic.
I turned to the next page.
A cramped rental apartment. She held a baby in swaddling clothes, sitting at a desk piled with design sketches.
The baby was crying.
She rocked him gently while staring at the computer screen, eyes bloodshot. The desk clock showed 3:17 AM. Beside it were bottles, diapers, and several well-worn parenting books.
Next page.
A park.
She held hands with a toddling little boy. The child fell. She crouched down, gently brushing dirt from his knee, kissing his forehead. The little boy looked up at her, grinning, showing a few baby teeth.
I flipped through page after page. Each photo like a dull knife, slowly and precisely splitting open my chest.
Her pregnant belly in jewelry school classes. Her carrying a baby to meet clients. Her calculating carefully in the supermarket discount section. Her leaning against the wall from exhaustion after getting up at night to make formula. Her teaching the child to talk, to walk, to tie his shoes.
Her celebrating his birthday with him—a small cake, a few candles, in the dim rental apartment. They must have been singing the birthday song, but she smiled and smiled until she cried.
Always just her. Alone. And yet she'd named this child—
Kai.
My hands began shaking. Not just my hands—my entire arm holding the photos trembled.
Kayden, this is what you did. Everything a coward does.
Evan watched my expression and wisely left.
The instant he closed the door, I could no longer maintain surface calm. I shot up and slammed my fist on the solid wood desk. The chair fell backward, crashing to the floor with a loud bang. Photos scattered everywhere.
One landed face-up—
A recent photo.
Kai was in her arms, little hand touching her face, saying something. Layla laughed at whatever he said, eyes curving into crescents.
That was the smile she used to show me. Gentle, full of love, completely unguarded.
Past tense.
A sour emotion surged up my throat.
Was this jealousy?
Was I jealous of my own son? Jealous that he got all her love, all her tenderness, all her smiles? Jealous that he'd been by her side these six years while I...
I crouched down, trembling fingers picking up that photo.
Kai really looked like me. Same eyes, same hair color, even the arch of his eyebrows matched. But when he smiled, he reminded me of Layla. I finally understood that children inherit parts from each parent. He was Kayden Blackwood and Layla Gray's child.
This wasn't jealousy. It was regret.
I staggered to my feet. Endless bitterness overwhelmed me. I gripped the desk corner to barely stand straight. Before the floor-to-ceiling window, Baltimore's night scene spread before me—thousands of lights, prosperous and dazzling—yet I felt utterly alone.
Layla was somewhere in this city.
I placed my hand over my left chest, feeling that still-severed bond. The one I'd cut with my own hands. It had lain dormant for seven years, like a wound that would never heal, silently bleeding. I'd even grown accustomed to this bleeding, as long as I never again caught her fleeting fragrance.
When I'd held her tight again, when I'd finally filled that bleeding hollow, the bond's sharp pain faded, and I felt long-lost warmth instead of being a machine that only existed to "be the perfect Alpha."
But she wouldn't even speak a word about "Layla Gray" to me now.
I numbly flipped through all the materials on the desk, recording the fragments I could glimpse of her seven years—without me. She had no me by her side, her identity didn't belong to me, her love was no longer mine, her future...
"Ella Ross Studio's current main partners include: Lucas Jewelry Group, Victoria Arts Foundation, Harbor Design Alliance..."
My mechanical movements stopped, gaze settling on this string of names.
I wanted to be in her future.
I needed to do something. Had to do something. Even if it costs everything for one conversation. Even if she'd curse me without restraint. Even if she'd hate me.
Hate me intensely.
Don't ignore me. Don't distance yourself from me. Don't act like nothing happened between us.
I lightly traced my finger across that string of numbers—the penalty if she wanted to abandon everything and flee Baltimore.
5.8 million, plus reputational and credibility losses.
She couldn't escape now.
A dark, almost pathological satisfaction seized my heart. An idea gradually formed.
This time, I would catch her.