C3 Old Wounds

Liam Stone had established a billion-dollar corporation by trusting his gut. They had shepherded him through high-stakes negotiations, dangerous investments, decisions that had charted the trajectory of his life. They had hardly let him down. And right now those senses were warning him something was wrong.

The black SUV slipped through the morning traffic and Liam looked out the window, but he wasn’t seeing the city. His thoughts were of a tiny boy. Dark hair. Blue eyes. A smile he knew. A laugh he knew. He'd even seemed eerily familiar when he'd tilted his head just a little.

Noah. The name echoed through Ava's mind as her gaze remained fixed on her son. A cold wave of realization swept over her, stealing the air from her lungs. Five years. Noah was five years old. Exactly five years old.

Liam loosened his tie, a peculiar tightness building in his chest. The air in the truck was suddenly stifling. He attempted to look out at the streets past the tinted glass, but the picture of the youngster would not leave him. Each feature, each emotion, each tiny detail played back again in his head with disturbing clarity, producing a sensation he couldn't exactly identify but couldn't ignore, either. The more he thought about it the less he could ignore the similarity as coincidence.

“Sir?”

His aide looked back from the front seat. “Are you OK?”

Liam blinked, drawn out of his musings. "What?

“You look absent-minded.”

Preoccupied. That was one way to put it, for sure. For the past hour he had not heard a word said in the meeting. Nothing. His mind kept returning to Ava, to Noah, to the unthinkable notion that was forming in his head.

No. He was being absurd. There were thousands of blue-eyed children. Dark haired children numbered thousands. That was nothing. Nothing. At all. But the recollection would not leave him, not the look Noah had given him. The way he smiled. The way he’d asked, innocent inquiry still ringing in Liam’s head:

Why does that man look like me?

Liam shut his eyes, but the words followed him into the dark. They kept repeating themselves, again and again, and they would not let him go.

“Damn.” The curse from him before he could stop it, harsh and frustrated. His assistant prudently remained mute across from him.

The SUV rolled into the underground parking garage of Stone Enterprises, the tallest skyscraper in the city, the headquarters of the empire Liam had spent years constructing. Years. Five years. The precise amount of time since he’d lost Ava. How long, precisely, it had been since she had left his life.

Liam climbed out of the car and headed toward the lifts. He was greeted by employees as he passed. Executives bowed their respect. phones buzzed Meetings were waiting. Business as usual, but his mind was elsewhere.

The lift doors opened on the executive floor where his best buddy and business partner was already waiting. Ethan Reyes. 30 years of age. Clever. Annoyingly insightful. Unfortunately, she was one of the few who could read Liam like a book.

Ethan glanced at him once and grimaced. “Who died?”

Liam strolled by him, heading for his office. "Nobody."

Ethan was right following him. “Bad meeting?”

“No.

“Company in crisis?”

“No.”

"Government probe?

“Nope.”

By the time they reached the office, Ethan's frown had intensified. He closed the door and crossed his arms. “Then what?”

Liam slumped into his chair. Ethan took the seat across from her. A silence fell between them, waiting, watching. The man had the patience of a skilled interrogator, one of many reasons Liam sometimes thought about firing him.

Finally he moaned, and drew a hand through his hair. “I saw Ava.”

That caught Ethan’s eye. “What?”

"Yeah, I saw her this morning.”

Ethan blinked, then stared at him for a time as the realisation sank slowly. “Ava? Ava?”

Liam gave him a blank stare. “How many Avas do you think I’m talking about?

Ethan leaned forward at once, incredulity etched on his features. “Wait a minute. “The Ava?”

Liam grumbled, rubbing a hand across his face. "Yes."

“Ava, the one you love?”

“Please, stop talking.”

Ethan absolutely disregarded him. "Did, you finally find her?”

“She wasn’t hiding.”

“Where?”

“At her café.”

Ethan stared at him for a long moment and then a grin came across his face. Then he chuckled, a genuine and unbelieving sound that seemed to astonish even him. It was the first real chuckle he’d heard out of him in years.

Liam scowled at him. "What?"

“You're kidding. You spent five years digging through business records, social media, mutual friends, private investigators,” stated Ethan with a grin. “And now, she was just running a coffeehouse.”

Liam hated that he was right.

Apparently so. Ethan’s amusement dimmed as he took a closer look at him. “How was she?

It hurt more than I thought it would. Ava looked good. Not merely good. Joyful. Or, at least, more cheerful than she’d seemed the previous time he’d seen her. More healthy More powerful. As if she'd been living without him. The realisation tasted harsh in his mouth.

“She looked fine.”

Ethan examined him, his face tightening. “And?”

Liam hesitated, a peculiar strain in his chest. The moment he spoke he regretted it. “There was a kid.”

Ethan scowled. "I’m sorry, what? A kid?”

“Yeah, a young boy.”

"So?"

Liam looked out the window, jaw tightening as the sight of the small kid raced through his head again. “He was five years old.”

The room was still. Not the normal kind. But the dangerous kind. The type that happened when two people arrived to the same conclusion, yet neither was willing to be the first to say it out loud. Ethan settled back in his chair. “Ohooo.”

Liam ran his hand across his jaw. "Uh-huh.”

“Oh my…”

“Stop saying that.”

Ethan paid him no mind. “Timing? Five… How old is he? Five, right? And probably he looked the same as—“

“Yeah, yeah. Enough.”

A thick stillness settled between them. Ethan stared at him for a long period, his astonishment giving way to a reluctant comprehension as the consequences sank in. Liam could almost see the puzzle pieces slipping into place behind his eyes, one by one, to make a picture neither of them wanted to look too carefully at. Unavoidably, it was impossible to ignore.

Ethan's eyes grew wide. “Oh my God.”

Liam rose suddenly, all the muscles of his body taut. “What?”

“You think —

“I don’t know what I’ll think for now.” The fact was worse. Somewhere inside, he knew it. Or at least part of him did. He attempted to dismiss the thought, but he could not help wondering. He could not help calculating dates. He couldn't help recalling.

Ava had been out of his life for five years now. The separation had broken him, but it was the stillness after that haunted him like a ghost he could never shake. Weeks went without a phone call or a message or an explanation. She’d just gone, leaving behind unresolved questions and wounds that haunted him over the years, that wouldn’t heal no matter how hard he tried to move on.

And now, after all these years, he was looking at a small kid. A youngster of five, with blue eyes and dark hair and a smile all too familiar for Liam to be comfortable with.

Ethan whistled softly. “This is terrible.”

Liam shot him a dry glance. ”Thanks for the insight,” he told him.

“You have to know.”

Liam knew that already. The trouble was, he wasn't sure he wanted them. Because if he was wrong he’d appear like an idiot. But if he was right, the ground beneath him was about to shake in ways he could not imagine. All would be different.

His secretary entered the office, and halted him with a knock on the door. "Mr. Stone?"

Liam looked up. "Yes?"

“Your mother’s on queue one.”

Liam shut his eyes for a moment. And, of course, she was. “Give her to me.”

A moment later, Sophia Stone’s voice, as cool and composed as always, filled the office through a call.

“Liam.”

“Hey, mother.”

“You forgot dinner again.”

Liam made a face. Right. Dinner with the family. Last night. He'd missed it once more.

“You know, I was busy.”

“Yeah right, busy all the time.”

Ethan snorted from across the room but Liam ignored him.

“What do you want?”

“A wife.”

Liam squeezed his nose. “Mother.”

“I mean it.” Now Ethan was laughing out loud, but Sophia kept right on going. "You are thirty years old.

"Thanks for the reminder.

“You need a family.” Liam's face darkened at the words. A family. Ha ha. That term hit different all of a sudden.

His eyes wandered over the city skyline and beyond, to a modest café and a small boy named Noah. "Maybe.”

Sophia stopped, a spark of surprise on her cheeks. Liam would have protested normally. He would have laughed off the talk with a shrug and lost himself in work. But not today. Liam peered out the window, his jaw tightening as he looked down at the sprawling city beneath him. He did not feel good either. Not even close.

There was silence in the office after the call. Ethan folded his arms and looked at him for a long period, as though assessing all that had just gone unsaid.

“So what now?”

Liam glanced down at his desk. There were contracts to be signed by the mountains. At the empire he'd built through the years. The success everybody envied and pursued their whole lives. It didn't matter, any of it. Not compared to the question that had taken root in his head and would not go away.

Finally he broke the stillness. “I got to know.”

Without a moment’s hesitation Ethan nodded, as though the answer had been evident all along. "Learn, then.”

Downtown Ava was thinking much the same, although her thoughts were not so tranquil. Liam Stone began asking enquiries, and once Liam started asking questions he didn’t stop until he had the truth.

She stood behind the counter of the café and looked at the card Liam had left there. It was simple, it was elegant, and it was pricey. Like him. She should have thrown it out the door the instant he stepped out the door. She had shoved it in a drawer instead, and the thought of having done so rankled more than she liked to confess.

“Mommy?” Ava looked up to see Noah climbing up onto a stool next to the counter. He leaned back comfortably, his small hands gripping the edge, his look serious in a way that immediately put her on guard. “May I ask a question?”

Ava smiled between her teeth, a knot in her chest tightened. “Yeah.”

The small kid tilted his head and her chest constricted. It was the same gesture Liam used when he was inquisitive about something. The resemblance now struck her more than ever before. “Will the good man come back?”

Ava stopped, her fingers clenched on the dish towel. She knew the answer beforehand. Liam Stone was not a man to walk away from a mystery, and Noah was fast becoming the biggest riddle of his life. "I don’t know … maybe," she murmured.

Noah smiled. He seemed to enjoy the response. "I hope so," he said.

Ava's stomach sank. For the first time since seeing Liam again, she knew something really horrible. She was no longer the only one with a secret. Now she had to safeguard Noah’s heart, too. And in some way it was so much more frightening than defending her own. She looked down at her son, and something heavy settled in her chest. Liam’s homecoming had already complicated everything, and deep down she knew the worst part was still to come.