Chapter 3

Sera's POV

Home. The word landed between us like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples of meaning in all directions. My hands moved to the jacket in my lap, fingers tangling in the expensive fabric. I had to resist the urge to throw it back at Dominic. To reject this small gesture of care that felt more like a claim than a kindness.

"This isn't my home," I said, meeting his eyes for the first time. I hated how much effort it took to hold that gaze. To not look away like I was still the girl he'd sent away with a one-way ticket and a trust fund I couldn't touch without his signature. "It never was."

Something flickered across Dominic's face. Hurt, maybe, or anger, or some complicated mixture of the two. But it was gone too quickly for me to be sure. He leaned back in his chair. The movement was deliberate and controlled. He picked up one of the coffee cups and offered it to me across the space between us. Without closing the distance. Without making me reach too far.

"Black, two sugars," he said. "Unless you've changed your coffee preferences in the past five years along with everything else."

I took the cup because refusing it felt too much like admitting he still had the power to hurt me. The warmth of it against my palms was steadying in a way I didn't want to acknowledge. I took a sip. It was exactly right. Of course it was. I used the moment to gather myself. To remember that I was twenty-three now, not eighteen. I'd survived five years without him. I could survive this too.

"How did you know I was here?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.

"Henry saw you at the airport." Dominic's tone was matter-of-fact, as if having his driver stationed at Logan to watch for me was the most natural thing in the world. "He texted me. I cleared my afternoon."

The casual way he said it made something hot and sharp twist in my chest. Cleared my afternoon, as if my return was just another item on his calendar. Something to be slotted in between meetings. I set the coffee cup down on the small table beside my chair with more force than necessary. The sound of ceramic on laminate was sharp in the quiet waiting room.

"I didn't come back for you," I said. The words came out harder than I'd intended, edged with all the anger I'd been carrying around for five years like a stone in my pocket. "I came back for Vivienne."

"I know." Dominic's voice was quiet. There was something in it I didn't want to examine too closely. Something that sounded almost like resignation. "Dr. Richardson is her attending. I've already spoken to him. Vivienne's stable for now, but she's going to need aggressive treatment if there's any hope of—" He stopped himself. His jaw tightened. "I've arranged for her to be moved to a VIP room once she's out of ICU. Private, comfortable. You can stay with her as much as you want."

And there it was. The thing Dominic always did. The move I'd learned to recognize and resent in equal measure. He couldn't just let things happen. He had to manage them, control them, arrange the pieces on the board until everything was exactly where he wanted it. Even my grief. Even Vivienne's illness became something he could optimize and improve through the sheer force of his wealth and connections.

"I don't need you to arrange anything," I said. This time I did meet his eyes. I held his gaze with all the defiance I could muster. "I can take care of her myself."

The silence that followed felt like a physical thing, pressing down on us both. Dominic's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around his coffee cup. The ceramic made a sound like a small bone breaking under pressure.

"Can you?" he asked. His voice was so soft it was almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. "Because from where I'm sitting, you look like someone who just burned through her savings on a last-minute international flight and doesn't have a place to stay or a plan beyond 'show up and hope for the best.'"

He wasn't wrong, and we both knew it. Which was probably why my next words came out with more venom than I'd intended. "I'll figure it out. I've been figuring things out without you for five years."

Dominic stood then. The movement was sudden enough that my body tensed instinctively. Some animal part of my brain was still wired to read him as a threat. But he didn't come closer. Instead, he set his coffee cup down with careful precision and straightened his tie. His face settled back into that mask of professional neutrality I'd learned to hate. It meant he'd stopped seeing me as a person and started seeing me as a problem to be managed.

"Seven o'clock," he said. "Tonight. The Manor. We need to talk about your situation, and it's not a conversation we're having in a hospital waiting room."

It wasn't a request. It wasn't even really a command. It was simply a statement of fact. Delivered with the absolute certainty of someone who'd never learned to doubt that people would do what he told them to do.

I opened my mouth to refuse. To tell him I'd rather sleep on the street than set foot in Blackwell Manor again. But he was already walking away. His footsteps echoed down the corridor with the finality of a door closing. I watched him disappear around the corner. Only then did I realize I was still clutching his suit jacket. My fingers were white-knuckled in the expensive fabric.

I looked down at it. Custom tailored, I could tell. With his initials monogrammed on the inside pocket in thread so dark it was almost invisible. I felt something in my chest crack open. Some dam I'd spent five years building finally giving way under the pressure of being back in this city. In this hospital. In this life I'd tried so hard to escape.

I folded the jacket carefully, precisely, and set it on the chair Dominic had vacated. Then I stood up, smoothed down my shirt, and walked to the nurses' station with my shoulders back and my chin up. Ready to lie about being Vivienne's niece again. Ready to do whatever it took to get through those ICU doors. Because if there was one thing five years of exile had taught me, it was how to survive in places where I wasn't wanted.

The nurse at the desk looked up as I approached. I was opening my mouth to make my case when her expression shifted. It softened in a way that made my stomach drop.

"Miss Blackwell?" The nurse's voice was gentle. The kind of gentle that usually preceded bad news. "Dr. Richardson just called down. Professor Cross is being moved out of ICU. You can see her now."