Serena Lancaster arrived at Blue Moon Restaurant precisely at 2 PM—punctual, as always, for her meeting with Maya Quinn.

The waiter led her upstairs to a private room on the second floor with practiced efficiency. Serena expected to find the LUXE representative waiting. Instead, she was greeted by an empty room.

"Would you like me to call Mrs. Quinn?" her assistant, Sally, asked softly, already reaching for her phone.

Serena waved the suggestion away, irritation simmering beneath her composed exterior. "She’s the one who requested this meeting. Basic punctuality should be a given." Her voice sharpened. "If LUXE can’t even manage that, perhaps this partnership isn’t worth pursuing."

Despite her annoyance, she took a seat in the plush chair, crossing her legs and checking her watch while skimming through emails on her phone. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Her patience evaporated with every tick of the second hand.

"This is ridiculous," Serena muttered, fingertips tapping against the polished tabletop. "Does she think I have all day?"

Soft jazz drifted in from the hallway, doing nothing to calm her nerves. Serena despised wasted time—especially when she had completely rearranged her schedule for this meeting.

Meanwhile, just down the corridor, Ryan Blackwood arrived with his business associates, their conversation echoing faintly as they discussed quarterly projections. As they headed toward their reserved VIP room, Ryan’s gaze flicked toward a partially open door.

He stopped mid-step.

The silhouette inside—straight-backed, elegant, checking her watch with a familiar tilt of the head—sent something violent crashing into his chest.

His heart stopped.

Even from behind, even with only a fraction of her visible, his body reacted before his mind could intervene.

"Mr. Blackwood?" Anderson, one of his associates, placed a concerned hand on his arm. "Is everything all right?"

Ryan blinked, snapping back to reality. "Yes. I just—" The words deserted him as Anderson gently steered him forward, past the room, and into their meeting space.

Inside, Ryan found it impossible to focus. His attention kept drifting to the door, to the knowledge that just a few walls away might be the woman he had spent three years hunting for across continents.

The woman who had vanished without a word.

The woman whose absence had carved out his soul.

"Ryan? Your thoughts on the Singapore proposal?" someone prompted.

"I need a moment to go over the numbers," he replied, though he couldn’t remember which proposal they were discussing.

Back in the private room, Serena had hit her breaking point.

Twenty-three minutes late.

"This is completely unacceptable," she said curtly, rising to her feet and grabbing her purse. The chair scraped sharply against the floor. "Sally, we’re leaving. Now."

As they stepped into the hallway, Serena smoothed her dress and adjusted her blazer with quick, irritated movements.

"If anyone from LUXE calls again, don’t put them through," she said coldly. "The partnership is dead. I don’t do business with people who have zero respect for my time."

"Yes, Mrs. Lancaster," Sally replied, typing swiftly on her tablet as she hurried to keep up.

Serena’s phone buzzed. Maya Quinn’s name lit up the screen.

Without hesitation, Serena hit decline—and immediately blocked the number.

The nerve of calling now.

As Serena descended the marble staircase, heels clicking decisively, Ryan stepped out of his meeting room, driven by an instinct he couldn’t explain.

He stepped into the hallway just as the private room door across from his own swung shut.

Too late.

A faint trace of warmth still lingered in the air, the echo of someone who had only just been there. His chest tightened for reasons he couldn’t explain.

He spun around. "The guest who was in that room—where did she go?"

The server hesitated, then gestured toward the staircase. "She just left, sir. Less than a minute ago."

Less than a minute.

Ryan moved without thinking.

He reached the banister in three long strides, fingers gripping the polished wood as his gaze swept the lobby frantically. At the bottom of the stairs, a woman’s back disappeared through the revolving doors—tall, composed, unmistakably familiar in a way that made his pulse spike painfully.

"Wait—" The word tore from his throat, low and raw, but it was swallowed by the noise of the restaurant.

Outside, Serena was already opening her car door.

Ryan broke into a sprint.

But the glass doors closed.

The valet stepped aside.

An engine turned over.

By the time Ryan reached the entrance, the sleek sedan was pulling away from the curb, slipping seamlessly into traffic. He stood there, breathing hard, eyes locked on the shrinking silhouette of the car until it vanished completely.

Gone.

Again.

"Mr. Blackwood?" His assistant caught up, slightly breathless. "What’s wrong?"

Ryan didn’t answer right away.

Because for one unbearable second—just one—he had been certain. Not hope. Not imagination. Absolute certainty.

That was her.

The same presence he had felt in empty airports. In crowded streets halfway across the world. In the quiet moments before sleep, when memory became almost physical.

His hands slowly clenched at his sides.

"...Nothing," he said at last, the word hollow. "Tell Anderson I’m done. Have them finish without me."

"And afterward? Back to the office?"

Ryan’s jaw tightened.

"Home."

In his sleek black car, Ryan leaned back against the leather seat and closed his eyes. The weight of three years crushed down on him.

Every morning, he woke to an empty space beside him.

Every night, he looked at Vivian—their daughter—and saw Serena’s features reflected in her innocent face.

"Where are you?" he whispered, fingers tightening around the steering wheel.

Meanwhile, Serena sat rigidly in the back seat of her car, fury still burning.

"Call Cedric," she instructed Sally. "The LUXE meeting was a complete bust. We’ll look into other options for European distribution."

What neither of them knew was just how close they had come.