SECOND CHANCE WITH MY POSSESSIVE BILLIONAIRE CAPTAIN

Chapter 5

NADIA

"Who sent this to you?" Grayson's voice had gone dangerously quiet, his thumb still hovering over the screen like the photo might change if he stared at it long enough.

"I don't know. Camille just forwarded the link." My hands would not stop shaking. "Grayson, who took this picture? I don't even remember anyone else being there that day."

"Nobody was supposed to be there. That was the entire point." He set the phone down slowly, deliberately, like it had become something dangerous to hold. "Somebody followed us. Somebody's had this for five years and waited until exactly the right moment to use it."

"That's not a coincidence. Callahan couldn't get his photo last night, so somebody handed him a better one instead."

"This didn't come from Callahan." Grayson was already pulling on his shirt, his movements sharp, controlled, the same focused calm I had seen him use on the ice. "Callahan didn't know about the courthouse. Nobody knew about the courthouse. Nobody except the two of us, and one other person I trusted enough to ask to be there."

My stomach turned over. "Who?"

"My mother."

The words landed heavy in the quiet room.

"Corinne knew we were eloping?"

"She was the only one. We didn't tell your teammates. We didn't tell mine, my father, anyone who might have talked us out of it or turned it into some kind of spectacle." He dragged a hand through his hair, pacing now, the calm from moments ago fraying at the edges. "I trusted her completely. I still can't understand why she would sit on something like that for five years and only bring it out now, of all times."

"She drove us there herself. Begged us to wait, actually, right up until the moment we walked through those doors." Something hard settled into his expression, an old anger I recognized even after five years apart. "She's the only person alive who has ever had access to a photograph like that."

"Why would she leak it now? After all this time?"

"I don't know. But I intend to ask her." He grabbed his jacket off the chair, then stopped, looking back at me with something unreadable in his eyes. "Come with me."

"Grayson, I have a job to worry about. Callahan is probably drafting my termination letter right now."

"Then let's give him something worth writing about instead." He held out his hand, steady despite everything. "Please. I can't walk into this alone, not knowing what she's going to say."

I took his hand.

My phone buzzed once in my pocket as we walked to the car, a text from Camille that I did not have the courage to read yet. Whatever was waiting in that message would still be waiting an hour from now. Whatever was waiting at Corinne's house would not.

The drive to his mother's house passed in a tense, heavy silence, both of us watching the city blur past the windows, neither of us quite ready to say out loud what we were both clearly thinking. Corinne Donovan opened her own front door before we even reached the porch, dressed impeccably despite the early hour, her expression giving away absolutely nothing.

"I wondered how long it would take you to come here," she said, stepping back to let us inside.

The house was exactly as I remembered it, cold marble floors and framed photographs of a childhood that had never once included me in it. Corinne led us into a sitting room bathed in early morning light, gesturing toward a pair of chairs neither of us moved to sit in.

"You could offer an explanation before we get comfortable," Grayson said, his arms crossed tight over his chest. "You leaked the photo. Five years, Mother. You kept it for five years and used it now, the exact week she comes back into my life."

"I did what I thought was necessary."

"Necessary for what?"

Corinne's gaze slid to me, cool and assessing in a way that made my skin crawl. "You should sit down, Nadia. Both of you should sit down, actually. There are things about that day at the courthouse you clearly never told him."

My blood ran cold. "Don't."

"Don't what?" Grayson turned to me sharply, confusion sliding into something wary. "Nadia, what is she talking about?"

"Nothing. She's talking about nothing."

"You look terrified, for someone talking about nothing." He studied my face carefully, the wariness deepening into something closer to dread. "Mother, whatever this is, say it plainly. I'm done with half answers from both of you."

"I've kept this quiet for five years because I believed it was hers to tell, not mine." Corinne folded her hands in front of her, unhurried despite the tension crackling through the room. "But the photograph is already out there now, and the questions that come with it are only going to get louder. I would rather you hear the truth from me than piece it together from strangers online."

"Then say it."

"I'm talking about the real reason you left my son standing outside a courthouse five years ago," Corinne said, her voice steady, almost gentle, which somehow made it so much worse. "And I think it's long past time he finally heard it from someone."

"That's not your story to tell."

"No," Corinne agreed softly, walking toward a small writing desk in the corner of the room. "But I think it's about to become everyone's story regardless, whether either of you are ready for that or not."

She pulled open a drawer, retrieved a single folded piece of paper, and held it out toward Grayson with a steadiness that terrified me more than any raised voice could have.

"Read it," she said. "Then decide who deserves to be angry at who in this room."

Grayson took the paper slowly, unfolding it with hands that had gone unsteady for the first time all morning. I watched his eyes move across whatever was written there, watched his face drain of every last trace of color, watched something in him break in real time in a way I had never once seen before, not even the night I walked away from him five years ago.

"Grayson." My voice came out barely above a whisper.

He looked up at me slowly, and the expression on his face was not anger. It was something far worse than anger, something that looked almost exactly like grief.

"You were pregnant," he said, his voice cracking clean in half. "The day we went to that courthouse. You were pregnant with my child, and you never told me. You just disappeared."

The room tilted violently around me.

"Where is my son, Nadia?" His hands were shaking now too, the paper crumpling in his grip. "Where is our child?"