The Past Isn't Gone

Chapter 10: The Man Who Speaks

Luis lingered just outside Elise’s private office in Cruz Tower, pretending to review something on his tablet. Through the glass wall, he could see her and Ethan — alone again.

Ethan stood a little too close. Not inappropriate. Just... familiar.

Elise leaned on her desk, arms crossed. Her face was composed, but Luis caught the faint tremble in her exhale. Then Ethan spoke — softly, firmly — and Elise looked away, eyes distant.

Luis couldn’t hear the words, but he saw them land.

A moment later, Ethan reached out and gently touched her hand.

The door opened. Ethan stepped out, nodding briefly at Luis. “She’s fine,” he said. “Just needed to hear it.”

“Hear what?” Luis asked, sharper than he meant to.

Ethan gave a faint smile. “That she’s not alone in this. That I’ve got her back.”

Luis didn’t reply.

He stood there long after Ethan left, jaw clenched, heart pounding with a bitter heat.

It wasn’t the words that bothered him — it was that Ethan could say them.

Luis never had.

He’d always told himself that Elise Cruz didn’t need warmth. She needed loyalty, protection, strategy. And he had given her all that, quietly, invisibly. No need to complicate things with emotions. No place for them, not in their world.

But now he saw how Ethan’s quiet declarations anchored her. And it cut him in places he didn’t know existed.

Does she see him? he wondered. Is that what she wants—someone who can speak out loud what I’ve buried for years?

He hated the jealousy in his chest. Hated that Ethan might feel the same for Elise. Hated, most of all, the fear that if it came down to it, Elise would choose the man who wasn’t afraid to say it.

Luis turned away from her office, the words he’d never said echoing inside him like a curse.

_________________________

The conference room on the 39th floor buzzed with quiet tension. Elise stood at the head of the table, laser pointer in hand, as the digital projection cast sharp graphs across the glass wall.

“Trim the third-phase funding by five percent,” she said. “Reallocate to the Visayas operation. And I want a security sweep on the Iloilo branch. Start today.”

Her executives nodded, scribbling notes. Luis stood by the wall, arms crossed, saying nothing.

Usually, he would offer refinements — a whisper in her ear, a sideways glance, a small correction only she would notice. Today, he was still. Guarded. Distant.

Ethan handed her a folder, brushing his fingers briefly over hers. It was nothing, really. But Elise noticed how Luis’s jaw tensed.

Strange.

“Luis,” she said after the meeting as they walked back toward her office. “Your silence today—should I be worried?”

He shook his head too quickly. “No. You handled everything perfectly.”

“Hmm.” She studied him.

He avoided her gaze, eyes fixed straight ahead.

“You’ve never been good at pretending,” she said quietly.

That stopped him. He glanced at her, almost startled. “What do you mean?”

“You’re off-balance. Not in your mind—but in here.” She tapped her chest lightly. “Is it something about the investigation? Or…” She let the rest hang.

He didn’t answer.

A pause settled between them, thick with something unsaid.

She tilted her head. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

Luis smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I know.”

And yet, he said nothing more.

Elise watched him walk away, something unsettling blooming in her gut. Luis Santiago, the man she trusted most, was hiding something — not from the world, but from himself.

And that… worried her more than anything.

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The city blinked awake beneath Cruz Tower’s glass walls. Elise sat in her private lounge, robe still tied at the waist, coffee untouched. Her morning briefings had been handled efficiently. Her calendar was clear for one hour.

Unusual. She’d made it that way on purpose.

Luis entered exactly on time, tablet in hand, as always.

“Elise,” he said, formal but not cold.

“Sit.” She gestured toward the velvet chair across from her.

Luis hesitated for a fraction of a second before obeying.

“I had something I wanted to ask,” she began, voice soft, unreadable. “And I need an honest answer.”

Luis nodded once, guarded. “Of course.”

She didn’t look at him right away. She stared out the window, watching the traffic crawl far below. Then, without turning, she asked:

“Do you resent Ethan?”

The question struck like a slap in still air.

Luis didn’t speak.

“I’ve noticed the way your face tightens when he enters a room,” she continued calmly. “The silence when he speaks up. And yesterday… the way you looked at me after he passed me that folder.”

She finally turned to face him. “Luis, I’ve known you for too long to ignore what’s clearly eating at you.”

He was still. But the flicker of something — a raw, unfiltered emotion — passed behind his eyes.

“I don’t resent him,” Luis said after a beat. “I just don’t trust how easily he talks to you.”

Elise’s brows rose. “Because you don’t?”

Luis looked down at the tablet, then set it aside slowly. “Because I can’t.”

There it was. Not a confession, but a c***k in the armor.

Elise leaned back, studying him now with something softer in her eyes. “Why not?”

“Because,” he said quietly, “if I let myself say the things I really feel… I’d lose control.”

Silence.

A long moment stretched between them. Elise didn’t push further, but her heartbeat had quickened.

“Luis,” she said finally, her voice low, thoughtful, “control isn’t always strength.”

His gaze met hers. There was heat there. Conflict. And something more dangerous than either.

Then he stood. “You have a 10 a.m. with the Finance Board. I’ll prep the reports.”

She let him go.

But as the door closed behind him, Elise touched her wrist — right where her pulse still throbbed fast — and whispered to herself,

“He’s in love with me.”