DEREK
Elena had denied cheating on me with Logan. But she hadn’t denied that Aiden was his.
The realization had settled into my ribs like a slow, festering wound, burning through every rational thought I had left.
She could have corrected me. Could have told me I was wrong.
But she hadn’t.
That was all the confirmation I needed.
I had spent years believing she was gone forever. That she had died in some nameless rogue ambush, her body never found. I had grieved. I had broken myself apart trying to understand how the world could have been so cruel—how fate could have given me something so precious only to rip it away before I could even mark her.
And then she had come back.
But not to me.
To him.
I stood in my office, staring at the map spread across my desk, barely seeing the lin
