[ALEXANDER'S POV - PAST TIMELINE]
Alexander had been fifteen when he'd first understood what death really meant.
Not the sanitized and dreamy version they taught in school—the gentle passing, the peaceful closure, the comforting lie that people "went to a better place."
Death was only for the living.
The person who died just passed away into blissful oblivion. A forever sleep with endless comfort. No pain. No worries. No pressures. No anxiety about how to earn money or feed children or pay bills or maintain appearances. No burden of existence at all.
All of that—every single crushing weight of mortality—was left behind for the living to carry. Alone. And forever.
The dead had no connection to the mortal realm anymore. No, they were free.
But the one who lived? Their life just carried on. Every single day. Painfully. A massive hole tore through the center of their existence, and they could never fill, repair, or stop the aching.
Just missing the person. The way they talked. The way they laughed. The way they made you feel like the world was bearable.
And yet never meeting them again. Never talking to them again. Never hearing their voice or seeing their smile.
And life just moved on and on and on.
He'd learned that lesson when he was fifteen, watching his mother's body in the morgue.
Now, at thirty, he was about to learn it again.
He had been sitting in his office on the sixty-third floor of Langford Tower, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows that framed Athena City like a kingdom laid at his feet. The late afternoon sun cast long, golden shadows across his mahogany desk, illuminating the crystal decanter of scotch he never touched.
He'd just come from a board meeting.
Three hours.
Three hours of discussion about the partnership of Chen Industries—a textile manufacturer in Hong Kong that would expand Langford Enterprises' supply chain and net them an additional 3.2 billion in annual revenue. His CFO had presented projections. His legal team had outlined contract terms. Everyone was excited about the numbers.
The papers sat before him now, waiting for his signature. Numbers and projections and legal terminology that his team had spent months negotiating.
He stared at them without really seeing them.
His mind was elsewhere. Somewhere with a girl who had sweetest brown eyes and the gentlest smile. That had lived in his memory for fourteen years like a photograph he couldn't stop looking at.
Seraphina.
Even thinking her name made something warm unfold in his chest—a feeling so foreign to his usual cold calculation that it almost startled him every time it happened, like discovering he still had a heart after all these years of pretending he didn't.
Two weeks.
And then he'd finally—finally—after fourteen years of watching from the shadows like some pathetic ghost haunting her life, to work up the courage to approach her. To tell her everything he'd kept locked inside for so long it had become part of his bones.
The timing was perfect. Almost too perfect, like the universe had finally decided to throw him a bone after years of punishment.
Derek King had proposed to her sister at that disastrous banquet two weeks ago. The engagement was off. Seraphina was free—
Free
Free from that manipulative bastard who'd never deserved her, who'd looked at her like she was a trophy to be won rather than cherished, who'd proven himself to be exactly the kind of man Alexander had always known he was.
Free.
A soft smile tugged at his lips—rare enough that his assistant would have been shocked to see it, would have probably called security thinking he'd been replaced by an imposter or finally snapped under the pressure.
Seraphina Hale.
The girl who'd always treated him kindly even when he was the lanky, thin, awkward scholarship kid being bullied across Ravenswood's pristine campus by rich boys who saw him as an interloper in their exclusive world.
Even when the other students whispered about his mother—the unmarried maid who'd gotten pregnant by a man, the addict who couldn't keep a job, leaving him with nothing but shame and determination and a fierce need to prove he was worth something despite his birth.
Seraphina had never looked at him like he was less than. Never treated him like his birth was a stain he'd never wash off. Never participated in the casual cruelty that seemed to be currency among their classmates.
She'd just smiled—that genuine, warm smile that made something in his chest crack open and bleed. Like he was just another student. Like he was worth her time and attention.
He remembered the way she used to walk through the corridors between classes. Always busy. Always moving toward her next endeavor with that focused determination he admired so much—debate practice, student council meetings, charity events she was organizing. She never met his eye during those moments, too caught up in whatever she was pursuing with that fierce intensity that made her seem like she was burning brighter than everyone else.
But he'd watched her.
God, he'd watched her like a drowning man watches the shore, hoping for rescue but too afraid to swim toward it.
Watched her bite her lip when she was concentrating on a difficult problem, leaving a small indent he wanted to smooth away with his thumb. Watched her tuck her hair behind her ear when she was nervous, a gesture so unconscious it made his heart ache. Watched her light up when she finally understood a difficult concept, her whole face transforming with joy that was almost childlike in its purity.
And he'd fallen in love so slowly, so completely, that by the time he realized what was happening, it was already too late. She'd been woven into every part of him—into his thoughts, his dreams, his reasons for pushing himself to succeed.
He'd just been too much of a coward to tell her.
Too aware of the differences between them. The Hale heiress and the bastard son.
Oil and water.
Incompatible by design.
So he'd kept his distance after graduation, telling himself it was better this way, that she deserved someone from her world, someone whose last name didn't come with whispers and shame.
Then everything changed.
The Langfords were without an heir—his father Gabriel had never married, never had legitimate offspring, and the legitimate heir his grandfather had groomed had proven to be a spectacular disappointment, more interested in yachts and mistresses than building empires. Desperate, they'd claimed the illegitimate son they'd once pretended didn't exist, the grandson they'd ignored for eighteen years suddenly becoming valuable when there was no one else.
Suddenly, Alexander had it all: the name, the fortune, the power.
Yet none of it felt like enough.
He knew she wouldn't love a title, a bank account, or a reputation carved by others. If he was to be worthy of her, he had to become someone who deserved her on his own merit.
So he buried himself in the company.
Late nights, brutal reviews, quiet failures, small victories, blood and ink on the spreadsheets. Until the day arrived when the empire he helped build no longer simply belonged to his name… it bore the unmistakable mark of his own hands.
But by then, she was engaged to Derek King.
His heart had broken when Sebastian told him the news over drinks at Eclipse, his friend's face sympathetic as he delivered the blow. Engaged to Derek King of all people—the arrogant bastard who couldn't handle anyone being better than him, who collected beautiful things like trophies, who saw Seraphina as another acquisition for his collection rather than the extraordinary woman she was.
So he'd tried to move on. Dated other women. Beautiful women. Intelligent women. Successful women who should have been perfect matches on paper.
None of them were her.
None of them could ever be her.
None of them made him feel like the world was bearable just by existing in it.
But now—finally—the universe had shifted in his favor.
She was free.
And he was ready to be brave. Ready to close the distance he'd maintained for fourteen years. Ready to risk rejection for the chance at something real.
Alexander leaned back in his chair, letting himself imagine their future together—lazy Sunday mornings with coffee in bed, her designing in their home studio while he worked nearby, children with her eyes and his determination, growing old together watching their combined empire expand across continents. He imagined her smile every morning, her laugh filling their home, her hand in his as they navigated life together.
He could finally tell her everything.
Three hundred and thirty-six hours until he could ask her to be his wife.
His phone buzzed against the mahogany desk, the vibration loud in the quiet office.
He glanced at it absently, expecting another email about the Chen Industries acquisition or a message from his assistant about tomorrow's schedule.
A news alert.
BREAKING: Seraphina Hale Found Dead in Apparent Suicide
The words didn't register at first.
His brain simply... stopped.
Refused to process.
Rejected the information as impossible, as some kind of error in the matrix, as anything other than what it clearly said.
Some kind of mistake. Wrong person. Wrong Hale. A glitch in the news algorithm. Something. Anything.
But his hand was already moving, clicking the notification with fingers that had started to go numb, pulling up the full article even as some part of his brain screamed at him to stop, to not look, to preserve this last moment of not knowing, this last second where she was still alive in his mind.