The Ceo s Shadow

The wind tore Ava Moreno's hair into misery and she stood atop the rooftop on its edge. The city pulsed with light, life, underneath her, but her heart was storming with it. Five years had gone wasted since her life came apart since every good thing that happened had ended. Her family. Her fortune. Her name. Those days still cast their shadowed wreckage, but tonight, she was here for a reckoning.

This was the night she decided to be herself again. No more running. No more hiding. Ava was singing her swan song to any definition attached to her by headlines or whispers. Standing there, on the outskirts of the world, she had worked her fingers to the bone putting that world back together, brick by fragile brick, and was ready to take the world on once more now.

She turned and walked out, taking a steadying breath, but a man stepped from the shadows. She was tall and composed, her gaze so sharp she almost hesitated. She couldn't put a finger on why she felt uneasy when she looked at him.

He murmured, "Ava Moreno." "You've kept me waiting."

Her heart skipped to a gallop. His tone of speaking her name gave it something almost tethered like... She didn't know him. Did she? However, he was strangely familiar.

Facing her was her clipped voice, with her guard up.

His smile was faint, almost mocking. "It was a chance to change your life," he said. "To show that you're more than a tabloid headline."

Anger ignited her stomach. This stranger dared to come dancing into her strength and the promise of redemption. He did not know what she'd been through.

'We don't need your charity,' she snapped. "Least of all from people who hide in the dark."

He murmured 'ah' as though her defiance amused him. "I was hoping that fire had not gone out-that."