Chapter 3: The Scars of Twenty Winters
The Maybach pulled through the ornate wrought-iron gates of the Sterling Manor in Westchester, gliding up the tree-lined driveway toward the sprawling stone residence. Light spilled from every window of the estate, casting a warm golden glow across the manicured lawns.
Tom led Helen and Leo inside, where the manor's staff had already prepared warm tea, fresh broth, and soft cashmere blankets. After Leo had eaten a warm meal and fallen asleep in the guest suite under the watchful eye of a trusted nurse, Tom and Helen sat before the roaring stone fireplace in the library.
Two porcelain cups of chamomile tea sat untouched on the mahogany table between them.
"Where were you, Helen?" Tom asked, his voice raw with suppressed agony. "On the night of our engagement gala twenty years ago, your car went off the bridge into the Hudson River. The police recovered the wreckage, but your body was never found. Your father’s company collapsed, and everyone told me to accept that you were dead."
Helen stared into the dancing flames, her hands wrapped around the warm porcelain cup.
"I didn't drive off that bridge by accident, Tom," she said quietly. "Someone cut the brake lines of my sedan. When the car plunged into the freezing water, I managed to crawl through the broken window before the current dragged it under. I washed ashore miles downstream, half-dead, with severe head trauma."
Tom’s fists clenched until his knuckles turned paper-white. "Who did it?"
"I don't know who severed the lines," Helen replied, her voice trembling. "When I woke up in a rural charity clinic in Pennsylvania, I had lost my memory. I didn't know my name, my family, or where I came from. For ten years, I worked as a farm laborer, living on charity and odd jobs."
"And when did your memory return?" Tom asked, his breath catching.
May you like
"Seven years ago," Helen whispered. "A sudden fever brought the fragments of my past back. But by then, I discovered that my father had died of grief, my family estate was liquidated, and you were a global titan engaged to Victoria Kensington. I looked at myself—penniless, broken, scarred—and I looked at you on the cover of magazines. I thought you had moved on. I thought I would only ruin your life."
"You could never ruin my life, Helen," Tom said, moving to sit beside her on the settee, taking her weathered hands into his own. "Every empire I built was meaningless without you. Every victory tasted like ash because you were not there to share it."
