THE RETURN OF THE FORGOTTEN SON

Chapter 5

The moment Adrian Cole left the mansion, the air didn’t settle. It remained tense, thick, like smoke clinging to the walls. Even after the car’s engine faded into the distance, his presence lingered sharp, precise, unsettling. I stood by the glass balcony, watching the taillights dissolve into the night, and for the first time in seven years, my hands trembled without reason.

That name Cole meant nothing to me. But the way he looked at me did.

It wasn’t the gaze of a stranger. It was the kind of stare that burrows into memory, digging through the dust of years until it finds something buried. Something that should’ve stayed gone.

When I turned away from the balcony, my reflection caught my attention. The woman staring back at me looked strong, hair pulled into a flawless bun, eyes lined in expensive eyeliner, mouth painted into confidence. But her hands gave her away. They were still shaking.

“Pull yourself together,” I whispered to myself. “He’s just another investor.”

But my voice didn’t sound convincing. Because deep down, I knew.

I’d seen that same posture before the subtle confidence, the quiet defiance in the way he spoke to Victor Knight, the calculated restraint that used to belong to only one man.

Adrian Knight.

Seven years ago, I watched his life burn to ashes. I watched the media crucify him, watched his father turn away, and watched him walk into the storm that ended everything we were. I had spent nights trying to forget the sound of his voice, the warmth of his hands, the reckless passion that made me believe in things that never last.

But the man who stood in that boardroom earlier today, the man calling himself Adrian Cole, had the same silence. The same controlled fury behind his eyes.

And that terrified me.

When I walked back into the main hall, Vanessa Knight was already pouring herself a glass of wine. Her red dress glimmered under the chandeliers, every movement deliberate, elegant and venomous.

“You’re still here,” she said with that smile I’d learned to fear. “I thought you’d run off to your next PR meeting by now.”

I forced a smile. “I was just making sure everything was fine after the investor left.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Investor, yes. Quite an impressive man, isn’t he? I haven’t seen your boss, Victor, so shaken in years.” She took a slow sip. “He looked at him like he’d seen a ghost.”

I felt my stomach tighten. “He… he reminded him of someone, maybe.”

“Perhaps.” She turned toward me, her smile deepening. “But ghosts don’t come back, Elena. They stay buried.”

The way she said it sent chills through me not because of her words, but because for the first time, I wondered if she wasn’t just talking about Adrian Knight. Vanessa had always known more than she let on. And tonight, she seemed almost… nervous.

When she walked away, I stayed still, the silence stretching. My mind drifted back to the boy I met ten years ago, the reckless, brilliant Adrian Knight who’d crash board meetings just to argue with his father, who once told me that life wasn’t worth living if you weren’t fighting for something you loved.

He was impossible, infuriating, and unforgettable.

He’d also been destroyed in one night.

I remembered the fire, the endless sirens, the thick smoke, and the call I got at 2 a.m. telling me that Adrian Knight was dead. The world moved on. Knight Corporation rebranded. Vanessa took over the family image, and Caleb became the perfect son.

And I buried my grief beneath my work. I built my career in the very company that betrayed him. Because it was easier to build something new than to dig through the ruins of what we lost.

But now, sitting in my car outside the mansion hours later, I couldn’t stop thinking about those eyes. The same eyes that once looked at me like I was his only home.

If Adrian Knight was truly dead, then who was Adrian Cole?

I started the car, but my mind wasn’t on the road. I kept seeing flashes of his hand on the conference table, the subtle scar along his jawline, the faint, almost invisible smirk when Victor refused to meet his gaze.

There were too many similarities. And the more I tried to reason it away, the stronger the thought grew that Adrian Cole wasn’t a stranger at all. He was the man the world forgot. The one who refused to stay dead.

When I reached my apartment, I didn’t turn on the lights. I walked straight to my desk, pulled open the drawer, and took out a small velvet box. Inside it was a silver cufflink slightly tarnished, engraved with the initials A.K.

I found it years ago, after the fire. I kept it because I couldn’t let go. Because some part of me hoped that if I held on to it long enough, he’d find his way back to it.

Now I placed it on the desk, right beside my phone, and stared at it as though it could give me answers.

My phone buzzed an unknown number.

Unknown: “You still keep it?”

My heart stopped. I stared at the message. There was no name, no photo, just that line. The kind of message that makes your blood go cold because no one else could’ve known.

Me: “Who is this?”

No reply. Just three dots for a moment then nothing.

I tried to breathe, but the air felt heavy. The city outside was silent except for the hum of streetlights and the faint siren echoing somewhere far off.

I tried to convince myself it was a prank. But when I picked up the cufflink again, something glimmered on its edge, a faint mark I’d never noticed before.

The initials were the same. But underneath, barely visible in the metal, was a tiny etching a number.

#01112018

The date of the fire.

My chest tightened. That cufflink didn’t belong to a dead man. It belonged to someone who wanted to be found.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat by the window, holding that cufflink, watching the skyline fade from darkness into dawn. The sun rose slowly, gold light pouring over the glass towers, the same city that took everything from him.

And I knew tomorrow, I’d go looking for Adrian Cole.

Or maybe, I’d go looking for Adrian Knight.

Either way, something told me that once I found the truth, there’d be no going back.