"Hello, Helen."

The words left his mouth more smoothly than he expected, considering his chest felt like a war drum. For six years, he’d imagined this moment, what he’d say, how she’d react.

But now that she stood before him, so real, so close, his carefully rehearsed lines scattered like ashes. Heq couldn't speak, or rather, he had no words to say.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. She just stood there, frozen in the doorway like someone who had seen a ghost. Or maybe, just maybe, to her, he was one.

She parted her lips to say something, but she found that the words were stuck in her throat.

He stepped forward, saying to her, "It’s been a while."

Helen’s eyes flickered, confusion, then recognition, then something sharper. Anger? Hurt? Maybe both.

She turned, and walked out. Not a word. Not a glance back. She didn't want to look at him, or speak to him.

Dean’s breath caught. He moved fast, following her out into the hallway.

"Helen, wait." He yelled after her.

She kept going, her heels pounding against the floor. Her hair swayed as she walked, her shoulders tense. Her eyes were filled with tears, but she stubbornly held back from back.

He reached her just outside the elevator.

"Helen!"

She stopped. Only slightly. Her finger hovered over the button.

"I don’t want to cause a scene," she said quietly, still facing forward. Her voice was low, sharp, controlled, but trembling at the edges.

"You have no right to be here." She whispered.

Dean stepped in front of her, blocking the button.

"I came for this meeting. I didn’t know you’d be here either. I found out three days ago when the final paperwork came through." He explained to her.

Her eyes met his, fury now fully visible in her expression.

"You disappeared." Her words cut like blades.

"You left me, Dean. One night you said you loved me. The next morning, you were gone. You didn't say anything, nothing." Helen's shoulders trembled as she spoke with anger.

"I know." He swallowed hard. "I—I didn’t plan for it to happen that way." He stuttered.

She scoffed and took a step back, folding her arms tightly.

"You didn’t plan to vanish off the face of the earth?" She snorted.

"No. I didn’t plan to get pulled out of the country that morning. It was sudden. My father collapsed. He was in a coma for three months, everything changed," Dean explained, his voice cracking while hoping that she would believe him.

Helen blinked. She hadn’t expected that. Her lips parted slightly.

"I didn’t have time to call. And then after he passed, I found out the company was collapsing. I had to take it over or lose everything. For months I was buried in it—"

"You could have written. Called, you could have done anything," she interrupted him with her words.

"You’re right. I should have," His voice broke slightly.

"I just didn’t know how to come back. I didn’t know if you’d moved on, and I was afraid to, and I didn’t think I deserved you after what I did." His head lowered.

Silence fell between them. Only the soft hum of the elevator filled the space.

Dean reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out something small and folded.

"I kept this," he said quietly, offering it to her.

Helen looked at the paper in his hand but didn’t take it.

"It’s the photo you gave me the night before I left," he added.

"You said it was your favorite picture of us. I carried it with me all through Europe even when things got dark."

Still, she didn’t take it.

"Why now?" she asked.

"Why show up after all this time? You could’ve stayed gone, you shouldn't have shown up," Helen was on the verge of crying.

"I wasn’t trying to find you," he admitted. "But when your company came up during our investment search, I saw your name. And suddenly, I couldn’t not come, I just had to show up."

"So you came to ruin everything again?" She asked.

"I came because I couldn’t stop wondering," he said, more firmly now.

"I never stopped thinking about you. About what I lost. About what I could’ve had, if I’d just stayed." Dean exhaled.

Helen’s jaw clenched.

"You lost the right to wonder," she said coldly.

Dean hesitated, his heart pounding. Then he tried the question that had been clawing at him since he saw her face again:

"Did you move on?" He asked with uncertainty. He was scared of her answer.

A bitter laugh escaped her lips.

"Oh, I moved on. I built an empire while you were off ‘rebuilding yours.’ I raised a daughter on my own." Helen answered.

The hallway went quiet.

Dean stared. His brain scrambled to make sense of her words.

"A… daughter?"

Helen froze. She hadn’t meant to say that.

Dean took a slow step forward. "Helen do we have a child?"

She looked away, her eyes glassy as she replied, "It doesn’t matter now."

"It matters to me." His voice cracked.

Helen turned sharply toward him. "You don't get to care now, Dean. You weren’t there when she was born. When she had her first fever. When she cried herself to sleep asking for a father. You weren’t there when I had to tell her I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t even know if you were alive!"

Her voice broke at the end, and she covered her mouth with her hand, holding back the sob.

Dean felt the wind knocked out of him.

All this time. Six years. A child he never knew existed.

"I need to see her," he requested softly.

"No." Helen straightened, her voice hard again. "You don’t just walk back in and expect to be part of her life. You’re a stranger to her."

"I can change that." He said urgently.

"Can you?" she challenged.

"Or will you disappear again when the next crisis hits?" She questioned.

Dean didn’t answer. Because he didn’t have the right words. Not yet.

She took a shaky breath and turned toward the elevator again. This time, when she pressed the button, he didn’t stop her.

"I built a life without you, Dean," she said as the doors slid open. "And I’m not going to let you tear it down."

She stepped in, and sighed. He stood frozen as he watched the doors closed.

But his heart was already racing ahead, toward the little girl she had described. Their daughter.

This wasn’t the end. It was only the beginning.