The Launch

The night of the IPO launch, the Vortex Tower was transformed.

The lobby was filled with the elite of New York. Champagne flowed. The mural, finished by Elara before the storm, was veiled behind a massive silk curtain.

Damian stood backstage. He was wearing a tuxedo. He looked like the perfect Boy King—untouchable, icy, remote.

His head was splitting. The migraine was a roar now, deafening him. He had taken four painkillers; they did nothing.

"Five minutes, Mr. Cross," the stage manager said.

Damian walked out onto the stage. The applause was thunderous.

He stepped to the podium. He looked out at the sea of faces.

"Welcome," Damian said. "Tonight, we unveil the future."

He pressed a button. The curtain dropped.

The crowd gasped.

The mural was magnificent. It wasn't just a cityscape. It was a timeline. On the left, the smoky, iron-boned New York of the 1920s, painted in warm sepias and golds. On the right, the neon, glass New York of the present.

And bridging them, in the center, was a figure. A man standing on a bridge in Central Park, playing a saxophone. The smoke from the saxophone swirled up to become the clouds of the modern city.

Damian stared at the painting.

He stared at the man. It was him. It was Julian.

And in the corner, hidden in the brushstrokes of the trees, Elara had painted a woman in a red dress, singing.

The flashbulbs started popping.

*Flash. Flash. Flash.*

Bright bursts of white light.

To Damian, they looked like sparks.

*Flash.*

The memory hit him. Not the fire this time.

The music.

He heard the saxophone. He felt the weight of the instrument. He felt the vibration of the reed against his lip. He remembered the smell of Elara’s perfume on their wedding night. He remembered the way she laughed when he missed a note. He remembered the promise he whispered to her as the roof came down.

*I will find you. In every life, I will find you.*

The static in his head screamed one last time, high and piercing, and then shattered.

The wall came down. The grief flooded in, but it wasn't drowning him. It was washing him clean.

He wasn't just Damian Cross, the broken CEO. He was Julian. And he had left his wife alone.

Damian gripped the podium. The teleprompter was scrolling his speech about quarterly earnings.

"Screw it," Damian whispered.

He stepped back from the mic.

"Mr. Cross?" Marcus hissed from the wings.

Damian jumped off the stage. The crowd parted, confused murmurs rising like a tide.

"Damian! Where are you going?"

Damian didn't answer. He ran. He ran through the lobby, past the mural of his past self. He burst out the revolving doors into the night.

It was raining. Of course it was raining.

He didn't call a car. He ran down the sidewalk, his tuxedo shoes splashing in the puddles, heading south. Toward the Village. Toward the only place that mattered.

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