Chapter 21 Returned
THIRD PERSON'S POV
Finnian Matthew Stewheinz doesn’t bother turning on the lights when he enters his condominium.
The door shuts behind him with a muted click, sealing him inside a space defined by glass, steel, and silence. He drops his keys onto the console table as the metallic clink echoes farther than it should, bouncing off walls too wide and too empty. As he walks toward the living room, he loosens his tie, tugging it free as though it’s been strangling him all day. Outside, the city glows. They are alive, restless, and endless. Inside him, there is only exhaustion.
He collapses onto the sofa as one arm draped over his eyes. His chest rises and falls slowly, deliberately, like a man reminding himself how to breathe.
Then his phone vibrates, not just once, not twice, but more than thrice. He lifts it without much thought the annoyance became evident in his eyes.
It's Lindsey, his ex-girlfriend.
Her name burns against the screen, unwanted and unwelcome, like a scar someone keeps touching long after it’s healed wrong. Finnian’s jaw tightens. His lips press into a thin, unforgiving line as he stares at it.
For a moment, he considers answering. Not because he wants to hear her voice, but because some wounds demand to be poked just to prove they’re still there.
Instead, he rejects the call and tosses the phone onto the coffee table. It slides, hits the edge, and falls face down on the floor.
Finnian exhales sharply and stares at the ceiling.
“It’s been a five year,” he mutters to the quiet. “Why won’t she just leave me alone?”
But Lindsey isn’t the one haunting him.
It’s Kara.
A year since he last saw her, a year since she looked at him with fear and defiance tangled together in her eyes, and a year since he lost control over something he never meant to feel in the first place.
His hand curls into a fist. He never understood what it was about her. She didn’t plead, she didn’t soften, she didn’t bend the way others always did, and she fought him, challenged him, and forced him to see the cracks in his own certainty.
And somehow, that made her unforgettable.
“Damn it,” he whispers into the dark. “You ruined me.”
The truth unraveled not long after Kara disappeared from his life. It began quietly because of a routine medical checkup. A standard blood test that should have meant nothing, until it did. The numbers didn’t line up, the doctor frowned, and asked questions that grew heavier with every answer.
Questions that led to truths Finnian never asked for. He wasn’t her son.
The woman who raised him, the woman who looked at him with polite distance his entire life was not his biological mother. The hospital records were incomplete, aged, carelessly preserved, but they hinted at something unforgivable.
A baby switching had happened and mistake made in a delivery room decades ago.
“Switched?” Finnian had repeated then, his voice sharp with disbelief. “That’s not possible.”
But it was because the man who raised him, the man who taught him discipline, silence, and survival was already dead. Gone before Finnian could confront him and gone before he could ask the only question that mattered. That loss hurt more than the truth itself.
Now, standing alone in his study, Finnian’s fingers brush an old framed photograph. The edges are worn and the glass faintly scratched.
“You weren’t my real father,” he whispers. “But you were the only one who ever loved me.”
His then throat tightens. He tried to find his real parents relentlessly, he offered money, influence, and leverage. He even demanded answers from hospitals, former staff, or anyone who might remember that night.
“We can’t release that information, Mr. Stewheinz,” they told him.
Over and over again.
Until one night, someone finally broke.
“She knew,” the nurse whispered as her voice trembling. “Your mother knew because she always did.”
And suddenly, everything made sense.
Why love always felt conditional?
Why affection was rationed?
Why he was never enough?
Finnian laughed that night because a hollow and humorless sound echoed through his empty room.
“So that’s it,” he murmured. “You never loved me because I was never yours.”
Something hardened inside him then, something sharp, and something merciless.
Morning comes without rest. Finnian sits across from Romeo Viancé inside a glass-walled conference room overlooking the city. Sunlight reflects off steel and skyscrapers, but the air between them is calm and controlled. Romeo’s presence is steady and commanding. The kind of authority built through years of discipline and legacy.
Finnian recognizes it instantly and respects it.
“To what do I owe this meeting?” Romeo asks, fingers calmly laced together on the table.
Finnian meets his gaze without hesitation.
“An opportunity, sir.”
Romeo studies him.
“You don’t strike me as someone who arrives without an agenda.”
"I don’t waste time.” A faint smile curves Finnian’s lips.
“Good,” Romeo replies evenly. “Neither do I.”
Every word is measured and every pause intentional.
“I’m expanding into food production,” Finnian explains. “I want partners who value quality, sustainability, and legacy.”
“And trust,” Romeo adds.
“Yes,” Finnian answers without pause. “Especially trust.”
What Finnian doesn’t say is that the man sitting across from him is Kara’s father. That this conversation is layered with meaning far beyond business.
All he want needs a door and that door is Kara's father. That door opens sooner than he expects.
That same afternoon, Mr. Lu enters Finnian’s office again, Kara walking beside him. Finnian feels her presence before he fully sees her, like a shift in gravity. She looks different, stronger, colder, and untouchable.
And it unsettles him.
“We’d like to revisit the proposal,” Mr. Lu says carefully.
“I agree,” Finnian replies without hesitation.
Kara’s head snaps toward him, eyes widening.
“But,” Finnian adds calmly, “I have one condition.”
Mr. Lu straightens. “Go on.”
Finnian’s gaze settles on Kara.
“She will report directly to me,” he says. “All updates, all details, and it should be daily. Only her and not anyone else.”
The silence that follows is immediate and heavy.
“What?” Kara blurts out before she can stop herself.
Mr. Lu hesitates. “Engr. Viancé—”
“I trust her,” Finnian interrupts smoothly, not taking his eyes off her. “Unless you don’t.”
Kara stiffens, anger flashing across her face. She opens her mouth to argue, but Finnian stands before she can speak. He turns his back to them as his expression is unreadable.
“I’ll have the contract sent,” he says coolly.
When he walks away, Kara never sees the slow, satisfied curve of his lips.
By late afternoon, Finnian is already moving forward. He finalizes the launch of a new food division under his empire and sends a formal partnership proposal to Romeo Viancé. The response comes sooner than expected.
“Accepted,” Romeo says over the phone. “Let’s proceed.”
Finnian ends the call and looks out over the city as the sun dips toward the horizon.
“Fate,” he murmurs. “You really do enjoy irony.”
Because whether Karaella Viancé wants it or not, she’s back in his orbit and Finnian Matthew Stewheinz never lets go of what fate returns to him.