Chapter 172 Chapter 172

Chapter 172 Chapter 172
Liana’s Pov
The notification arrived before dawn, a quiet chime breaking the stillness of her office. Liana glanced at her screen, expecting another routine report, another board update. Instead, her breath hitched.
Anonymous transfer received: $2,000,000 USD.
The finance team had flagged it immediately, as per protocol. There was no sender listed and no message attached. Just a string of encrypted numbers that led, after an hour of digital digging, straight back to him. Dominic.
She leaned back in her chair, staring at the glow of the monitor as if it might explain itself. The sun hadn’t yet risen; the city outside her window was washed in pre-dawn gray. Her reflection stared back at her, she was calm on the surface, while her heart was breaking somewhere underneath.
There was no one else who would think of doing this. Not the board, not investors, not even allies trying to curry favor. Only Dominic would send two million dollars without a word. Only Dominic would think that silence could say what language had failed to.
It wasn’t the money that unsettled her. It was the restraint. Dominic didn’t do subtle. He never had. Every gesture in their history had been larger than life: grand, violent, or both. When he loved, it was consuming. 
When he hated, it was ruinous. His apologies, when they existed at all, came in the form of ultimatums or impossible promises. But this… this was quiet. A peace offering made in lowercase.
For the rest of the morning, Liana couldn’t shake the thought. She went through her meetings, signed her documents, even smiled at the right times, but beneath every polite word and nod, her mind replayed that simple act over and over again.
She typed the message herself, six words long. “Coffee? No agenda. Just conversation.”
He replied ten minutes later. “Tell me when and where.”
The café she chose sat at the edge of the pier, glass walls overlooking the restless gray-blue water. It was open, exposed and impossible to hide in. The kind of place where neither of them could retreat behind reputation or security detail.
She arrived there and spotted him already there. Of course he’d be early. Dominic had never entered a battlefield unprepared.
He sat near the window, a black coffee untouched before him, sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. There was no suit jacket today. His tie hung loose. His hair was slightly unkempt, as if he’d run his hands through it one too many times.
He looked older. Not in years, but in weight. The sharp, ruthless precision that used to define him had dulled at the edges. And when he lifted his gaze to meet hers, there was no challenge there. Just quiet awareness.
Liana hesitated, then crossed the room. The sound of her heels against the wood felt almost intrusive.
He modded lightly. A small gesture, a peace flag in disguise.
“
She sat across from him. “You wanted me to.”
Something like a smile touched his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Maybe.”
She took in a slow breath, steadying herself. “You know that donation doesn’t fix what happened.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
That stopped her. There was no arrogance in his tone, no defense, no manipulation. Just honesty. The kind of truth that doesn’t beg to be forgiven, it just understood.
“Then what was it meant to do?” she asked.
Dominic’s gaze drifted to the ocean outside. “To stop keeping score.”
The words were so unlike him that she didn’t know how to respond. For years, their entire existence had been scorekeeping. One betrayal answered with another. One wound for every wound. The idea of stopping… felt like fiction.
For a while, neither of them spoke. The sound of waves filled the silence, rhythmic and steady, as if nature itself refused to rush them.
Finally, Liana leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. “Why now?”
He didn’t look at her when he answered. “Because I realized that even when I win, I lose something and I’m tired of losing things that used to matter.”
Her throat tightened. “Used to?”
His eyes found hers again, sharp but soft at the edges. “Maybe still do.”
Something in her chest stuttered, an old ache stirring awake. She forced herself to smile faintly, not unkindly. “You’re still impossible, Dominic.”
He exhaled through a quiet laugh. “And you’re still impossible to forget.”
For the first time in a long time, the space between them didn’t feel dangerous. It felt… real. Like two survivors sitting among the wreckage, neither pretending they hadn’t built the fire that burned them both.
They talked about everything else, the fallout, the mistakes, the silence between them that had turned into something heavier than hate.
She asked about Project Eden. He didn’t lie. He told her what he’d found beneath Elia’s grave: the cash, the drives, the data labeled with the names of the dead. The reanimated subject called E-07.
“
Liana listened, heart heavy. “And what are you going to do with it?”
He looked down at his hands. “That’s the problem. I don’t know anymore.”
It wasn’t the confession of a man plotting revenge. It was the exhaustion of one who’d already seen too much of it.She studied him for a long time. “You’re changing.”
He gave a humorless chuckle. “Too late for that, don’t you think?”
“Maybe not,” she said softly. “You showed restraint. That’s new.”
He glanced up, almost incredulous. “Two million dollars is restraint?”
Liana smiled, faint but real. “From you? It’s practically a whisper.”
That earned her a genuine laugh, it was brief and disbelieving, but honest.
For a fleeting moment, she remembered the man before the chaos. It was almost painful, that memory because she knew they could never go back there but maybe they could stop dragging each other further down.
When she finally rose to leave, he didn’t try to stop her. He didn’t ask for another meeting, didn’t suggest they start over. He just looked at her, eyes steady, and said quietly,
“I didn’t come here to win.”
She paused mid-step. “Then why did you come?”
“To make sure we both stop losing.”
Liana held his gaze for a heartbeat longer, then turned toward the door. The sunlight hit her as she stepped outside, warm and blinding. She blinked against it, breathing in air that felt lighter than it had in years.