Too Late For Regret, Mr. Booth

The Museum of Modern Art had been transformed.

Elise stepped from the black car into a wall of flash photography, her body moving on autopilot through years of buried training. The dress she'd chosen-deep crimson velvet, backless, cut to suggest rather than reveal-caught the light and held it, a declaration of war in fabric form.

She didn't pause for interviews. She didn't acknowledge the whispers that followed her up the steps, the speculation about her identity, her patron, her right to appear at an event where every invitation had been vetted for months. She moved through the entrance like water through stone, finding the paths of least resistance, the gaps in attention that let her reach the main gallery unseen.

The space was magnificent. Monet's water lilies glowed against white walls, their serenity a mockery of the violence Elise intended. She accepted champagne from a passing tray and positioned herself where the light would find her when the moment came, where Callum Booth would have no choice but to see.

He entered twenty minutes later.

She knew before she turned. The gallery's energy shifted, conversations stuttering, heads turning in waves that rippled outward from the doorway. She took a sip of champagne, counted to three, and looked.

Black tie. Perfect tailoring. The same face that had filled her nightmares and her rare, traitorous dreams, now bracketed by lines that hadn't existed four years ago. His arm held Jaida Powers, her throat draped in the Booth diamond, her smile fixed in the rictus of a woman who knew she was being watched.

Elise raised her glass.

Across the room, Callum's head turned. His eyes found hers.

The champagne flute slipped from his fingers. It hit the carpet with a sound like distant thunder, like a door closing, like the end of something that had never really begun.

Jaida followed his gaze. Her face emptied of color, of expression, of everything except the primitive terror of a predator who'd discovered her prey was not, in fact, dead.

Elise smiled.

She turned away before he could reach her, drifting toward the auction area where the evening's formalities would begin. The first lot was already displayed-a Renaissance sketch, minor but pretty, the kind of piece that attracted competitive bidding from collectors who valued provenance over passion.

Jaida raised her paddle immediately, her voice too bright, her desperation poorly disguised. "Fifty thousand."

"Seventy-five," someone countered.

"One hundred." Jaida's paddle snapped up. "One-fifty. Two hundred."

The bidding climbed, Jaida's numbers growing more reckless, more performative, until the sketch had reached a price that exceeded its value by multiples. The auctioneer hovered with his gavel, seeking final bids, and Elise raised her hand.

"Five hundred thousand."

Silence. Absolute and complete.

The auctioneer's gavel fell. Elise didn't celebrate. She was already moving, her path calculated to intersect with Callum's desperate trajectory, to lead him away from the crowd and into the museum's shadowed corridors where their history could finally confront its present.

She heard him behind her. His footsteps, uneven, too fast, the sound of a man who'd abandoned dignity for desperation.

"Elise. Elise, stop-"

She stopped. Turned. The bronze statue beside her-a twisted abstract thing that suggested human form in agony-framed her like a sentinel, like a witness.

Callum halted three feet away. His chest heaved. His eyes-those eyes she'd memorized, that she'd seen in another child's face just yesterday-devoured her with an intensity that should have felt like victory.

"You're alive." The words emerged broken, disbelieving. "Four years. I searched-I thought-"

"You thought what?" Her voice was ice. Perfect, controlled, the product of four years of practice. "That I'd burned? That your wife had conveniently disappeared so you could upgrade?" She stepped closer, close enough to smell his cologne, the same scent from their marriage, from their bed, from the life he'd abandoned her to preserve. "I'm not a ghost, Callum. I'm the woman you threw away. The difference is subtle, but it matters."

His hand rose. Trembling, reaching for her face, for confirmation of substance, of reality.

She stepped back.

"Booth," she said, the name deliberate, distancing. "Mr. Booth. I believe you have something I need. A doctor. A contract. A small favor that would cost you nothing and save a life." She smiled, showing teeth. "I'm prepared to negotiate. But not here. Not like this."

She turned and walked away, her heels clicking against marble, her spine straight, her heart hammering against her ribs with a violence she refused to show.

Behind her, Callum Booth stood motionless in the shadow of the bronze, his hand still extended, his face a mask of grief and hope and terrible, dawning comprehension.