The “Something Old” - 2031 - Part 13
This dream felt real. Too real.
Jess sat across from him in a room that didn’t quite exist. She knew that. Some part of her did.
The walls stretched endlessly, shifting as if they couldn’t quite decide what they wanted to be. One moment, they were sleek and modern, all polished glass and sharp steel edges, the kind of office where power was wielded with a flick of a pen. The next, they melted into dark mahogany panels, dimly lit by antique sconces, casting elongated shadows that stretched toward her like grasping fingers. The air was heavy—so thick she could feel it pressing against her skin, muffling the sound of her own breath.
And across from her sat Leonardo Azure.
Or… Kai?
Because, fck, the resemblance was unnerving.
Leo was composed. Effortlessly so. He lounged in a leather chair, his posture regal, like he was meant to sit at the head of the table. His suit was pressed to perfection, a shade of navy so deep it almost looked black. A gold cufflink glinted at his wrist when he moved—just slightly, just enough to tap a single finger against the armrest in a slow, rhythmic motion.
His jawline was sharp, almost too sharp, his features so defined they could have been carved from stone. His grey-blue eyes flickered with something unreadable, like they could dissect her if she stared too long. And his blond hair—perfect, untouched, like not a single strand dared to be out of place.
It was Kai… It was Leo. It was both?
And Jess wasn’t sure how to separate them.
Her stomach twisted.
She had spent years forcing herself not to think about Kai. Not to remember the way he had once looked at her, how he had once loved her, how he had broken her.
And yet… here he was.
Except it wasn’t him.
It was Leo.
But it wasn’t.
The realization made something crawl beneath her skin, unsettled and restless.
Jess forced herself to sit up straighter, her fingers tightening around the pen in her hand. The notepad in front of her was filled with precise, clean strokes of ink, but the words—her words—shifted if she stared too long, blurring, distorting into something unreadable.
It was confusing… why was she here again?
Oh.
This was supposed to be an interview.
That’s what this was. That’s why she was here. Right?
She had a job to do.
Jess cleared her throat, forcing her voice into something even. Something professional.
“Mr. Azure, thank you for sitting down with me today.”
He didn’t smile.
His blue eyes—Kai’s eyes, her mind whispered, but she shoved the thought away—flickered with something unreadable.
“Of course,” he said smoothly. His voice was low, even, practiced.
Jess inhaled sharply. Get a grip. But even his voice… it sounded like Kai.
That hurt.
It’s Leo.
It’s Leo.
It’s…Leo.
She had studied him. Read about him in headlines. Whispers passed between journalists who were too afraid to ask the real questions. Or, were paid not to ask those questions. He was a man wrapped in power, cloaked in ruthless efficiency. A businessman. A kingmaker. A phantom looming over the business world with nothing but a flick of his wrist.
And funny enough, unless one looked, no one would know how powerful this man was.
But Jess had read about him—the real him—in her mother’s journals. Not just the titan, not just the empire.
The boy.
The boy who had once loved so fiercely. The boy her mother had loved so fiercely. The boy who had shattered her.
The boy who had shattered… her.
Kai.
No this wasn’t Kai.
He looked like Kai.
NO.
no.
And for the first time, Jess realized—he was young.
The man sitting across from her wasn’t the Leonardo Azure of today. He wasn’t in his fifties, hardened by decades of life. No.
He was younger than she was.
And that fact—it rattled her.
His hair was golden, untouched by time, slicked back in the way Kai used to style his. His face was unlined, sharp with youth and arrogance. And his suit… his perfectly tailored suit… rested against his frame like it belonged to him before he even knew what power was.
Jess clenched the notepad tighter, forcing herself to move past it.
It’s not Kai. And… and she didn’t have time to dissect why he looked like this…
This was her chance.
This was an interview. Her interview.
She glanced down at her notepad, at the shifting, unreadable words that moved on the page, sliding away from her, refusing to be pinned down.
It didn’t matter. She moved ahead anyway.
“Let’s… start with your latest acquisition—”
Leo tilted his head… just slightly… just enough… and something in his expression made her pause.
And suddenly, everything in the room went still.
His expression was unreadable, too controlled. His fingers—long, calculated—tapped against the armrest, so… so… deliberate.
Then—
“Cut the bullshit.”
Jess blinked.
The words rang out, shattering the polished illusion of formality.
She knew she should have been surprised…should have been.
But instead, a chill coiled in her spine. Because the way he said it—the exact inflection, the exact cadence—was familiar. Too familiar.
And it wasn’t Leo’s voice anymore.
It was Kai’s.
Leo… Kai?.. No, Leo… leaned forward, elbows resting on the polished wood of the desk between them. The light above them flickered—just for a second.
Jess could hear her own breathing—shallow, uneven—like she had just asked something forbidden.
But she hadn’t…
“You didn’t come here to ask me about business.”
Jess swallowed, shifting in her seat. Something about the way he looked at her sent sharp unease in her gut.
It was a look reminiscent of what Kai gave her at one moment… but she couldn’t… place when?
Irrelevant.
But he was right.
She hadn’t.
Her fingers trembled against the notepad, gripping it tighter.
“Who was she to you?”
A flicker of something passed through his expression.
“Excuse me?”
His voice was quieter now, measured. But it wasn’t confused. It wasn’t the voice of a man caught off guard.
It was the voice of a man deciding how much to give away.
Jess’s grip tightened around the notepad. She felt like she was teetering on a ledge of somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.
But she didn’t back down.
“My mother. Who was she to you?”
Another pause.
A long, uncomfortable pause.
Leo’s fingers twitched where they rested on the table, but his face gave nothing away. She watched him - leaning back, the movement slow, precise, calculated…
Then he exhaled a soft laugh, but there was no humor in it.
“You already know the answer to that.”
Jess’s stomach clenched.
“I want to hear it from you.”
Leo’s jaw tightened, the muscle ticking ever so slightly. His hands—so still before—clenched just barely.
He didn’t like this.
Jess knew when a man was cornered.
She…knew what Kai looked like when he was cornered…
“She was…” His voice trailed off.
He looked away.
Jess leaned forward. Her pulse was pounding now, hammering against her ribs, but she kept her voice even.
“Did you love her?”
His head snapped back to her.
The temperature in the room dropped.
Truly… it was so, so cold now. The temperature had dropped so drastically that the very air felt sharp, slicing against her skin like daggers. Each exhale shifted into the space before her, dissolving into the thick, frigid silence that wrapped around them. The room itself seemed to shrink, the walls closing in under the weight of the cold, turning the very air dense and brittle—icy in a way that seeped deep into her bones.
Even the light had shifted, the once warm glow now tinged with something colder, harsher, as if the frost had crept into every crack, draining the warmth from the very space around them.
His eyes—Kai’s eyes, Leo’s eyes, the Azure blue eyes—locked onto hers, sharp as glass… or ice… and there was a storm in those eyes.
She knew it well.
She had seen it before.
“This interview is over.”
“No, it’s not.”
Jess didn’t move. Didn’t even blink.
“What happened between you two?”
Leo stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor in a way that made Jess flinch.
“I said—”
“Do you know why she left you?”
That stopped him.
Jess swore she saw the faintest hitch in his breath, barely perceptible, but there. The kind of reaction a man like him wasn’t supposed to have. A muscle in his jaw clenched—tight, controlled—but something about it felt… fragile.
Like a crack forming in ice around them… just before it shattered.
And for a fleeting second, Jess saw it. Saw him. The split-second flicker of emotion behind those stormy blue eyes. It was raw, exposed—like a wound torn open before he could cover it.
It was Kai.
The face in front of her blurred, shifting between past and present, between the man she had walked away from and the one her mother had loved. It was Leo and it was Kai, blending together so seamlessly it made her stomach turn.
And then—just as quickly as it had faltered—the mask slid back into place. The sharp, unreadable expression returned. Leo Azure was back.
Jess tightened her grip on the pen.
The silence stretched between them, heavy and unbearable.
And she knew—she had him.
Honestly…
She hadn’t known why she needed to ask this. Why it felt so urgent.
But now, looking at him—at the way his breathing had changed, at the storm behind his carefully neutral expression—she knew.
“Did you even fight for her?”
Leo pushed his chair back even more. The legs scraped against the floor, the sound cutting through the thick silence.
“Enough.”
But Jess didn’t stop.
“Did you ever even tell her how much she meant to you?”
“Stop.”
“Do you still love her?”
And that—that was the breaking point.
Leo shot to his feet.
The light above them flickered again—faster this time, more erratic.
His fists were clenched at his sides. His breathing was sharp, uneven.
Jess watched as his shoulders heaved, as his jaw locked, as the cracks in his mask widened and split.
And then—
He turned away.
“Leo, we’re not done”
Jess started but he was still moving.
“Leo.” Jess tried again, getting up from her own chair.
“KAI.” Jess screamed this time, unable to stop the name from leaving her lips. And… and she finally saw him stop in his tracks. Why had she called him that?
Why?
Jess barely had a moment to register the shift. The world around them wavered, the office walls dissolving into something else.
A scream hit the room.
Distant, small.
Unnerving.
Was Leo crying? Was… Kai crying?
No… No this wasn’t an adult.
It was a baby’s cry that cut through the room.
Jess snapped her head toward the sound, confusion lancing through her chest.
He was still standing there, but his back was to her now. His shoulders trembled.
And the cry—
It grew louder. And louder.
But now it was coming from him… or she assumed it was him…
And then, the office collapsed.
Jess woke up with a gasp. Her body jerked upright, her skin damp with sweat and her pulse pounded in her ears, the remnants of the dream clinging to her like static.
The crying— It wasn’t from the dream anymore. It was real.
Shay.
Her daughter’s wails echoed through the room, piercing through the last hazy remnants of sleep.
Jess’ heart clenched as she turned to the bassinet, her hands moving on instinct.
“Hey, baby,” she whispered, lifting Shay into her arms, pressing a kiss to her tiny forehead. “I’ve got you.”
Her daughter’s warmth grounded her. But Jess’ mind was still elsewhere.
Still caught in that dream.
Still hearing Leo’s voice… Kai’s voice? —his silence—echoing in her head. Still wondering what the hell it all meant.
And knowing—without a doubt—that maybe she wasn’t ready for the truth.
But she was going to hear it anyway.