**HALE DYNAMICS CEO VICTORIA HALE HOSPITALIZED AFTER
IN-FLIGHT MEDICAL EMERGENCY.**
Ethan stared.
Everything inside him stopped.
The kitchen became impossibly quiet.
Margaret whispered his name.
“No.”
Ethan stood.
“No.”
“Ethan—”
“No.”
He backed away from the phone.
Victoria Hale.
Not simply Victoria.
**Victoria Hale.**
The woman whose heart he had restarted.
The woman who had offered him anything.
The woman whose company name he had spent eleven years trying to forget.
Margaret touched his arm.
“You didn’t know.”
Ethan pulled away.
“I need air.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I said I need air.”
He walked outside into the freezing morning.
Margaret didn’t follow.
She knew better.
Ethan stood on the porch staring at nothing.
Eleven years earlier, he had owned three suits.
