---- Chapter 27 27 Liam's repeated attempts to leave the sprawling country estate were met with polite but firm resistance from Eleanor's loyal staff. He was a prisoner in a gilded cage, his every move monitored. He paced the rooms like a trapped wolf, his desperation growing with each passing day. Eleanor visited him one last time. She was visibly weaker, her flame dimming. "Liam," she said, her voice frail, "| am dying. My doctors give me weeks, perhaps days." He stared at her, shocked into stillness. "| have one final wish, grandson. One promise | need you to make." She took his hand, her grip surprisingly strong. "Promise me you will stop chasing Maya. Promise me you will let her go. For her sake. For your own. And promise me you will rebuild Goldstein Global. Uphold the family legacy. It is all Ihave left to leave." Her eyes, fierce even in their decline, bored into his. Liam looked at his dying grandmother, the woman who had been a rock in his life. He saw the plea in her eyes, the weight of her legacy. He thought of Maya's final words on the recording: "Leave me ---- in peace." A profound, weary resignation settled over him. "| promise, Grandmother," he said, his voice hoarse. Eleanor smiled, a faint, tired smile. "Thank you, my boy." She passed away two days later. Liam, true to his word, returned to New York. He threw himself into rebuilding Goldstein Global, working with a cold, relentless efficiency. He transformed. The passionate, reckless Liam was gone. In his place was a somber, work-driven automaton. He remarried, a quiet, arranged union with a woman from a suitable family. It was a business merger, not a love match. His new wife understood the arrangement. She had her own life. He had his ghosts. He kept Maya's wedding ring, the one she'd left behind in their divorce settlement, locked in his safe. He never looked at it. He never spoke Maya's name. He rejected all other women, his loyalty to Maya's memory absolute, even in its futility. He mentored a successor, a bright young executive who reminded him, faintly, of a younger, more innocent version of himself. Twenty years passed. Liam, now in his mid-fifties, stepped down as CEO of Goldstein Global, his promise to Eleanor fulfilled. The company was stable, prosperous. ---- He was a solitary man, his arranged marriage a distant, polite formality. He finally allowed himself to do what he had forbidden himself for two decades. He searched for Maya. Quietly. Discreetly. His investigators, using sophisticated, modern tracing methods, found her. A small, picturesque mountain town in Montana. Owner of a bookstore and coffee shop called "The Wandering Quill." Liam traveled there alone. He saw her. Maya, aged gracefully, her dark hair now streaked with silver. She was laughing, interacting with customers, a serene, contented light in her eyes. A teenage girl, about sixteen, with Maya's intelligent eyes, was helping her in the shop. Her daughter. Adopted, he later learned. Lily. Maya had built a new life. A complete life. A life that had no space for him. Liam didn't approach. He couldn't. He bought a small, struggling antique map and print shop across the street. He renamed it "The Cartographer's Regret." He spent his days there, quietly restoring old maps, occasionally catching a glimpse of Maya through the window. ---- A distant, silent penance. He wrote letters. Letters to his younger self, full of warnings, of sorrow, of the love he had destroyed. He kept them in an old wooden box. He understood now. She was happy. He had no right to intrude, to tarnish her peace with his presence, his regret. Being near her, even like this, was a strange, painful comfort. Away to be close to the memory of what he had lost, without ever disturbing the new world she had so carefully, so bravely, built. The late Montana winter settled over the small town, mirroring the perpetual winter in Liam's heart. A spring that, for their love, would never come.