Elena remained frozen on her knees, the cleaning cloth still clutched forgotten in one hand, tears springing immediately to her eyes as she absorbed the reality of Damian standing directly in front of her, older but unmistakably himself, staring down at her with an intensity that stripped away every careful wall she'd built over the last three years of hiding.
"Damian?" Her voice cracked on his name, disbelief warring with a hope she'd trained herself, painfully, not to feel anymore. "Is it really you?"
He crouched immediately, closing the distance between them, his hands hovering uncertainly near her shoulders as though afraid that touching her might somehow prove this wasn't real. "Elena, what are you doing here? Why are you—" He gestured helplessly at her uniform, at the cleaning supplies scattered around her knees, comprehension arriving in slow, devastating waves. "Why are you working in my house?"
Elena's tears fell freely now, three years of carefully suppressed grief and confusion finally surfacing all at once. "I didn't know it was your house," she managed. "I took this position under a different name. I needed the work, and I never imagined—"
Before she could finish, the sound of careful footsteps on the glass staircase drew both their attention upward.