For years, I carried her as one carries a hidden wound — invisible to the world, but aching with every breath. My empire grew, my sons became men, my name carried weight in places I had never dreamed. Yet none of it silenced the whisper that followed me through the corridors of power and the solitude of night: She is not gone. Not yet. It began again with dreams. Not the fragmented hauntings of before, but sharp, vivid visions that clung to me upon waking. I would see her walking toward me through a field of water reeds, her hair lifted by the wind, her smile the same as the first day beneath the jacarandas. I would stretch out my hand to her — and wake with my arm extended into the emptiness of my bedroom. The dreams came too often, too insistently, to ignore. Then came the signs. One afternoon, while visiting a dam project in the north, I overheard workers speaking in hushed voices. An Indian woman, they said, had recently been seen in town — staying quietly, avoiding notice. They laughed, shrugging it off, but my blood ran cold. Another time, during a flight back from Johannesburg, the woman seated beside me took a phone call. Her words meant nothing to me — but the name she spoke was hers. I froze, my hands trembling against the armrest, until the passenger ended the call and said no more. Coincidence, perhaps. But I had lived long enough to recognize when the gods were moving their pieces. Even my sons noticed the change. “Dad, you’ve been distracted,” my eldest said one evening, his tone edged with concern. “Is something wrong with the company?” I smiled and lied, as I always did. But inside, I was unraveling. It felt as though invisible hands were pulling me toward something inevitable, some last collision I could neither resist nor prepare for. And with that pull came fear. What if she came back into my life only to be taken again? What if fate had saved its cruelest twist for last? One evening, alone in my office, I poured myself a glass of water and stared at it under the lamplight. It shimmered, pure and flawless, a reflection of all I had built — and of all I had lost. For the first time in years, I spoke aloud to the silence: “If you are out there, if you can hear me… then come. Or let me go. But do not leave me in this prison between.” The glass trembled in my hand, though no one had touched me. And in that moment, I knew: the gods had heard. The storm was coming.