She’s not a ghost anymore, Mira.

Mira POV

I'd known something was wrong the second Adrian's champagne glass hit the floor, before I even fully processed the woman standing on that stage, before my brain caught up with what my body already understood in some deep, animal way. His whole frame had gone rigid beside me, his face draining of color so fast I thought for one terrifying second he was about to collapse right there in front of two hundred witnesses, and something about the way he whispered her name under his breath, so quiet I almost missed it, had sent ice straight down my spine.

She's dead. I buried her.

I'd heard those exact words from him before, more times than I could count over five years, usually late at night when he thought I was already asleep, murmured into the dark like a confession he couldn't stop making even after the person he was confessing to could no longer hear it. I'd learned to live with the ghost of Aysha Hayes haunting my engagement, my house, even my wedding day, telling myself it was simply grief, simply guilt, nothing that would ever have a face or a voice or the power to walk back into our lives.

I had never once considered that the ghost might actually be real, standing in front of me in a gown that cost more than most people's houses, smiling at a room full of people who had no idea they were looking at a dead woman.

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the phone steady against my ear.

I'd slipped out through the side exit before Adrian even noticed I was gone, weaving through a hallway lined with expensive art until I found a stairwell empty enough to actually think in, my heels echoing sharply off the concrete with every step. The ballroom noise faded behind the heavy door, replaced by nothing but my own ragged breathing and the dial tone ringing in my ear, once, twice, three times before he finally picked up.

"It's late, Mira. This better be important."

"Vincent." My voice cracked on his name, and I hated myself for it, hated how quickly five years of careful composure had come apart the second I saw that woman's face lit up on stage. "Tell me it isn't true. Tell me what I just saw wasn't what I think it was."

A long pause stretched out on the other end of the line, long enough that I knew, even before he spoke, exactly what his answer was going to be.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't." My grip tightened around the phone. "Don't you dare do that with me, not tonight. I just watched Seraphine Vale walk out on a stage in front of two hundred people, and Vincent, she has Aysha's face. Not similar. Not close. Her face."

Another pause, shorter this time, and when he finally spoke again his voice had lost the careful, sleepy irritation from a moment ago, replaced by something colder and far more alert.

"That's not possible."

"I was standing thirty feet from her. I know exactly what I saw."

"Mira." His tone shifted into something almost gentle. "I handled that job myself. I hired the driver. I confirmed the wreck. I stood outside that hospital and watched them wheel a body out under a sheet."

"Then explain to me how she's standing on a stage tonight worth twelve billion dollars."

"I can't."

"You told me she was dead." My voice rose sharply enough that it echoed off the stairwell walls, and I forced myself to lower it, glancing up toward the door in case anyone had followed me out. "Five years ago, you looked me in the eye and told me it was handled, that there was nothing left to worry about, that I could move forward with Adrian and never once have to think about her again."

"And as far as I knew, that was the truth."

I closed my eyes, pressing my free hand flat against the cold concrete wall to steady myself. Five years I'd built on top of that promise. Five years of comforting a grieving husband, of slowly, patiently making myself indispensable in a house still haunted by a dead woman, of watching Adrian's guilt curdle into something I could shape and use, until finally, finally, he proposed, and I thought I'd won everything I ever wanted.

Now the ground I'd been standing on for half a decade had just cracked wide open beneath my feet.

"I need everything you can find," I said, opening my eyes again, my voice hardening back into something closer to steady. "Everything. Who pulled her out of that wreck. Who paid for whatever hospital actually treated her. Who built her a new identity solid enough to survive this much scrutiny for this long. Someone helped her disappear, Vincent, and I need to know exactly who."

"That's not going to be easy. Whoever set this up knew what they were doing. The paper trail is practically nonexistent."

"I don't care how hard it is. You owe me this." My jaw tightened. "If this comes back on me, if anyone ever finds out what really happened on that highway, you go down with me. We both know that."

Silence stretched between us again, heavier this time.

"I'll make some calls," he said finally.

"Do it tonight."

"Mira." His voice dropped lower, something almost like fear threading through it now, and it was strange, satisfying in a small, ugly way, to hear that particular emotion in a man who'd never once let me see it before. "If she's alive, and if she's built something this big, this untouchable, in five years, you need to understand what that means. It means she's not coming back to reclaim a life you took from her. She's coming back to take yours."

I stared at the stairwell wall, my own reflection faint and warped in the small mirrored panel beside the fire extinguisher, a woman in a beautiful dress with her whole carefully built future suddenly balanced on a knife's edge.

"Let her try," I said, though my voice wavered slightly on the last word, betraying more fear than I wanted him to hear. "I didn't spend five years becoming Adrian Hayes's wife just to lose everything to a ghost in a designer gown."

"She's not a ghost anymore, Mira. That's exactly the problem."

I hung up without answering, my thumb hovering over the screen for a long moment before I finally slid the phone back into my clutch and smoothed the front of my dress with both hands, forcing my breathing back into something even, something composed enough to walk back into that ballroom and stand beside Adrian without him noticing the fear still crawling underneath my skin.

I made it exactly three steps toward the stairwell door before it swung open from the other side, and I froze, my whole body going rigid, as Diego Steel stepped through it, his eyes fixed directly on me with an expression that made my stomach drop straight through the floor.

"Mira," he said quietly. "We need to talk."