MIDNIGHT CALL.

   My phone lit up just after midnight, Unknown number but I already knew who it was.

I answered anyway.

“You’re becoming interesting,” Adrian’s voice said, low and unhurried, like he’d been waiting for the exact second I’d pick up.

I stared at the dark ceiling. “Is that your version of a greeting?”

“It’s my version of a compliment. You turned away Hale Pharmaceuticals in front of an entire hospital wing, humiliated Richard without raising your voice,” a quiet pause, “and yet you’re still sitting in that house pretending the oil on your floor was an accident.”

My fingers tightened around the phone. “You think this is funny?”

“I think you’re still too careful.” His voice dropped, rougher now. “In the first life, careful got you killed. Are you planning to repeat that, or are you going to use the fact that someone just declared war inside your own home?”

“I don’t need you to tell me what I already know.”

“No,” he agreed, “you need me to tell you what you don’t.”

Silence stretched between us. I could hear him breathing, slow, deliberate.

“You sound tired,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“Liar.” A soft sound, almost a laugh. “Your voice does that thing when you’re lying, it gets quieter, like you’re trying not to wake someone up.”

“Adrian.”

“Mm?”

“Why are you really calling?”

“Because I couldn’t sleep.” His tone shifted, lower, warmer, the mockery thinning into something more dangerous. “Because I keep thinking about the way you looked at me in that glasshouse, like you wanted to hit me, or something worse. I still haven’t decided which.”

My breath caught. I hated that he heard it.

“You’re insufferable.”

“And you’re not as cold as you pretend to be.” He said it like a fact. “I can hear it in your silence. That little pause you just took, that’s the sound of someone who knows exactly what kind of man she’s talking to at midnight.”

“You’re not doing anything to me.”

“No?” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Then why are you still on the phone? It’s past midnight, you should be asleep. Instead you’re lying in the dark, listening to a dead man’s voice, wondering how much of what I say is a game… and how much of it is true.”

Heat flooded my face. I pressed the phone harder against my ear.

“You’re disgusting.”

“You didn’t deny it.”

“I don’t need to deny it. You’re not worth the effort.”

“Mm. That’s what you said in the first life too.” A beat. “Right before you married the man who poisoned you.”

The words landed like ice water.

“Don’t,” I said, my voice going flat. “Don’t bring him into this.”

“Why not? He’s already in your head. He’s in mine.” Adrian’s tone sharpened with open mockery. “Richard Hale. The devoted husband. The perfect CEO. The man who held your hand while the poison worked and then fucked your best friend two rooms away while you died.” A soft, humorless laugh. “Tell me, Lisa, does he still look at you like you’re something he already owns? Or has he started noticing that the soft little heiress is gone?”

I didn’t answer.

Because the image of Richard’s face at the hospital, the flicker of something close to disgust when he thought of me, was still too fresh. And underneath it, uninvited, came older memories. Richard’s voice in the early years, low and gentle, telling me I was the only thing that made the empire feel worth building. The way his hand used to settle at the small of my back in crowded rooms, steady, protective. The quiet way he once said my name when no one else was listening.

Those memories felt like betrayal now.

“He’s weak,” Adrian continued, almost lazily. “He always was. He needed your name, your company, your father’s research. Without you, he was just another ambitious bastard with a powerful father. And now? Now he’s starting to realize the script has changed… and he doesn’t know who rewrote it.”

“You sound jealous.”

“I sound accurate.” His voice dropped again. “Richard wants control. I want justice. There’s a difference. One of us is still pretending this is a business arrangement. The other one already died for it.”

The line went quiet for a moment.

Then, softer: “You’re thinking about him right now, aren’t you?”

“I’m thinking about hanging up.”

“No, you’re not.” A pause. “You’re thinking about the fact that the man who killed you once is already losing sleep over a few text messages and a closed hospital door. And part of you, the part that still remembers dying, likes it.”

My pulse was hammering.

“You’re wrong.”

“Am I?” His voice was almost gentle now. “Or are you just afraid that if you admit it, you’ll have to admit something else too?”

“What?”

“That you don’t only want revenge.” A beat. “You want someone who understands what it cost.”

The words sat between us like a blade laid carefully on the table.

I closed my eyes. Adrian’s voice stayed in my ear even after he stopped speaking, dark and mocking and far too close. At the same time Richard’s older tenderness rose uninvited, the memory of his hand around mine in hospital corridors, the soft promises he never meant. Two different men. Two different kinds of danger. One had already destroyed me. The other was offering to help me destroy everything in return, and I couldn’t tell which pull was stronger.

I was tired. So tired of carrying both of them in my head at the same time.

“Goodnight, Lisa,” he murmured. “Dream about whatever you want. Just don’t pretend it’s only about the war.”

The line went dead.

I stared at the phone for a long time, the screen dark again, the silence of the room suddenly too loud. My bandaged hand throbbed. My chest felt tight. Every word he had said replayed itself with uncomfortable clarity, looping with the softer memories I didn’t want.

Richard’s voice from another life, gentle, lying.

Adrian’s voice from this one, sharp, honest, dangerous.

I set the phone down and pressed the heel of my uninjured hand against my eyes.

Seventeen years old in body.

A lifetime older in memory.

And somewhere between the two, I was no longer sure which version of myself was answering these calls, or which man I was more afraid of wanting.

I got up, crossed the room, and stood by the window. The estate grounds were quiet under the moonlight. Somewhere in this house, my mother was recovering. Somewhere in this city, Richard was probably still awake, turning the anonymous messages over in his mind. And somewhere else entirely, Adrian Croft was smiling in the dark, already planning the next move, his words still sitting under my skin like a brand.

I touched the bandage on my palm.

The cut still stung.

So did the truth.

Someone had spilled oil outside my door.

Someone had wanted an accident.

Someone had expected Hale doctors to take over.

And now a man who had died in a prison cell was calling me at midnight, mocking the husband who had once watched me die, and asking questions I didn’t want to answer while older, softer memories tried to soften the edges of my anger.

I turned away from the window.

This time, I wasn’t going to wait for the next warning.

I was going to make one of my own.

The next morning I requested every remaining file connected to my father’s final months, including the overseas facility records Adrian had only partially shown me. I also requested a full internal review of household staff movements from the previous forty-eight hours, regardless of what the cameras had failed to show.

Maria watched me from the doorway of the study, arms folded, expression unreadable.

“You’re not going to let it rest,” she said.

“No.”

She studied me for a long moment, then simply nodded and left.

I sat down at the desk, opened the first file, and began reading. Outside, the day continued as if nothing had changed. Inside, Adrian’s voice still echoed, Richard’s old tenderness still lingered, and the war had already started.