CHAPTER THREE: GHOSTS NEVER KNOCK

The dream came before dawn.

Ember stood barefoot on a blood-soaked rug in her childhood home only it wasn’t right. The walls were darker. The windows were boarded. Her mother’s piano was playing by itself, keys tapping out a lullaby in minor chords.

And then she saw him.

Rafael Vairo.

He sat on her father’s armchair like he owned the bones of the house. He looked exactly the same as she remembered him at twelve years old, tall, elegant, ageless. But his eyes… his eyes were too calm. He didn’t blink in dreams either.

“Do you remember the story I told you, Ember?” he asked.

She couldn’t speak. Her throat was full of soot.

“The one about the girl and the maze,” he continued. “She ran so far, so fast… she didn’t realize she built it herself.”

She turned to run. But the walls moved. The hallway stretched. And her father screamed from behind the bedroom door.

She clawed at it, fingers bleeding.

Then Rafael whispered, “Don’t wake up. It’s better here, where lies are softer.”

She screamed

Ember jolted awake in a dark room, sweat clinging to her skin, mouth dry. Lucien stood near the window, phone pressed to his ear.

“Dead,” he muttered. “Burned the whole safehouse.”

A pause.

“Find out who tipped him. We’ve got a leak.”

He hung up.

Ember sat up slowly. “Where?”

Lucien didn’t look at her. “One of my informants in the North District. Gone. Tortured and torched.”

“Rafael?”

Lucien nodded. “And he left another message. One line carved into the wall.”

Ember swallowed. “What did it say?”

Lucien turned to her, eyes unreadable.

“You’re still mine, Ember.”

The silence between them shattered like glass.

Lucien crossed the room in three strides. “Tell me the truth now. All of it. What was your connection to Rafael?”

She shook her head. “I don’t ”

“Don’t lie.” His voice dropped to a deadly murmur. “I saw the way you flinched when he said sister.”

Ember’s eyes flared. “He used to visit. When I was little. My father said he was a business partner. That’s all I knew.”

Lucien’s voice went sharp. “And he never hurt you?”

“No,” she said. Then softer: “But he made me afraid of mirrors.”

Lucien blinked. “Why?”

“He said mirrors were dangerous,” she whispered. “He said they show you what you’ll become… and that I’d become just like him.”

Lucien went still. As if Rafael’s poison had touched more than one life.

He finally said, “I need to know everything. Anyone who’s ever talked to him, fed him information, anyone you saw around your father.”

“There was a woman,” Ember said. “Red hair. She was always around when Rafael came. I was eight. She smelled like cigarettes and roses.”

Lucien tensed. “Roses?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because that’s the scent my brother used to coat his bullets in.”

Later that night.

Lucien paced in his underground armory steel walls, crates of ammunition, tactical screens displaying street feeds. Ember stood at the door, watching him load a weapon.

He tossed her a holster. “We’ve got a meeting. One of mine claims he knows the red-haired woman.”

“Where?”

“Blackthrone Hotel. High-level poker game. No weapons allowed.”

Ember raised a brow. “And we’re playing?”

“No,” he said. “We’re crashing.”

Blackthrone Hotel.

Glittering marble, velvet chandeliers, the kind of place soaked in blood behind the mirrors. Lucien walked in first, dressed sharp and lethal. Ember followed with a tight black dress, heels sharp enough to slit throats.

Inside, a dozen players sat around green felt and secrets. A woman in a crimson gown dealt cards. Her hair: fire-red. Eyes: black as coal.

Lucien leaned down beside her.

“Do you know me?”

The woman smiled. “I know your brother.”

Ember’s skin went cold.

Lucien’s smile was pure threat. “Then you know what’s coming next.”

The woman didn’t flinch. She turned over a card.

A Joker. The wild kind.

“I have a message for the girl,” she said, eyes flicking to Ember. “He said… ‘Do you remember the piano song?’”

Ember froze.

The poker table exploded.

Gunfire.

Lucien shoved Ember behind him, pulled a hidden blade from his sleeve. The red-haired woman stood, flipped the table, and fired two shots, one hit a guard, the other ricocheted off a mirror.

“Down!” Lucien barked.

Ember rolled, pulled a knife from her ankle. Slashed a gunman’s thigh. Blood sprayed. Lucien shot another through the neck.

Screams echoed. Bodies dropped.

And then the red-haired woman ran through the back, heels clicking like war drums.

Lucien cursed and took off after her.

Ember hesitated.

Then grabbed a photo off the floor fallen from the woman’s clutch.

It was of Ember as a child. At a piano.

Rafael stood behind her, smiling.

Back alley behind the Blackthrone Hotel.

Lucien chased the red-haired woman through narrow corridors of steam and shadow. She moved like someone who’d spent a lifetime surviving the kind of grace born from brutality. He turned the corner

Bam!

A flash.

His shoulder jerked back from the shot.

She was waiting.

“Next one’s your heart,” she called. Her voice was smooth. Unafraid. “He told me not to kill you. Yet.”

Lucien growled. Blood dripped from his arm. “Tell Rafael he’s slipping if he thinks hired ghosts can take me.”

She smiled from the shadows. “He doesn’t want you dead, Lucien. He wants you broken.”

She disappeared through a side door metal, old, already swinging shut.

Lucien aimed, fired. The bullet took the hinge clean off

But she was gone.

He swore and turned back toward the hotel.

Inside, Ember stood over the bodies.

The floor was painted in crimson.

The hotel manager was yelling something. Lucien didn’t care. He grabbed Ember’s arm and dragged her into the staff elevator.

“Your shoulder,” she said. “You’re hit.”

“I’ve been hit worse,” he growled.

They moved in silence until they reached the underground garage. There, Ember shoved the photo she found into his chest.

“Explain this.”

Lucien stared at the photo. Ember. The piano.

Rafael’s hand on her shoulder.

“That’s not just an obsession,” she said. “That’s possession. He planned this. Every part of it.”

Lucien’s jaw clenched. “He thinks he owns you.”

“No,” she snapped. “He knows something. About my father. About me. About why he kept visiting.”

Lucien tucked the photo away. “We need to leave. Now. Someone at that table was wired.”

“What do you mean?”

“I found a transmitter taped under the chair beside you. Rafael’s listening to every move we make.”

Ember froze. “That means someone in your crew sold us out.”

Lucien nodded grimly. “And I think I know who.”

Two hours later. Vairo Estate. Lucien’s war room.

Three of his men stood in silence. One woman, blonde, sharp-eyed, with a scar over her lip leaned against the wall with a cigarette.

Lucien threw the photo on the table.

“This showed up tonight. With my brother’s fingerprints on it.”

The room tensed.

“Someone tipped him off,” Lucien said. “And it wasn’t one of them.”

He pointed at Ember. “It was one of you.”

Silence.

Then the blonde spoke. “What proof do you have?”

Lucien’s eyes burned into her. “You were stationed at the north perimeter the night the safehouse burned.”

“Coincidence,” she replied, too calmly.

Lucien stepped forward.

“Do you know what happens to traitors, Dani?”

Her jaw flexed. “You always said loyalty was a choice.”

Lucien pulled his gun.

Ember grabbed his wrist.

“Wait.”

He glared at her. “Why?”

“Because she’s not the only one lying,” Ember said coldly. She looked straight at Dani. “Tell me what Rafael promised you.”

Dani exhaled. “Freedom.”

“From what?” Lucien asked.

“From you,” she whispered.

Then everything moved fast.

Dani went for her weapon. Lucien shot first through the leg.

She dropped, screaming.

He knelt beside her.

“No one walks free from me,” he said softly.

Then he looked up at Ember. “We keep her alive. We bleed her slow. She’ll tell us everything about Rafael's plans.”

Ember nodded but inside, her stomach twisted.

Not because of Dani.

But because of how calm Lucien was while destroying someone who used to call him family.

Later, Ember stood alone on the balcony.

Rain hissed off the railings. The photo lay in her hands again.

In it, Rafael wasn’t holding her like a protector.

He was anchoring her. Like she belonged to him.

Lucien joined her silently.

“We’re spiraling,” she said.

Lucien lit a cigarette. “No. We’re circling the drain.”

She looked at him. “How does this end?”

Lucien stared into the dark. “With blood. Or fire. Or both.”

Ember’s voice was quiet. “And if he takes me?”

Lucien met her eyes. “Then I burn down every city he touches.”

A pause. A breath.

Then she asked the question that terrified her more than all the rest.

“What if… I don’t want to run when he comes?”

Lucien didn’t blink. “Then I shoot you myself.”