All Chapters of The Lost Heiress’s Glorious Return: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Isabella’s POVThe feeling of being watched was no longer a flicker at the edge of my nerves. It lived in the pauses between breaths, a steady weight that crawled beneath my skin. Eyes where there shouldn’t be any—on my back when I reached for a mug, in the glass when I passed a window, in the silence between one heartbeat and the next.Sleep offered no refuge. When I did drift off, dreams struck like lightning: flames racing up wallpaper, heat pressing into my chest, a voice calling my name through smoke. I woke raw-throated, clutching the sheets as if the past had clawed its way back to drag me under.That morning, the city stretched gray and thin, painted in watercolors someone had forgotten to finish. I moved through Mia’s apartment like a ghost, each step careful, as though one wrong sound might crack the walls. The kettle hummed, stubbornly ordinary, its rhythm almost rebellious against the unease pressing in.Mia was home, which was a mercy. She made tea her way—too much milk,

Isabella’s POVFor three nights the photograph sat on the coffee table like an accusation. By day it seemed harmless—an old snapshot with blurred edges and a locket catching light. By night it burned in my hand, warm and dangerous at once. I told myself not to read into it, not to tug at the frayed threads memory refused to reveal. But the photograph had its own gravity. It whispered questions I could feel in my bones.Morning light slanted across Mia’s apartment, reluctant to cut through the city’s haze. I had been staying with her ever since the divorce, when the house I once shared with Damon stopped feeling like mine. What began as a temporary refuge had turned into something steadier—a rhythm built on Mia’s quiet kindness, the smell of cinnamon tea and detergent lingering in every corner. But the officers’ vague warnings and that anonymous call had shifted everything again, turning her apartment from shelter into something closer to a safehouse. Her generosity made me ache wit

Isabella’s POVThe knock at the door was almost polite, almost casual, yet it carried a weight that made my pulse spike. Mid-step, I froze, the photograph still warm in my hand, the name Marisol Abram etched into my mind like fire.I didn’t need to peek through the peephole. The energy, the quiet menace, the controlled confidence were unmistakable. Kiara.I opened the door cautiously. Her smile was light, teasing, but her eyes glinted with something that made my stomach tighten.“What do you want, Kiara?” My voice was steady, but beneath it trembled a thread of unease. “What are you doing here?”Kiara stepped forward, deliberate, letting the doorframe swallow her as if she belonged. Every subtle shift in her posture, every measured movement, radiated control.“I was passing by,” she said lightly, almost casually, “thought I’d check in… make sure you’re settling in.”Her words were honeyed poison. I narrowed my eyes, sensing the undercurrent.“You never know what you might learn when s

Isabella’s POVThe dream arrived like heat: immediate, all-consuming, the room around me shrinking into flame.I was small and enormous at once, skin prickling, lungs burning, the ceiling sagging like water about to burst. Sounds fractured: the brittle crack of drywall, the pop of gasping wood, voices rising and falling in waves. Somewhere inside that chaos, a single thread of sound cut through, Sharp with panic. My name or some version of it slipped through the smoke like a rope I couldn’t grasp.Hands found me. Not gentle but urgent, unyielding. Fingers clawed at the fabric of my waist, dragging me backward through a corridor of heat. The air tasted of iron. Soot stung my tongue. Ash fell like confetti, as if the fire itself applauded my destruction.Arms wrapped around me, decisive and fast. It was a rescue that bruised: skin scraping over splintered wood, ribs pressed hard. I clung anyway because it meant I was still breathing.At the edge of vision, a hand locked around mine. Knu

Kiara’s POVDamon’s rejection still burned in my chest like acid. He had said it plainly and left, as if a single sentence could close whatever we had shared. His eyes were already somewhere else—on her. Isabella.I should have screamed. I should have clawed until his skin opened. Instead, I smiled. Control is knowing how to hide the wound until you can choose the perfect moment to strike back.Hours later I sat in the dim light of my apartment, city neon bleeding through the blinds. Whiskey tasted at the back of my throat, the glass abandoned half full on the counter. I didn’t drink to forget. I drank to sharpen the edges, to remind myself there was a fire inside me.He thought he could push me away. He thought guilt and protectiveness would be enough to bury what we had. He underestimated me. He always did.Love and control are the same thing, and I had no intention of surrendering either. I flipped open the black folder hidden in the false bottom of my drawer. Photographs, notes, o