All Chapters of The Lost Heiress’s Glorious Return: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Isabella’s POVThe lot looked smaller in daylight than my memory made it feel. Concrete teeth jutted from the earth where foundations had been; charred beams lay like blackened ribs. A chain-link fence sagged where no one had bothered to mend it. In the center a single swing hung from a rusted frame, its seat gone; the chains hissed in the breeze like something half alive. Someone had spray-painted a date across a slab: 8/12 and the year had weathered away.I stood at the edge and let the place soak into me, waiting for the dream to meet the waking world. The photograph of Marisol Abram was safe in my bag, the paper stiff from careful handling. I had little plan beyond coming here. Mia wanted to join me; I insisted on going alone. Some things require solitude. The ruins were one of them.The heat was dry and polite, nothing like the inferno of the dream. Still, the air carried phantom scents of burnt wood and stale smoke that made my chest tighten. When I stepped inside the fence time

Kiara’s POVThe city was loud that night, but all I heard was the clip of my heels on pavement. Each step steadied the fire in my chest, the burn left by Damon’s last words to me. His rejection had not faded; it had darkened, a bruise that refused to heal.Rejection was not defeat.I had threads in my hands. Tonight I would pull them tight enough to strangle Isabella with her own uncertainty.Victor’s address wasn’t far. A small, forgettable apartment building—too humble for someone who might hide dangerous truths. Damon’s angel holed up in a plain room. If she was really Marisol Abram, that cramped space was a coffin compared to what she might have inherited.I pressed the buzzer once, twice. No answer. Typical. The girl liked to wall herself up. I leaned on the railing and waited. Patience had its own cruelty.When the door opened, Isabella’s face appeared—pale but harder, her eyes clearer than the last time I’d surprised her. For a half-breath, I faltered. She did not look broken.

Isabella’s POVKiara’s perfume lingered long after she left, a cloying sweetness that felt like poison in the air. My hands still trembled, though not from fear the way they once would have. She had tried to cut me open with her words, the same way she had before sliding into my space, spitting venom about what I wasn’t, what Damon would never see in me, how fragile I had always been.But this time I hadn’t broken.I kept replaying the look on her face when I didn’t crumble. For a flicker of a second, Kiara had looked unsettled, almost… startled. She had expected me to fold, the way I did the last time she forced her way into my life, leaving me gasping and questioning my own worth. But instead of dissolving into pieces, I had stood tall. My voice hadn’t wavered when I told her to leave, when I called her obsession for what it was.It hadn’t been strength without cost. The words had burned coming out of me, scraping against all the old wounds, but once they were spoken, something stea

Isabella’s POVThe night pressed heavily against the apartment windows, a silence so thick I could hear the pulse in my ears. I sat alone, my knees drawn up against my chest, the faint light of the lamp spilling shadows across the floor. Damon had left me earlier with files, truths, and confessions I wasn’t ready to hold. My hands still shook from touching those papers, names, reports, and dates, and yet none felt as suffocating as the storm unraveling inside me.For years, my mind had been a broken mirror. Shards of memory, sharp but scattered, cutting me whenever I tried to gather them. I had lived as Isabella, the woman after loss, after fire, after silence. I had convinced myself that was enough, that survival was all I was owed. But the truth Damon placed before me had opened a door I had long boarded shut. And now—now the fragments bled together whether I wanted them to or not.It started with the smell. Acrid, bitter, unmistakable. Smoke. I tasted it in my throat, felt it claw

Damon’s POVThe unease started small.At first, I blamed nerves. After everything with Kiara, the obsession, the photos she slid across my desk. I told myself I was imagining things. But the details refused to disappear, faint cracks in ordinary life that whispered something was wrong.The first call came late at night. Isabella’s voice was low, unsteady.“Someone’s outside,” she whispered. “They didn’t knock. Didn’t try the door. They just… stood there.”My grip on the phone tightened. “Did you see their face?”“No.” A shaky breath. “By the time I looked again, they were gone.”I told her it was probably nothing. A passerby. A trick of shadows. But when the call ended, I didn’t believe my own words.The second time, I saw it myself. Driving past Mia’s street was more instinct than reason. I kept far enough back so Isabella wouldn’t notice. A man stood across from her building. Not smoking. Not on his phone. Not waiting for a ride. Just… watching her window. And when my headlights hit