A grand chandelier glimmers over a crystal-strewn ballroom. Strings hum in the background. The Rain family gala is in full swing, held at the Rain Estate, just outside Rushmoore. Wealth hangs in the air like expensive perfume—Gucci suits, Chanel smiles, and diamond lies.
The family thinks they've moved on. Six months since Michael Rain's "death." They buried an empty coffin. They cried crocodile tears.
But tonight… they'll learn ghosts can walk through the front door.
Lord Augustine raises a glass to toast the dearly departed.
"To Michael Rain," he says, solemn.
"A son. A soldier. Taken too soon."
A pause. Glasses clink.
Tears dabbed. Faked.
Then—the doors slam open.
A figure stands at the entrance.
Black tailored suit.
Scar across his cheek like a signature.
Fresh cut. Untouched by dust. But those eyes? Those eyes saw Hell and took souvenirs.
Michael Rain.
Very much alive.
He walks in slowly, uninvited, unfazed,
As if he owns the floor—and maybe he does.
and unbothered.
He tosses his coat at a
stunned butler
without
looking.
Straightens
Smirks like he never died.
his
cuffs.
"Apologies for being late," Michael
"I had trouble climbing out of my grave."
says, voice smooth
as aged
scotch.
Gasps. Screams.
A fork
clatters.
Uncle Victor chokes
on
an
olive.
Sasha stares like
Mirabel drops her gin. Unforgivable.
she saw
a
ghost.
Michael continues, sauntering to the center of the ballroom like it's his runway.
"Wow. You buried me in an empty casket. Touching. Symbolic. Expensive. Very on-brand." "And that eulogy? Chef's kiss, Father. You always did love speaking at events more than speaking to me."
Lord Augustine doesn't blink.
He just stares. A flicker of fear—only those closest see it.
Michael turns to the room. He raises a glass from someone's trembling hand.
"To family," he says, smiling like a loaded gun.
"Because no one can stab you in the back like someone who shares your blood."
Boom. Silence.
Then, he leans close to the front table. Looks directly at Darren.
"Funny thing about faking your own death... You hear everything people say at your funeral." Darren shifts in his chair.
Michael's tone drops an octave. Cold. Deadly.
"So now I'm here to say thanks. For the betrayal. For the bullets. For the grave." A beat.
"But mostly…
I'm here to find out which one of you tried to bury me—before I return the favor."
Camera pans the room.
Gasps. Whispers. Shifting chairs.
Everyone in this room has a secret.
Only Michael Rain knows the game now.
And tonight, the game has changed.
You could slice the silence in the ballroom with a butter knife—silver, of course. Everything in the Rain Estate was silver. Cold. Clean. Surgical. Like the family itself.
Michael Rain stood like a ghost with perfect posture, dressed in tailored vengeance, and stared at his father.
"Say something, Father. Aren't you glad to see your dead son walk into your overpriced gala?"
Lord Augustine Rain didn't move. Didn't blink.
The man was a fortress. Sculpted in shadow and boardrooms.
"We buried you," he said finally, voice low, gravel-filled. "We saw your blood. Your body was gone."
Michael chuckled. Cold. Hollow.
"You buried a lie and gave it a eulogy."
He turned. Faced the crowd of designer vultures. His eyes scanned the room like a laser. There they were:
Sasha Rain — the golden Always perfect. Always smiling like a knife in satin. Michael's jaw clenched when their eyes met. Mirabel — his stepmother, nursing a fresh gin and a guilty conscience. She looked like she aged ten years in one breath. Her eyes? Calculating. Afraid.
"Funny," Michael said, pacing slowly. "The will was rewritten days before I died. Sasha, suddenly you inherited the company's European assets. Mirabel, you got the villa in Milan."
He smirked.
"You even dressed in white at my funeral, Mirabel. Subtle. Classy."
She said nothing. Her lip trembled—but her hands didn't. That told him everything.
Michael stopped by the front table. Placed both hands on the back of a velvet chair.
"And yet… someone wasn't in on the plan."
His gaze flicked to the crowd. He could feel the sweat. The guilt. The panic.
Then he saw her.
Zaria Noir.
Wearing a black slit dress that hugged her like a secret.
Lips like a sin he wanted to commit twice.
Eyes that once read every truth in him—and tore him open for it.
Their gazes locked.
Memories detonated behind his eyes. The Paris rooftop. The Cairo hotel. The Istanbul betrayal.
Love. Pain. Weapons drawn. Clothes torn.
All blurred into one long dangerous kiss of a history.
She didn't smile. She didn't flinch. And neither did he.
He looked away.
Flashback: Six Months Earlier
Darkness. Dust. Blood.
Michael woke in the rubble of the mine, gasping like a newborn dragged into a world too cruel.
His ribs were broken. His head bleeding.
But he was alive.
And she was there.
A stranger—or maybe a ghost.
Wrapped in scarves. Scar across her cheek. Hands steady.
"Don't talk," she said in a hushed accent. "Just breathe."
She dragged him through hidden shafts, passages that didn't exist on any map. Old tunnels—contraband routes. War routes.
Her name was Anya Volkov—ex-Graver mafia medic turned rogue.
She patched him up in an abandoned Soviet outpost in the Okavango marshlands. Concrete. Quiet. Off the grid.
He lived there. For five months. Healed. Trained. Remembered.
"Someone wanted me dead," he whispered once, holding a rusted knife in candlelight. "And someone inside my family pulled the trigger."
Anya said nothing. But her eyes agreed.
Back to the Gala – Present
Michael turned from the crowd.
"I died in darkness. Alone. Buried under betrayal. And all I could think about was which one of you wanted me dead the most."
He took out a small velvet box from his jacket. Tossed it on the table in front of Sasha.
She flinched. So did everyone else.
She opened it.
Inside: a single cracked bullet.
Michael stepped back, voice calm.
"That one missed."
A gasp. Mirabel reached for her glass.
"Don't bother," he said, eyes like daggers. "I switched it with water. I know how you drink when you lie."
A pause.
The kind that feels like the air itself clenched its jaw.
Then came the sound of a cane — a soft, deliberate click… click… click — cutting through the silence like a heartbeat in a morgue.
Uncle Victor Rain emerged from the side of the room, half-shadow, half-legend. Tailored obsidian suit, silver hair slicked back like it hadn't dared move in decades. He looked like he stepped out of a time capsule… or an expensive funeral.
He didn't gasp. Didn't flinch. Didn't even look surprised.
Just said:
"Either you're a ghost, or you're about to make everyone here wish you were."
He walked up to Michael — every click of his cane loud as a gunshot in the marble-floored gala — and handed him a glass of Rain Family Reserve.
Michael raised an eyebrow. "Still drinking the blood of our enemies, Uncle?"
Victor smirked. "It pairs well with betrayal."
They stared at each other. A long silence. Not hatred. Not warmth. Something else.
A memory of a time when Victor taught Michael how to disarm a man with a corkscrew.
"You're leaner," Victor muttered, eyeing him like a hawk. "Tighter around the eyes. You've seen things."
Michael sipped the wine. "You could've called."
Victor stepped closer, his voice dropping.
"You were buried in an empty box. If I thought you were alive… I'd have killed everyone in this room myself to find you."
Michael's jaw twitched — half a smirk, half a snarl. He didn't know whether to hug Victor or stab him.
Then came the whisper.
A perfume. A laugh too tight. Aunt Lorna.
She emerged behind a tray of untouched desserts like a ghost in pearls.
"Michael, darling…" Her voice was butter dipped in arsenic. "You've lost weight."
Michael didn't smile.
Lorna was all red lips, exaggerated concern, and eyes like razors. The kind of woman who always knew too much, said too little, and never let go of a grudge or a glass of champagne.
"Nice to know you mourned me with cake and caviar," Michael muttered.
She tilted her head. "Oh, sweetie. We mourned. We even cried. The empty casket was your father's idea. He insisted on marble, of course."
Michael stepped closer, examining her eyes for cracks.
"Tell me something, Auntie Lorna. When I died… did you sleep better or worse?"
She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes.
Victor cut in smoothly, cane tapping once for silence. "This isn't the place, nephew. Save your questions for when you're ready for answers."
Michael nodded slowly. The room was still watching.
They didn't get it. But these two?
They weren't shocked he was alive — only that he came back here.
Michael's voice turned cold.
"No one leaves this room until I know who put a bullet in my fate."