Lucas stood in his study at three in the morning, staring at the lipstick message on his desk, and tried to convince himself he wasn't losing his mind. The word "SOON" glowed under his desk lamp like a threat written in blood. Or a promise written in hope.
He couldn't decide which was worse.
The security team had found nothing. No signs of forced entry, no camera footage, no evidence that anyone had been in the house except for the guard's routine rounds. Yet Lucas knew—knew with the certainty of a man who'd lived in this house for five years—that someone had been here. Someone who moved like smoke and left traces that only he could recognize.
Someone who wore Aria's perfume.
Lucas climbed the stairs to his bedroom, his footsteps echoing in the empty mansion. The hallway felt longer than usual, shadows stretching like accusing fingers across the Persian runner. Family portraits watched him pass—ancestors who'd built fortunes and buried secrets, men who'd done whatever necessary to protect the Stone legacy.
Men like his father.
The thought hit him like a punch to the gut. Richard had been asking too many questions about Victoria Crow, making too many casual inquiries about her background. And tonight, when Lucas had called him about the break-in, Richard's first question hadn't been about security or stolen items. It had been about what the intruder might have been looking for.
Like he already knew.
Lucas paused outside his bedroom door, his hand on the brass handle. Through the wood, he could smell it again—that impossible scent that made his chest tight and his hands shake. Flowers and vanilla and something that was purely, unmistakably Aria.
He pushed open the door and stepped into darkness.
The smell hit him like a wave, so strong and familiar that for a moment he forgot how to breathe. Three years. Three years since he'd smelled that perfume, three years since he'd woken up to find Aria getting ready for work, humming under her breath as she sprayed her wrists with the bottle she kept on her vanity.
The bottle that had been destroyed in the car crash along with everything else.
Lucas fumbled for the light switch, his heart hammering against his ribs. The bedroom materialized around him—king-sized bed with navy sheets, leather armchair by the window, the walk-in closet where half the space still belonged to a dead woman because he couldn't bring himself to clear it out.
Everything looked normal. Everything except the scent that filled the air like a ghost made manifest.
"This is insane," Lucas muttered, running his hands through his hair. "Dead people don't wear perfume. Dead people don't break into houses."
But even as he said it, he was moving through the room, checking corners and shadows, looking for signs of an intruder who might or might not exist. The window locks were secure. The closet was empty except for clothes and memories. The bathroom showed no signs of disturbance.
But when Lucas opened his dresser drawer—the one where he kept his watch collection and cufflinks—he found something that made his blood freeze.
A single white rose, fresh as if it had been picked that morning, lying across his father's watch.
Lucas stared at the flower like it might explode. White roses had been Aria's favorite. She'd carried them in her wedding bouquet, insisted on them for every anniversary dinner, filled the house with them whenever she wanted to apologize for an argument. He'd banned them from the mansion after her death because the sight of them made him physically ill.
Now here was one, impossible and perfect, resting in his most private space like a calling card.
"Okay," Lucas said aloud, his voice steady despite the terror clawing at his throat. "Okay, let's think about this logically."
Someone had been in his house. Someone who knew about Aria's perfume, her favorite flowers, the little details that only a wife would know. Someone who could move through a secured mansion without triggering alarms or leaving traces.
Someone who wanted him to know they'd been here.
Lucas pulled out his phone and scrolled to a number he hadn't called in months. Dr. Patricia Morgan, the grief counselor his father had insisted he see after Aria's death. A woman who specialized in trauma and guilt and the kind of breakdown that happened when reality started feeling negotiable.
His finger hovered over the call button. One touch and he could schedule an emergency session, start taking medication, begin the process of admitting that stress and guilt and three years of repressed grief had finally snapped his sanity like a rubber band.
Or he could do something else. Something that might be even crazier.
Lucas walked to his bedside table and opened the drawer where he kept the lipstick he'd found on the hotel terrace. Cherry Lush, the shade that had haunted his dreams for days. He pulled it out and compared it to the message on his desk. Perfect match.
"If you're real," he said to the empty room, his voice barely above a whisper, "if you're somehow, impossibly real, then give me a sign. Something I can't explain away or rationalize or blame on a breakdown."
The house was silent except for the hum of the air conditioning and the distant sound of traffic on Fifth Avenue. Lucas waited, counting his heartbeats, listening for footsteps or voices or anything that might confirm he wasn't talking to himself.
Nothing.
He was about to close the drawer when his phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.
You always sleep with the window cracked. Old habit.
Lucas spun toward the window. The latch was slightly open—maybe an inch, just enough to let in the October night air. Just like he'd done every night of their marriage because Aria complained about feeling trapped in sealed rooms.
Just like he'd been doing without thinking about it for three years.
His phone buzzed again.
Check your email.
Lucas's hands shook as he opened his email app. A new message waited from an encrypted account, no subject line, just a single attachment. He downloaded it with trembling fingers and found himself staring at a photograph that made the world tilt sideways.
It was him, taken through his bedroom window maybe ten minutes ago. Standing by his dresser, holding the white rose, his face a mask of confusion and fear. In the corner of the photo, barely visible in the window's reflection, was a figure in black.
A woman's silhouette with emerald eyes that the camera flash had caught like green fire.
"Jesus Christ," Lucas breathed, dropping the phone like it was burning his fingers.
He ran to the window and yanked it fully open, leaning out to scan the street below. Empty sidewalks, parked cars, shadows that could hide anything or nothing. Whoever had been out there was gone now, vanished into the New York night like smoke.
But they'd been real. The photo proved it. Someone had been watching him, documenting his confusion, playing with him like a cat with a wounded mouse.
Someone who knew things only Aria could know.
Lucas pulled his head back inside and reached for his phone to call the police. Then he stopped, his finger frozen above the emergency number. What would he tell them? That his dead wife was stalking him? That someone who looked like her was playing psychological games with his grief?
They'd have him committed. Or sedated. Or both.
Instead, Lucas found himself dialing a different number. Victoria Crow's business line, the one she'd given him during their meeting. It rang three times before going to voicemail, her voice smooth and professional in the darkness.
"This is Victoria Crow. Please leave a message."
"It's Lucas Stone," he said after the beep, his voice rough with emotion he couldn't control. "I need to see you. Tonight. There's something... something impossible happening, and I think you might be the only person who could understand."
He hung up and sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the white rose in his hands. The petals were soft and perfect, still damp with dew that shouldn't exist on a flower picked in the middle of the night. Real as everything else in his dissolving world.
Real as the woman who might or might not be stalking him.
Real as the hope that was eating him alive from the inside.
"Aria," he whispered to the empty room, his voice breaking on her name. "If that's really you, if you're somehow alive, then stop playing games. Stop hiding. Just... come home."
The house was silent. But somewhere in that silence, Lucas could swear he heard the echo of familiar laughter, soft as a memory and twice as devastating.
Three blocks away, Victoria sat in a rented car, watching Lucas's bedroom window through a telephoto lens. She'd seen him find the rose, watched him get her text messages, captured the exact moment when hope and terror warred across his face.
Phase one was complete. Lucas was starting to believe in ghosts.
Now came the hard part: making sure those ghosts led him exactly where she wanted him to go.
Victoria's phone buzzed with his voicemail. She listened to his broken voice pleading with shadows, asking for understanding from a woman he thought might be the answer to three years of guilt and grief.
"Soon, my love," she whispered, starting the car engine. "Very soon."
But first, she had some other ghosts to deal with. Richard Stone thought he'd buried all his secrets along with Aria's body. Time to dig them up and see how they looked in the daylight.
Victoria drove away into the night, leaving Lucas alone with his roses and his questions and the growing certainty that his carefully ordered world was about to explode.
End of Chapter 6