The sound of Caleb's voice grated against the inside of my skull, sharp and volatile, and for a second I couldn't decide if I wanted to shut him up or walk away before I did something reckless. He kept pacing inside the small holding room, breath coming out in angry bursts, eyes darting anywhere but mine.
I wasn't even looking at him anymore.
My phone kept vibrating inside my palm. Security alerts. Internal notifications. Something digging at the edge of my awareness. A pull. A warning. Like the building itself was trying to tell me something was wrong.
Something upstairs.
Something with her.
"Are you even listening to me?" Caleb snapped, stepping closer, the kind of step meant to provoke.
I leveled my gaze at him without moving. "You pushed one of my employees. You forced your way into a corporate building. You barged in demanding access to someone who clearly doesn't want to see you. I've listened enough."
He went rigid. "She's my business, not yours."
"No," I said quietly. "She stopped being your business the moment you threw her away."
That hit him. I saw it. The flicker in his eyes. The twitch in his jaw. But he covered it quickly, pacing again, muttering under his breath, something about misunderstandings and how she owed him a conversation.
I didn't care.
Not about him.
Not about his excuses.
Not about this entire scene.
Everything inside me was tightening, twisting, pulling toward a single direction. Upward. To the twentieth floor. To Aria.
Another vibration.
Another alert.
I glanced down.
One word in the notification froze the breath in my lungs.
Unidentified visitor. Cleared access.
Name provided: Liana Cross.
My fingers locked around the phone.
The air in the room thinned.
And for a moment I forgot how to breathe.
No.
Impossible.
My heart slammed so hard it hurt. I felt the floor shift beneath my feet even though I knew it hadn't moved. My vision tunneled around the words. My body went cold. Then hot. Then numb.
Liana Cross.
Alive.
Here.
I didn't hear Caleb speaking anymore. His voice dissolved into background noise, like static crackling far away. The walls of the room felt too tight. The air too thin. Everything inside me tilted, unsteady, as if someone had grabbed my life by the edges and snapped it in half.
"This can't—" I whispered, but the words didn't finish. They drowned in the pounding in my chest.
A sharp knock hit the door. One of my guards stepped inside, face tense. "Sir. That woman… she's on your floor."
My pulse jolted.
I moved instantly.
The guard stepped aside. Caleb sputtered behind me, "Where the hell are you going? I'm not finished—"
I didn't even glance at him.
I didn't owe him a glance.
I shoved the door open and strode into the hallway, adrenaline crashing through me so fast I felt it in my teeth. My legs moved harder, faster, my breath coming in sharp pulls. The elevator at the end of the corridor felt too far away. Every second it took to get there scraped along my nerves like claws.
My guard hurried behind me. "Sir, she went up without waiting for clearance. The badge she used—"
"I know the badge," I said, voice rough.
"But sir, how—"
"She's not supposed to exist," I snapped.
My hand hovered over the elevator call button, shaking. Damn it. I curled it into a fist until the tremor stopped. I didn't want my men to see that. I didn't want anyone to see what that name did to me.
The doors slid open. I stepped inside, chest tight, fingers flexing uselessly at my sides.
The elevator began to rise.
I had imagined this moment a thousand times.
What I would say.
What she would look like.
If she would remember me.
If she would still be alive when I found her again.
But none of my imagining felt like this.
This vertigo.
This disbelief.
This tearing sensation in my ribs like my heart was caught on something sharp.
The elevator hummed, moving too slow, too slow, too damn slow. My jaw clenched. My hands curled. My breath came in short, jagged bursts I tried to hide.
Aria was upstairs.
Alone.
Vulnerable.
Thinking Caleb was the threat.
She had no idea a ghost was walking toward her instead.
I closed my eyes for one fractured second and felt my pulse spike so violently I pressed a hand to the wall.
Aria.
God.
Aria.
The doors opened.
I stepped out.
I didn't walk.
I didn't think.
I moved, driven by something deeper, older, something that sat inside my bones long before I understood what it meant to lose someone.
The hallway stretched ahead, empty except for the echo of my steps and the faint hum of the building systems. I heard something. A soft muffled sound. A voice—
A woman's voice.
Not Aria's.
Familiar.
Unfamiliar.
Wrong.
I turned the corner.
And stopped so suddenly my breath slammed into my chest.
She was standing outside my office.
Facing the door.
My door.
Aria on the other side.
The woman turned her head slightly, sensing me.
My heart lurched.
Painfully.
Confused.
Horrified.
Liana.
Alive.
Breathing.
Real.
But not the way I remembered her.
Not soft.
Not warm.
Not the woman I lost.
There was something colder around her now. Something sharp in her eyes that didn't belong there. Something calculating.
She smiled slowly.
"Hello, Damon." she said.
My stomach dropped.
And then her gaze flicked to the office door behind her.
"Is she inside?" she asked softly.
Before I could answer, before I could breathe, before I could piece together the nightmare forming around me—
A sound drifted from inside my office.
A tiny, sharp inhale.
Aria.
She was right on the other side of the door.
And Liana already knew it.