SOPHIE POV
Sophie's alarm went off at five in the morning and she was already awake.
She hadn't slept much. Her brain had been running in circles all night about nothing important. The kind of thoughts that kept you up when you were alone. She'd given up trying to rest at 4:47 and gotten out of bed.
The hospital shift would be good. Work always helped. When Sophie was working she didn't have to think about the five years since Marcus Sinclair had destroyed her. She didn't have to remember what hope felt like. She didn't have to feel anything at all.
She'd gotten good at that. Numbness was a skill like any other. You just had to practice it enough.
Sophie showered and dressed in her scrubs. The fabric was soft and familiar. The pockets held her phone and her pen and the small notebook where she wrote patient notes. Everything had a place. Everything was organized and controlled. That was how Sophie survived now. Control.
The morning shift was busy. Her supervisor handed her a stack of papers with patient names and room numbers. Sophie scanned through the list with the same professional distance she brought to every single day.
Room 412. Margaret Sinclair. Cancer. Needs constant monitoring.
Sophie had cared for Margaret before. The woman was kind in the way people become kind when they know they're dying. There was something gentle about her. Something sad that went deeper than sickness.
Sophie had always felt a little sorry for Margaret. Having to lie in a hospital bed while her family probably left her alone.
She pushed the cart down the hallway toward room 412. Morning light was starting to come through the windows. The hospital was quiet except for the soft beeping of machines and the sound of her shoes on the tile floor.
Sophie reviewed what she needed to do. Check Margaret's vitals. Update the chart. Make sure the IV was running correctly. Simple things. Things she could do without feeling anything.
She pushed open the door to room 412.
Margaret was sleeping. The machines beside her bed beeped steadily. Sophie moved toward the monitors and that's when she felt it. Eyes on her. The kind of attention that made her skin prickle.
Sophie looked up.
Her entire body went cold.
A man sat in the chair beside Margaret's bed. Dark hair. Sharp features carved out of something harder than normal bone. Gray eyes that looked like they'd seen things that would break a person. And his face. His face was almost identical to another face. A face Sophie knew. A face she'd memorized by touch when Marcus Sinclair had kissed her at sunset five years ago and promised her forever.
This was Marcus's brother.
This was Adrian Sinclair.
Sophie's hands started shaking. She couldn't stop them. She gripped the blood pressure monitor tighter, trying to make her body obey, but her hands were trembling like she was cold even though she wasn't cold at all.
Adrian watched her.
She could feel his attention like a physical thing. Like weight pressing down on her chest. Like hands around her throat. Sophie tried to breathe normally but her breathing had changed and she knew he could see it.
This wasn't supposed to happen. Adrian Sinclair was supposed to be dead or in prison or somewhere far away. Not here. Not sitting in a hospital room like some kind of ghost.
Sophie finished checking Margaret's vitals with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. She didn't look at Adrian again. She couldn't. Looking at him meant remembering Marcus's face and Marcus's promises and the moment her entire world had collapsed.
She finished her work and left the room. Her legs felt unstable. Her vision was getting narrow like she was looking through a tunnel.
The hallway was empty. Sophie made it about ten feet before she had to stop. She leaned against the wall and pressed her palms flat against the cool surface. In. Out. In. Out. The breathing technique she'd learned from her therapist. The one that was supposed to calm you down when panic was trying to take over.
It wasn't working.
Sophie's mind was racing. Adrian Sinclair was at St. Catherine's Hospital. Adrian Sinclair was sitting in his mother's hospital room. Adrian Sinclair with his criminal face and his gray dead eyes was close enough that Sophie could have touched him if she'd been crazy enough to try.
The man who'd abandoned his family to become a ghost in the criminal underworld was back.
She knew who he was because the news had covered his disappearance years ago. The Sinclair family had tried to keep it quiet but gossip had leaked out anyway. Their youngest son had run away. Become involved in organized crime. Become something so dangerous that even his own family had disowned him.
And now he was here.
Sophie's phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out. Text from her brother James. "Hey. Got off work early. Want to grab dinner?"
Sophie stared at the screen and couldn't answer. How could she explain what she'd just seen? How could she tell her brother that the man who'd ruined everything was back in the city?
The hospital hallway blurred. Sophie closed her eyes and tried to steady herself but everything was falling apart. Five years. Five years she'd worked to put herself back together after Marcus had shattered her. Five years of therapy and quiet nights and not letting anyone close enough to hurt her again.
And now his brother was here. The criminal. The ghost. The brother of the man who'd gotten on one knee at sunset and told her he loved her with promises in his eyes and then chosen someone else because his parents had demanded it.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway.
Sophie opened her eyes.
Adrian Sinclair was walking toward her.
He was tall. Taller than Marcus. There was something different about the way he moved. Like violence was his second language. Like danger followed him the way shadows follow people in daylight.
He was walking right toward her and his gray eyes were fixed on her face like he was trying to solve a puzzle.
Sophie pushed off the wall and tried to move away but her legs weren't listening to her brain. She was frozen. Stuck between the wall and the ghost of her own past.
Adrian stopped a few feet away from her. Close enough to talk. Too close to breathe without shaking.
"I don't know what I did to you," he said.
His voice was rough. Deep. Nothing like Marcus's smooth charming voice. This voice sounded like it had been dragged through broken glass.
Sophie couldn't answer. She was too terrified. Too angry. Too broken.
Adrian took a step closer and something in his gray eyes shifted. Understanding. He was looking at her like he could see the damage. Like he could see exactly where Marcus had broken her and how the pieces hadn't fit back together quite right.
"But I'm sorry anyway," Adrian said.
Sophie found her voice. It came out thin and shaky but it came out.
"Stay away from me."
Adrian's jaw clenched. He looked like he was about to say something but before he could, the monitor in room 412 started screaming.
Not a gentle beep. A loud urgent alarm that meant something was wrong.
Sophie didn't think. She just ran. Past Adrian. Back into the room. Margaret was seizing. Her body convulsing. The machines screaming like they were trying to warn everyone that death was coming.
Sophie called for backup and moved into crisis mode. This was what she was good at. This was where she could control things.
Adrian was beside her in an instant, holding his mother's hand and whispering things Sophie couldn't hear over the sound of the alarms.
And Sophie realized something terrifying as she worked to save Margaret's life.
The ghost had come home and somehow Sophie was going to have to figure out how to survive it.
Because the way Adrian had looked at her in the hallway before the alarm went off, the way he'd said he was sorry for something she hadn't even told him about yet, meant that he somehow already knew what his brother had done.
And Sophie had a terrible feeling that Adrian Sinclair was going to spend every single day trying to prove something to her.
Something that would either save her or destroy her completely.