Ethan Hart stared at the image on his tablet.
Alessia Grey.
Kingsley Gala.
Black dress. Crimson lips. Eyes like frozen fire.
It wasn't her beauty that unnerved him. It was her gaze steadfast, piercing. Watching him like she knew something he didn't. Like she remembered something he forgot.
Or… didn't want to remember.
With a flick of his thumb, he swiped to another photo.
Serena Vaughn.
Three years ago.
White sundress. Laughing in the sunlight.
Dead and buried.
But his gut twisted.
He zoomed in on Serena's eyes. Wide, warm, trusting.
Then back to Alessia's.
Different. And yet…
The shape. The weight. The sadness behind the stare.
They were the same.
No. That wasn't possible.
He leaned back in his chair, disturbed. He had buried Serena himself. Lowered the lid on her coffin. Kissed her forehead before it turned cold.
She was gone.
Wasn't she?
Across the city
Alessia stood before her mirror in a high-rise penthouse, red lipstick in hand. She stilled.
Her spine stiffened.
That shift in the air…
Something had changed.
She felt it like a tremor beneath her feet—Ethan was beginning to look. Not just glance. Not just flirt.
Dig.
She had planted false identities, burned old records, rerouted her paper trail through Swiss holdings and fake passports.
But Ethan knew her tells. He had kissed her tears once, read her silences like scripture.
And if he saw through her…
It was too soon.
That evening, Ethan stepped into the dim office of Julian Graves, a private investigator who once cleaned up Vaughn family messes.
"I need everything you can get on a woman named Alessia Grey," Ethan said, dropping the name like a blade.
Graves raised a brow. "What kind of everything?"
"Background. Financials. Travel history. Birth records. All of it."
Graves leaned forward. "You think she's dangerous?"
Ethan hesitated.
"I think she's not who she says she is."
Alessia met Lucian Drake later that night on a rooftop lounge that hovered above Manhattan's glittering skyline.
They stood alone, the city spread out beneath them like prey.
"You're quiet tonight," Lucian said, handing her a glass of whiskey.
"I'm calculating," she murmured, swirling the amber liquid.
He studied her. "Let me guess. Ethan Hart?"
She didn't respond, but her jaw tensed.
"You think he's starting to connect the dots?"
Her eyes turned to steel. "He's always been clever. And I underestimated his memory."
Lucian took a slow sip. "Want me to intervene?"
She looked at him.
Hard. Cold.
"No. This isn't business. It's personal."
There was a flicker of admiration in Lucian's expression. He liked her best when she was cold-blooded.
They had met during a high-stakes negotiation in Prague two years earlier. Alessia newly reborn, anonymous and lethal had outbid Lucian on a multi-million-dollar acquisition.
He could've crushed her.
Instead, he invited her to dinner.
She'd refused.
He invited her again.
She didn't.
Eventually, she accepted—not because she trusted him, but because he was useful.
And Lucian respected power when he saw it.
Now, here they were. Not quite allies. Not quite threats.
Something sharper in between.
Alessia turned back to the skyline, her voice calm.
"If Ethan wants to dig up the dead—he better be ready to find a ghost who bites."