The storm outside had started to rise.
Wind howled against the glass, thunder rolling over the hills as lightning split the night in harsh flashes of white.
Sebastian moved through the mansion like a shadow silent, focused, deadly.
Every step echoed with memories he'd spent years trying to bury.
Evelyn's laughter in the music room.
Her perfume in the hall.
Her scream the night everything went to hell.
And now the faint sound of footsteps upstairs.
He raised his gun, every muscle tense.
"Sebastian?" Liam's voice buzzed in his earpiece. "We've lost her tracker."
He ground his teeth. "She's still inside. Keep scanning the lower levels."
"Sir, if that's really Evelyn"
"It's not," he snapped, cutting him off. "She's dead."
But even as he said it, his chest tightened.
He'd seen her body. He'd buried her.
So how was it that the shadow on the screen the same auburn hair, the same walk could move exactly like her?
He pushed the thought away and focused on what mattered.
Isabelle.
He had to find her before whoever that was did.
The east corridor stretched out in eerie silence.
Moonlight bled through tall windows, silvering the floor.
Then, faintly, he heard it a soft click, like metal brushing against wood.
From behind the servant's stairwell door.
He eased it open, gun raised.
Nothing. Just darkness and dust.
Then a whisper light, feminine.
"She looks just like me."
Sebastian froze.
The voice was unmistakable.
Cold. Familiar.
Haunting.
He turned sharply toward the far end of the hall, but it was empty.
"You kept everything," the voice continued, echoing softly. "The pictures. The locket. Even the guilt."
He felt the air shift behind him. A faint trace of perfume drifted past the same scent Evelyn used to wear.
For a brief, terrifying second, he thought he was losing his mind.
Then he saw it a reflection in the window glass.
A woman standing behind him.
He spun around gun up but she was already gone. Only the faintest flicker of movement disappeared up the grand staircase.
"Evelyn!"
His shout thundered through the mansion. "Where is she? What did you do to Isabelle?!"
No answer.
Just the whisper of retreating footsteps and the hollow echo of his own heartbeat.
He ran after the sound, his pace accelerating as he reached the top of the stairs. The hallway up there was colder lined with locked rooms and faded portraits.
Halfway down, he saw the door at the end slightly open the same locked door Isabelle had been investigating.
A faint glow spilled through the crack.
"Isabelle"
He pushed the door wider.
Inside empty.
The files still scattered, the monitors still flickering, and one thing missing:
Isabelle's necklace lying on the floor beside a single drop of blood.
Sebastian knelt, his jaw tightening as he picked it up. The delicate chain glinted faintly between his fingers.
He wasn't too late. Not yet. But whoever had taken her whoever Evelyn really was had planned this.
Lightning flared outside again, illuminating the far window.
And for one impossible instant, he saw her.
Standing in the rain-soaked garden.
A woman holding Isabelle by the wrist.
Auburn hair loose and wild. Eyes burning with something unreadable sorrow, rage, love, or madness.
Sebastian's breath caught.
"Evelyn," he whispered.
Then they vanished into the trees.
He turned, barking orders into his comm. "Lock down the north exit! Get the car to the back entrance now!"
He sprinted down the stairs, adrenaline tearing through him.
But beneath the fury and command, something colder coiled in his gut a truth he didn't want to admit.
If Evelyn Kane was alive.
Then everything he thought he'd buried was about to rise again.
And this time, Isabelle was caught in the middle.