Chapter 2 The Ghosts of Past

Isabella's POV

The name “Moretti” doesn’t mean anything to me beyond gossip muttered over late-night news anchors. Suits. Scandals. Whispers of money moving in shadows. But in my world—the beige walls, the glitching printer, the chipped mug with a fading World’s Best Mom sticker—they’re as unreal as movie villains.

My reality is smaller. My reality is five years old, with curly hair like mine and eyes too big for her little face.

Sofia.

The reason I keep dragging myself through nine-hour shifts and cheap instant coffee. The reason I don’t let myself cry when bills pile up. The reason I learned to breathe again after he died.

Or after I thought he died.

Because six years ago, there was a man. A man who kissed me like sin and salvation in the same breath. Who looked at me like I was the only thing in a world gone mad. And then—gone. A tragedy, a blur of fire and chaos, and I was left clutching ashes of what we almost had.

I never even told him about her.

“Bella,” my coworker’s voice pulls me back. Stacy, the closest thing I have to a friend here, is peeking over my cubicle wall. “There’s a client meeting, Boss wants you in the room.”

“Me?” I blink. They never drag me into meetings unless it’s to take notes.

“Yeah.” She smirks. “Guess you clean up okay after all.”

I smooth down my thrift-store blouse and grab my notebook. I don’t feel like someone who cleans up okay. I feel like someone barely taped together.

The conference room is colder than the rest of the office, a glass box that makes me feel like a bug under scrutiny. The bosses are already seated, jittery in their suits. They don’t look at me when I slip in, but I can feel the tension crawling over my skin.

Then the door to the back office opens.

And for a second, I forget how to breathe.

A man walks in, tall, sharp suit, presence heavy enough to crush the oxygen out of the room. His voice is low when he greets the executives, smooth like expensive whiskey. I shouldn’t stare. I can’t stare. But something about the line of his jaw, the dark eyes that seem to see everything, the dangerous calm in his movements,

My stomach twists. It can’t be.

It can’t be him.

Because the man I lost six years ago, the man whose absence still claws at me in the dark, was swallowed by tragedy. He doesn’t exist anymore.

And yet… when those eyes flicker over me, just for a heartbeat, it’s like the earth tilts sideways.

Recognition slams into me.

But before I can be sure, he looks away.

I sit frozen, my pen useless in my hand. My heart’s racing, but my head keeps whispering the same thing over and over:

It can’t be him.

It’s impossible.

He’s dead.

Still, the ghost of his gaze lingers, burning through me.

And for the first time in years, I wonder if the past I buried is about to claw its way back into the light.

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The first time I saw him, it felt like someone pulled the world inward so I could fit into one small, impossible moment.

It was a summer evening—too warm for coats, too polite for rain—at a fundraiser my job had roped me into because “it’ll look good on the resume.” I had pinned my hair up, borrowed a dress that made me feel dishonest, and rehearsed the polite smiles I handed out like cheap change. I was supposed to be invisible.

He wasn’t invisible.

He moved through the room like he owned the light, not the way a rich man owns things, but the way sunlight owns a room in the morning—effortless, inevitable. He smiled at people as if he meant every syllable, and then he turned and looked at me as if I had been the only thing in the room since the start. His eyes were dark and too keen; they caught the edges of me and held them like a promise.

“You look cold,” he said, and his voice folded into the space between us.

“I’m fine,” I lied, because that’s what women like me did. We lied until the lies fit.

He shrugged, as if the world held a thousand trivial truths and this was one of them. “You don’t have to pretend here.”

He reached out like he would hand me something—not money, not a favor—just his palm. I took it because taking it felt less insane than saying no. Our hands fit together as if two halves had been waiting.

We danced like strangers who’d forgotten the rules. He made me laugh in a way I hadn’t in years, peeling away careful armor with the lightest of touches. For that night he was an entire universe: warm, safe, brilliant. I told him about silly things—books I loved, the recipe I’d ruined that morning—nothing that mattered. He told me about plans that sounded like a different life.

When the night finished, he kissed me like a benediction. I walked home dizzy, full of possibility, like a person who’d been gifted a secret map. I slept with the small, ridiculous hope that I might wake up into that life.

Two weeks later, the world burst into flames and left nothing but questions.