CHAPTER 2 — “The Woman Who Should Be Dead”
A car door suddenly slammed behind them.
Slow footsteps echoed across the pavement.
Thomas turned sharply.
A woman stood there.
Pale. Thin. Alive.
“Isabella…” Thomas whispered.
His late wife.
The woman he had buried five years ago.
The woman whose funeral had destroyed what remained of his soul.
But she wasn’t a ghost.
She was real.
And she was terrified.
“I didn’t want you to find them like this,” Isabella said softly.
Thomas staggered back.
“That’s impossible… you died. I saw— I saw the report—”
“No,” she interrupted, voice shaking. “I disappeared.”
Her eyes moved toward the children.
“I left to protect them.”
Silence shattered everything Thomas believed.
Eli stepped closer to the girl, holding her hand tightly.
“They told us you were dangerous,” Eli said quietly.
Isabella flinched.
Thomas’s voice rose, broken.
“From who?! Who told you that?!”
Isabella hesitated.
Then whispered one name.
A name Thomas had trusted for years.
His business partner.
The man who controlled half of his empire.
And in that moment, everything clicked.
The kidnapping.
The silence.
The missing body.
The identical necklaces.
May you like
It was never random.
It was orchestrated.
