Aidan Rooke didn't believe in ghosts—at least not the kind that rattled chains or haunted attics.
He believed in the ones that smiled in photographs, vanished without trace, and left bodies behind like broken promises.
He sat at his cluttered desk, fingers tapping against a mug of cold coffee, eyes locked on a string board that stretched across the back wall of his studio apartment. Red thread connected photos, police reports, and blacked-out financial documents. In the center of it all, pinned like a spider at the heart of a web, was a single name: Selene Virelli.
Or at least, the name she was using now.
Aidan leaned back and rubbed his jaw. He had stumbled across her by accident—or fate, depending on how drunk he was when he told the story. Three years ago, he'd been covering a high-profile suicide: a state senator found dead in a penthouse suite, pills scattered like candy across the tile. Open-and-shut, they said. Until Aidan found a surveillance shot—grainy, timestamped, almost lost in the data flood—that showed a woman leaving the hotel twenty minutes before the senator was found dead.
That woman had worn a red coat.
Her face was turned, just slightly, but it was enough. He'd kept digging. And the more he dug, the less he liked what he found.
Six dead men. All powerful. All connected by investments, secrets, or sins.
And all of them had been involved with a woman who had no past before five years ago. No childhood photos. No parents. No school records.
Selene Virelli had appeared out of nowhere, brilliant and beautiful, and every man who got too close to her ended up ruined, dead, or forgotten.
And now she was in Marlowe City.
Aidan turned to his laptop. Earlier that day, a contact from the gala had sent him a grainy photo from the Harrow Foundation event. Even pixelated, Selene's red dress was unmistakable. He zoomed in, watching her smile as she walked beside Victor Harrow.
The bastard didn't stand a chance.
He sighed. If Harrow ended up in a grave, it wouldn't be the worst tragedy. The man was known for burying lawsuits and bribing health inspectors into silence. But Aidan wasn't here to mourn villains. He wanted the truth.
He wanted her truth.
What drove a woman like Selene to orchestrate destruction with the elegance of a violinist? Why did she make powerful men fall in love, only to ruin them?
Aidan didn't want to destroy her.
He wanted to understand her.
That was his first mistake.
His phone buzzed. A new email: Subject: Blue Orchid. No sender name.
He opened it cautiously. Inside was a single image—an old yearbook photo. A teenage girl with soft features, holding a blue orchid.
The caption read:
Liliana Vale, Class of 2012.
Beneath it, in handwritten scrawl:
"You're not looking at the ghost. You're looking at the reason she became one."
Aidan's pulse quickened.
He reached for a pen.
Selene had a sister.
And someone out there wanted Aidan to find her.