Chapter 3 The Eve Before the Storm

Selene stood at the edge of her mother's grand staircase, the soft rustle of her dress the only sound echoing in the hollow silence of the manor. A gilded invitation card lay clenched in her hand-elegant cursive printed her name alongside Damien Voss, as though the decision had always been mutual. As though her voice didn't matter.

She could still hear her mother's voice from earlier that day, sweetened with false concern.

"Selene, this is what's best for the family. Damien's father has agreed to fund the restructuring. Do you want us in debt forever?"

Her brother had added the final dagger:

"You always said you'd do anything for us. Here's your chance to prove it."

Her fingers trembled around the invitation.

Outside her window, the world moved as if everything were normal. Cars passed. Lights flickered on in distant buildings. But inside her, everything was crumbling.

Selene wasn't naïve. She knew why Damien had become their golden ticket. The Albrechts-once one of the city's most respected families-had faltered under the weight of poor decisions and greed. Her father's sudden death left a vacuum of power that none of them had truly filled. Damien Voss was wealthy, connected, and patient. He'd waited years. And now, he was collecting.

She moved to her bookshelf and pulled out an old, worn leather journal. Kael's journal. A gift he'd given her when they were seventeen. She'd kept it hidden all these years-its pages filled with architectural sketches, quiet hopes, and scribbled notes of their late-night conversations.

"Someday, I'll build you a home with windows as wide as your dreams."

He'd written that on the back page, along with a crude sketch of a cliffside house and a girl with windblown hair.

Selene pressed her fingers to the page, her vision blurring.

"Where did you go?" she whispered.

"Why didn't you fight for us?"

But even as she said it, a sliver of doubt tugged at her. The night Kael disappeared wasn't just a vanishing act-it was violent, abrupt. Her brother had claimed Kael stole something. Her mother said he was dangerous. But none of it had ever sat right.

And now, on the eve of becoming another man's wife, she couldn't escape the feeling that part of her was being buried alive.

---

That night...

A sleek black car rolled through the shadowy streets of the city. No driver. Just Kael, alone at the wheel. The skyline rose around him like a memory-tall, cold, full of ghosts.

He hadn't returned as the boy they left for dead.

He'd returned as a storm wrapped in velvet.

Vivienne's final words echoed in his mind. "I trained you for the war after it."

Three nights. That was all he had.

He parked beneath the flickering sign of an old building-once an abandoned office, now the discreet headquarters of one of his holding companies. The door unlocked with a subtle scan, and he stepped into the dark.

On the table, dossiers waited.

Damien Voss. His political ambitions. His father's crumbling empire. The hidden debts. The offshore accounts. The faces who smiled in public but sold secrets in back rooms.

And Selene.

A recent photo. Taken from a news site, blurry, but unmistakably her-sad eyes framed by a forced smile.

Kael stared at it for a long time, fingers curling.

"They thought I'd vanish," he muttered. "But ghosts remember. And I didn't come back to haunt them... I came to end this."