Chapter 2 GHOSTS OF THE PAST
Rain drummed softly against the apartment windows, steady and relentless, like a heartbeat that refused to die.
Isabella couldn’t sleep.
Her dress from the gala lay crumpled on the floor, the scent of champagne and expensive cologne still clinging to the fabric. She sat at her desk, staring at the folder of documents Gianni had given her. Inside were contracts, transaction records, and coded emails — threads that all led back to one man.
Lorenzo De Luca.
She traced his name with a trembling finger. The ink blurred as a tear fell, though she didn’t remember crying.
Outside, the fog rolled over Milan like a ghost returning home.
Five years earlier, the world had ended in a quiet study that smelled of whiskey and despair.
Her father, Alessandro Romano, had been one of the most respected financiers in Milan — a man who believed in loyalty, family, and the law of his word. He had raised Isabella alone after her mother’s death, teaching her everything he knew about business and integrity.
“Power,” he’d once told her, “means nothing if it isn’t clean.”
She’d believed him. Until the day everything turned dirty.
It began with rumors.
A scandal in one of his firms. Missing funds. Forged signatures. An accusation that his accounts were tied to offshore laundering through the De Luca Consortium.
At first, her father laughed it off — a misunderstanding, he’d said. He’d worked with Lorenzo’s father, Don Vittorio De Luca, for years. They had built trust, shared deals, and shaken hands over countless glasses of Scotch.
But trust in Milan was like fine glass — it glittered, fragile and treacherous.
When the investigators came, her father’s accounts were already frozen. His partners withdrew. Employees vanished. The De Lucas denied everything.
And then, the evidence appeared — ledgers, signatures, transactions — all pointing to him. Every piece immaculate. Every document damning.
He swore he was innocent. But innocence didn’t matter. Not when the city wanted a scapegoat. Not when the De Lucas needed someone to burn for their sins.
The night he died still lived in her mind, every sound a scar.
It was raining then too.
She’d come home late from university to find the study door half open, the air thick with the scent of whiskey and gunpowder. Her father sat slumped behind his desk, head bowed, a pistol fallen from his hand. The walls were splattered with truth no one wanted to see.
She remembered the letter — short, written in a shaking hand.
My sweet Isabella,
They left me no choice. I tried to fight, but the world listens only to power, not to truth. Forgive me. Live. Forget them.
— Papà
But she couldn’t forget.
She’d screamed until her throat bled, until the neighbors came running. The police arrived, the news spread, and within days, the Romano name was dust.
The De Lucas sent flowers to the funeral. White lilies.
She’d torn them apart with her bare hands.
The years that followed blurred into survival.
She sold what was left of their home, left Milan, and disappeared. But grief has a strange way of fermenting — it turns into obsession if left too long in the dark.
In London, she rebuilt herself. Changed her accent. Changed her name. She learned the rules of power — how to charm, how to deceive, how to weaponize a smile.
She worked her way into private circles where billionaires whispered secrets over cigars, and she listened.
When she learned that Lorenzo had inherited his father’s empire, she began to plan.
She didn’t know how yet — only that she would find a way to dismantle him piece by piece. Not by force, but by infiltration. He would never see her coming.
The rain softened. Isabella blinked, realizing she’d been lost in the past. Her hands were clenched around a photograph — her father at the lake, smiling, one arm around her shoulders. She was sixteen, happy, unbroken.
She pressed the photo to her chest, closing her eyes.
“I’m doing this for you,” she whispered.
The wind rattled the windows, as if the city were warning her to stop. But she couldn’t.
She was too far gone to turn back now.
The next morning, the sky was pale and merciless. She dressed in black slacks and a white blouse, her hair pinned back neatly. Her reflection in the mirror was calm, but her eyes held something colder than resolve — a promise.
She opened her laptop and scrolled through her research. Lorenzo’s empire was vast: real estate, shipping, private banking, luxury tech. But beneath the clean facade, there were whispers — extortion, data laundering, political manipulation.
He was everything her father had refused to become.
And that was exactly why he had survived.
She paused at a photo of Lorenzo shaking hands with a senator — handsome, smiling, a model citizen. The world saw a philanthropist. She saw a predator.
And predators could bleed.
Her plan was simple, at least in theory: gain his trust, infiltrate his company through a consultancy cover, gather proof of his corruption, and expose him. But somewhere inside, she knew it wasn’t just about exposure.
It was about making him feel what she had felt — loss, betrayal, ruin.
She wanted him to know what it was to have everything stripped away.
A knock startled her. She turned to find Gianni in the doorway, damp from the rain, his dark hair slicked back.
“You haven’t slept,” he said, stepping inside.
“Couldn’t.”
He glanced at the files spread across the desk. “Still torturing yourself?”
“I’m preparing.”
“Preparing or drowning?”
She ignored the jab. “You saw him last night. What did you think?”
Gianni shrugged. “Same as always. Cold. Calculating. The kind of man who could smile while signing your death warrant.”
Her lips curved slightly. “Then he won’t see me coming.”
Gianni sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. “Isa, revenge doesn’t bring peace. You know that.”
“It’s not peace I want.” Her voice was quiet, but sharp as glass. “It’s justice.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then said, “Just remember — when you stare too long into hell, it starts staring back.”
She turned away, back to the window. “Then I’ll stare it down.”
After Gianni left, she opened her father’s letter again — fragile, yellowed with age.
Live. Forget them.
She traced the words with her thumb. “I can’t forget, Papà,” she whispered. “Not when your blood built their empire.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
For a long moment, she stood there, watching the rain smear the skyline. Then she folded the letter, slid it into the locket around her neck, and locked the clasp.
Her vow was complete.
Even if it meant losing herself — even if she had to sell her soul to the devil — she would burn the De Luca empire to ashes.
And if she had to walk through fire to do it, she would not look back.
Somewhere across the city, in the upper floors of his glass tower, Lorenzo De Luca stood by his own window, unaware of the storm that had returned to Milan in the shape of a woman.
He lifted a glass of whiskey, eyes dark with the kind of loneliness only power could bring, and muttered to no one,
“Ghosts never really stay buried.”
Outside, lightning split the sky — and the game began.