Chapter 78 She Is Alive

Chapter 78 She Is Alive
Lucas's POV

I had been pacing around my room for what felt like hours now, ever since the news about the Ricci family reached me.

An entire family, wiped out in a single night. Michael, his wife, Magnus. All of them gone, burned alive in their own mansion. My mind kept circling back to the same question, over and over, without landing on any real answer.

Who would want them dead badly enough to do something like this?

I ran through every possible enemy I could think of. Business rivals Michael had crossed over the years. Old debts that had never been settled. Grudges from deals gone sour…Nothing quite fit the scale of what had happened.

Burning an entire mansion to the ground with everyone still inside wasn't the work of some petty enemy looking to settle a score. This was someone sending a message, someone with resources and a very specific kind of ruthlessness, the kind that didn't come from ordinary business disputes.

I thought about every deal Michael had ever brought to my attention, every partnership, every enemy he had made along the way over the years we had worked together. None of them had the reach or the audacity to pull off something this brazen. This wasn't a simple hit. This was a statement, deliberate and calculated.

I raked a hand through my hair, my mind refusing to settle on anything concrete. Whoever did this had access, resources, and enough confidence to believe they would never face consequences for it.

The door burst open suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.

Sasha rushed in, her expression tight with urgency. Her eyes were wide, wider than I had ever seen them, and her face had drained of nearly all its color. She looked like she had seen something that genuinely terrified her, which was rare for my sister.

Sasha doesn't get scared easily. She had watched men beg for their lives without so much as flinching, and had helped plan schemes that would make most people's stomachs turn.

I hurried toward her immediately, gripping her shoulders as I studied her face with growing concern.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Why do you look like that? Talk to me, Sasha."

Her lips trembled slightly as she stared up at me, her breathing shallow and uneven, her chest rising and falling too fast.

"She's alive," she murmured.

I frowned, completely lost by what she was saying.

"Who's alive?" I asked. "Sasha, you're not making any sense right now…Talk to me properly."

Her grip on my arm tightened suddenly, her nails digging into my skin through the fabric of my shirt.

"Bella," she said, her eyes wide with something close to panic. "Bella is alive, Lucas."

I stared at her for a long moment, searching her face for any sign that this was some kind of twisted joke, something she and Haley had cooked up between them to mess with me. But there was nothing there except pure, unfiltered fear.

"Are you feeling okay?" I asked slowly, genuine concern creeping into my voice now. "Have you been sleeping properly lately? Because you know this isn't the first time you've said something like this."

This wouldn't be the first time Sasha had claimed to see Bella's ghost somewhere. After everything that happened, she had gone through a rough period where she swore she saw Bella's face in crowds, in mirrors, even once in the reflection of a car window. I had chalked it up to guilt at the time, some deep, buried part of her mind refusing to accept what we had done.

Those episodes had lasted for months before finally fading, and I had genuinely believed she was past all of that by now. I braced myself now for another one of those episodes, worried she might be spiraling again after everything with the party and now the Ricci fire.

Sasha seemed to understand exactly what I was thinking, because her expression shifted from fear into something more insistent.

"I'm not imagining this," she said firmly. "I have proof."

She raised her phone toward me, her hand shaking slightly as she pulled up a video and pressed play.

I took the phone from her and stared down at the screen.

The video showed the inside of what looked like the Monroe family's sitting room. And there, standing in the middle of the frame, speaking directly to Benjamin Monroe, was a woman whose face I would recognize anywhere, even after three years, even after everything I had told myself to make peace with her death.

Bella…

My chest tightened painfully as I stared at the screen, my mind refusing to accept what my eyes were clearly showing me. The angle of her jaw. The way she carried herself, straight-backed and composed, exactly like she used to stand across from me at every business dinner I ever dragged her to. The exact same eyes that used to look at me like I hung the moon, back when she still believed every word I told her.

It was her… There was no mistaking it. It was Bella, alive and standing in the Mayor's sitting room like nothing had ever happened.

My hands went slack, and the phone nearly slipped from my grip before I caught it again, my fingers tightening around it like it might disappear if I let go.

"That's not possible," I muttered, more to myself than to Sasha. "She died… She was on that plane. The explosion…"

I staggered backward, my legs feeling unsteady beneath me for the first time in longer than I could remember. I sat down hard on the edge of the bed, my eyes still glued to the frozen image on the screen, my mind racing through every possible explanation and finding none of them satisfying.

"How," I said slowly, my voice barely above a whisper. "How is she still alive? And if she survived, why has she waited so long to show herself? Why now, of all times, when everything else is already falling apart?"

None of it made any sense. If Bella had survived that crash somehow, why hadn't she come after me sooner? Why let everyone believe she was dead for months, only to resurface now, right as everything with the Ricci family and Haley's scandal was unraveling? Almost a year of silence, and now she chose this exact moment to reappear.

Unless she had been planning something this entire time and she needed those months to become whoever this woman was on the screen, someone who could apparently sit across from Benjamin Monroe himself and speak to him without fear.

The thought sent a fresh wave of unease crawling up my spine.

Sasha watched my reaction carefully, and I could see her own fear multiplying as she studied my face, like my shock was only confirming whatever theory had already been forming in her mind since the moment she found that video.

"Lucas," she said quietly, her voice trembling now. "I think I know what this means. I've had a bad feeling about this ever since I saw her walking into that mansion."

"What?" I asked, still staring at the screen, unable to tear my eyes away from Bella's frozen image.

She hesitated for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip before finally speaking, like she almost didn't want to say the words out loud, as if voicing them would make them undeniably real.

"I think Bella is the one who killed the Ricci family," she said.

My head snapped up to look at her, my chest tightening even further at the certainty in her voice.

“What makes you think that?” I asked, my mind still trying to catch up with everything happening at once.

Her hands were shaking now as she paced a small circle in front of me, unable to stay still.

"Think about it," Sasha said, her words coming faster now, tumbling over each other with growing urgency. "Michael was the one who raised her. He treated her horribly for years, and everyone knew it, even if nobody talked about it openly. And now, right when she resurfaces after being presumed dead for almost a year, his entire family ends up dead in a fire. That's not a coincidence, Lucas… That can't be a coincidence, not with a timing like that."

I turned the idea over in my mind, my initial shock slowly giving way to something colder, more calculating, the same instinct that had kept me alive and profitable in this world for years now kicking into gear.

"If she's really back," Sasha continued, her voice dropping lower, almost a whisper now, "and if she's the one responsible for what happened to the Riccis, then she's not just alive. She's hunting down everyone who ever wronged her, one by one, starting with the people who made her childhood a living hell."

My stomach twisted at the implication, the weight of it settling heavy in my chest.

"You think she's coming after us next?," I said, it was more of a statement than a question, my voice quieter than I intended.

Sasha nodded slowly, her eyes wide with barely controlled fear, her hands still trembling at her sides.

"I think she's seeking revenge," she said. "On everyone who hurt her before. And Lucas, we're at the very top of that list….Both of us.