Chapter 3 The Eyes that Burn
Isabella' POV
The bus lurches to my stop, bringing mebacl from the memories I have tried to burry and burn for 6 years, like it’s on its last breath, rattling over every pothole in the city. I cling to the strap above my head, trying not to spill the grocery bag balanced on my lap. A pack of juice boxes, cereal, and the cheapest pasta I could find—it doesn’t look like much, but it’s the best I can do this week.
When we finally screech to my stop, the sky is already bleeding into twilight. My apartment building waits like a concrete box, ugly and familiar. The paint is peeling, the elevator hasn’t worked in years, and every night the pipes sound like they’re crying. But behind one chipped blue door on the third floor is the only thing that matters.
I unlock it, and before the knob even turns all the way, I hear the small, sweet voice that makes every bone in me unclench.
“Mama!”
Sofia barrels toward me, a five-year-old tornado of tangled curls and pink socks. She collides with my legs, wrapping around me like she’s trying to anchor me to the earth.
“Hey, baby,” I whisper, bending down and pressing my face into her hair. She smells like crayons and the strawberry shampoo I water down so it lasts longer. “Did you behave for Mrs. Carter?”
“She made me eat peas,” Sofia says with a dramatic sigh, then grins, showing off the gap where her first baby tooth fell out last week. “But I drew you something.”
I drop the groceries on the counter and let her tug me toward the small table we call a kitchen. There, between unpaid bills and coloring books, is a sheet of paper covered in wild, bright strokes. Stick figures—one tall, one small, holding hands under a lopsided sun.
“That’s you,” she points proudly at the tall one. “And me. And that’s our castle.”
I blink hard, because my throat tightens too easily these days. “It’s beautiful, sweetheart. Better than any castle I’ve ever seen.”
She beams, climbing onto my lap as if she still fits there. For a moment, the world outside doesn’t exist—the endless grind, the bills, the ache of old ghosts. There’s just her warmth against me and her laugh when I tickle her side.
But later, after dinner (pasta with more water than sauce), after bath time and bedtime stories, when she’s finally asleep curled up with her ragged bunny, I sit by the window with the quiet pressing in.
The memory of him won’t leave me tonight.
The man from the meeting. The way my heart almost stopped when our eyes met.
It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him.
And yet…
I press my forehead to the glass, watching the city lights flicker like restless stars. I’ve built my life on surviving, on burying what was lost. But tonight feels different. Tonight feels dangerous.
Because for the first time in six years, the ghost doesn’t feel like a memory.
He feels alive.
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I close my eyes, telling myself to breathe, to push it all down the way I always do. But the past doesn’t obey rules—it breaks in when it wants, like smoke through the cracks.
It was raining that night. Not the soft drizzle that lulls you to sleep, but a storm that shook the city, tearing at the streets with claws of water and thunder. I remember clutching my coat tighter, the cheap fabric soaked through, as if it could protect me from everything closing in.
We were late. I had missed the first bus and sprinted across two blocks, shoes squelching, lungs burning. My phone buzzed with a message—one word that made my heart stutter: hurry.
When I reached the old warehouse, he was already there. Adrian.
He wasn’t “Adrian Moretti, billionaire heir” that night. He was just Adrian, the man who kissed me like I was the only person in the world and held me like he was afraid I’d slip through his fingers.
“Ma Belle,” he whispered when I stepped inside, his voice urgent, almost broken. “We don’t have much time.”
I remember the smell—oil, dust, and something sharp, metallic. Shadows moved across the far wall, men in suits with low voices. And I remember how his hand found mine, his palm hot, trembling, like he was as scared as I was.
“They shouldn’t know you’re here,” he said, pulling me behind a stack of crates. His eyes, dark and fierce, caught mine. “If something goes wrong—”
“Adrian,” I cut him off, gripping his face, refusing to hear the rest. “We’ll be fine.”
But we weren’t.
A sound tore through the air—an explosion, deafening, ripping light and heat across the warehouse. The crates shook, wood splintering, and in the chaos, he shoved me down, shielding me with his body.
The last thing I remember is the taste of blood in my mouth, smoke filling my lungs, and his voice shouting my name through the storm.
And then—blackness.
When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed with no answers. They told me there had been a fire, that so many didn’t make it. His name was on the list. Dead. Gone. Burned into ash and memory.
I buried him that night in my heart, because there was no grave to go to. Just smoke, silence, and loss.
And now—tonight—those eyes. In that meeting.
The same ones I swore I would never see again.
My fingers curl against the windowsill, nails digging into the peeling paint. I want to tell myself it’s impossible, that grief is just playing tricks on me again. But deep down, a part of me I’ve tried to kill is whispering:
What if he’s alive? What if the ghost you’ve been running from is flesh and blood?
Behind me, Sofia stirs in her sleep, murmuring my name. I turn, my heart splintering with a different kind of ache. She’s my everything now, my anchor. But she’s also the living reminder of that night. Of him.
If he really is alive, if Adrian Moretti truly walked out of those flames…
He doesn’t know he has a daughter.