Chapter 4 The Ghost in the Room

Adriano's POV

The meeting was supposed to be another forgettable transaction. Numbers on paper. Signatures on contracts. A performance where I play the polished CEO while the men across from me scramble to impress the devil they can’t admit exists.

And then she walked in.

For a second, I thought I’d lost my mind. Hallucinations aren’t my style—I deal in hard facts, not fragile delusions. But the air shifted, and the world narrowed down to the woman clutching a notebook like it was armor.

Ma Belle.

Isabella so should I say Bella Valentino.

Her hair was shorter now, curls brushing her shoulders instead of tumbling down her back. Her frame was a little slimmer, exhaustion etched in the slope of her shoulders. But those eyes—the same molten brown that had once stripped me bare—were unmistakable.

She froze when she saw me. Just for a moment. Just long enough for me to catch the flicker of recognition before she buried it under confusion.

She doesn’t know. She thinks I’m dead.

Good. Let her think that.

Because the truth would crush her. The truth would drag her into shadows she’s spent years trying to escape.

I forced myself to look away, to finish the meeting with the same calm efficiency that built my empire. But every word was an effort. My mind wasn’t on the contracts. It was on her. On the way she chewed her lip when she thought no one was watching. On the tremor in her hands as she scribbled notes. On the fact that she was here at all—alive, breathing, so close I could almost taste her.

When the meeting ended, I stayed behind under the pretense of reviewing documents. My brother Luca gave me a look as he left—sharp, knowing—but said nothing. He’s always known when to keep his mouth shut.

But tonight, silence wasn’t enough.

The moment the door closed, I let the mask slip.

Six years. Six years of believing she was gone. Of burying the part of me that still bled for her. I built walls, empires, an empire of fear—because I thought I had nothing left to lose.

And now she’s here.

Alive.

Working in some dead-end office tied, unknowingly, to the Moretti brothers. The irony tastes bitter on my tongue. The world thinks it’s chaos, but sometimes I swear fate bends just for me.

But questions claw at me. Where has she been? Why didn’t she come back? Who the hell let her struggle while I tore the city apart?

And why, when I looked into her eyes, did I see not just shock—but fear?

Later, in my office high above the city, I pour a glass of whiskey I don’t need. The skyline glitters like broken glass, mocking me with its indifference.

I should leave her alone. Walk away before she drags light into the parts of me that should stay dark.

But that’s the thing about devils. We don’t let go.

A knock interrupts my thoughts. Luca steps in without waiting for an answer, as he always does. His tie is loosened, his eyes sharp with questions he won’t voice unless I make him.

“You stayed behind for a reason,” he says, not asking, stating.

I don’t look at him. “Did you see her?”

“The girl with the notebook? Yeah. Hard not to notice the way you were staring.” He moves closer, hands in his pockets. “Who is she?”

For a moment, I almost lie. But Luca is the only person alive who knows what that night six years ago did to me. He watched me burn down half the city in my grief. He helped me build The Service not just as a weapon, but as a net—to catch the truth, to find the thread of that tragedy.

“She’s not just someone,” I say finally. “She’s the ghost.”

His brows rise. “The one you never stopped looking for.”

I nod once. My throat feels raw.

Luca whistles low. “Well. Fate just punched you in the face.”

I almost laugh. Almost. But instead, I think back—back to the second time I ever saw her after the charity gala.

It was a bar on the edge of the city, a place I rarely went. Too noisy, too messy, too human. But Luca had dragged me there, saying I needed a night without blood on my hands.

I remember the sound of her laugh before I even saw her—bright, unguarded, cutting through the haze of smoke and cheap liquor. And then there she was, sitting at the counter, sipping a drink with a straw, like she had no idea men were staring at her as if she were a flame they’d never touch.

But I touched her.

I walked up, said something I can’t even remember now, something reckless. And she looked at me—not at my suit, not at my scars, not at the shadow of danger I carried like a second skin. She looked through me.

Like she saw the man I had almost forgotten I could be.

That night changed everything.

And then the fire. The chaos. The screams. Her hand ripped from mine in the smoke, and I never saw her again.

Until today.

I drain the whiskey, the burn nothing compared to the ache clawing at my chest.

Luca studies me quietly, then shakes his head. “So what now? You planning to keep her at arm’s length, or—”

“She doesn’t know who I am anymore,” I cut in. “She thinks I’m dead. And for now, that’s how it stays.”

Luca’s smirk is sharp. “Since when do you settle for staying in the shadows?”

I don’t answer. Because the truth is simple.

I built The Service to control sinners, to decide who deserved punishment. And now fate has handed me the only sinner who ever mattered.

Bella Valentino. The woman I thought I’d lost. The woman who has no idea she dialed my number.

My ghost is alive.

And I will not let her slip away again.