The library was thick with the smell of stale cigar smoke and sorrow. Dawn was breaking, painting the sky in bruised shades of purple and gray, but inside, the night refused to end.
Cole hadn't slept. He sat behind his desk, a ghost in his own home, his eyes raw and bloodshot. The ashtray overflowed. Empty coffee cups littered the surface around him.
Juliana's soul hovered in the corner, a helpless observer. The sight of him, so utterly broken, was a constant, twisting pain in her non-existent gut. He was a machine of grief, using work to numb the wound.
His voice was a low, gravelly rasp as he spoke into the phone. "I want every detail. Traffic cameras, the truck driver, the car's maintenance records. Everything."
The butler, Charles Whitman, entered silently, placing a fresh pot of coffee on the desk. Cole waved him away without looking, his focus absolute.
Hours bled into one another. The sun was fully up when his phone rang, a sharp, intrusive sound. It was his executive assistant, Zane Foster.
"Mr. Mcintyre, we have preliminary findings," Zane's voice was grim, stripped of its usual professional pleasantries. "It wasn't an accident."
Cole's body went rigid. The exhaustion vanished from his face, replaced by a chilling, predatory focus. His eyes, which had been hollow with grief, now glinted like shards of steel.
"Go on," he commanded.
Juliana's soul drifted closer, a cold premonition creeping over her.
"The brake lines were tampered with," Zane reported, his words precise and damning. "Cut clean through. It was deliberate."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. Cole's knuckles were white where he gripped the edge of the desk.
"Who?" The word was a splinter of ice, forced from between his clenched teeth.
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. "We tracked Mrs. Mcintyre's recent communications. She was planning to meet someone."
Juliana's spectral heart, if she still had one, plummeted.
Zane continued, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "Aidan Sterling. And the person who helped her arrange everything, who had access to the car at the estate yesterday afternoon... was Paige Chapman."
The names exploded in Juliana's consciousness. Aidan. Paige. Her love. Her best friend.
It wasn't possible. It couldn't be.
But Zane wasn't finished. He delivered the final, fatal blow. "Furthermore, we found evidence of their planning to elope with her trust fund after the... incident. Paige recently purchased two one-way tickets to the Cayman Islands. In their names."
The truth crashed down on her, a brutal, undeniable force. They hadn't just betrayed her. They had murdered her. For money. Her first love and her best friend had orchestrated her death.
Cole listened to the entire report in absolute silence. When Zane finished, the quiet that followed was more terrifying than any scream. Juliana could feel the rage radiating from him, a palpable, murderous energy that filled the room.
"Find them," Cole said, his voice so cold it could freeze blood. "Don't let them leave the country. Make them pay."
He ended the call, the phone clattering onto the desk. He leaned back in his chair, his head falling back as if the weight of it was too much to bear. His face was a twisted mask of incandescent rage and profound, soul-crushing pain.
He had been betrayed, too.
Juliana was drowning in a storm of her own emotions. Fury at their treachery. Hatred for her own blind stupidity. And an overwhelming, suffocating wave of regret. She had thrown away the love of this man, this broken man, for a lie.
She wanted revenge.
The desire was so fierce, so all-consuming, it became a fire in her soul. She would not let them get away with this. She would not let them win.
The thought was a beacon. Her spectral form began to glow, a soft, ethereal light pulsing around her. The edges of the library began to warp and blur, the solid world dissolving around her.
She felt a violent pull, as if she were being dragged into the heart of a whirlpool.
Through the roaring darkness, she heard Cole's voice, a desperate, broken prayer. "Jules, come back to me..."
Her next sensation was a scent. A clean, sharp fragrance of cedar and bergamot. It was Cole's scent.
Then, the feeling of soft sheets and the heavy warmth of a blanket.
She forced her eyelids open. They felt impossibly heavy. She was in a bedroom. Her bedroom, at the Mcintyre estate. The morning light was filtering through the silk curtains.
She wiggled her fingers, feeling the texture of the high-thread-count cotton. She was real. She was alive.
She turned her head on the pillow, and her breath caught in her throat.
Cole Mcintyre was asleep beside her.
He was fully dressed in yesterday's rumpled suit, lying on top of the covers. One of his arms was thrown possessively across her waist, holding her tight, as if he was afraid she might vanish into thin air.
His face, so handsome even in sleep, was etched with exhaustion and pain. His brow was furrowed, his jaw tight. Even in his dreams, he was tormented.
