Return Of The Billionaire's Ghost Wife

The water was warm.

Too warm.

Isadora's eyes snapped open, her lungs seizing as if she'd been drowning. She jerked upright, water sloshing violently over the rim of a massive freestanding tub, soaking the Calacatta marble floor.

She wasn't drowning.

She wasn't in the ocean.

Her hands gripped the smooth porcelain edge, knuckles white. She looked down at herself-naked, submerged in water that was unnaturally warm and carried a strange, cloying scent she didn't recognize. Her skin was unblemished. No cuts. No bruises. No burns from jet fuel or salt from seawater.

Just smooth, pale skin. Perfect. Untouched.

Her breath came in short, ragged bursts. This wasn't right. None of this was right. The last thing she remembered was the screaming. The metal tearing. The impossible cold of the Pacific rushing through the cabin as Flight 815 plunged toward the black water.

She'd been dying. She was sure of it.

Isadora tried to stand, her legs trembling beneath her. The bathroom-because that's what this was, some kind of obscene luxury bathroom with brass fixtures and marble walls that probably cost more than her parents' house-swam in her vision. She made it halfway up before her knees buckled, her hip slamming against the tub's edge, her palm slapping wet marble.

The door opened.

No knock. No warning. Just the soft whisper of hinges and a silhouette filling the frame, backlit by light from somewhere beyond. The figure was tall. Broad-shouldered. Familiar in a way that made her chest ache even as her instincts screamed danger.

"Jordi?"

Her voice cracked. She hated how small she sounded. How desperate.

He didn't answer.

He stepped inside, each footfall deliberate on the heated floor. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing them in. Isadora couldn't see his face, not yet, but she could feel him-the weight of his presence, the way he seemed to consume the oxygen in the room.

She reached for a towel. Her fingers brushed terry cloth.

His hand closed around her wrist.

The grip was iron. Cold. Nothing like the warmth she remembered, the way his thumb used to trace circles against her pulse when they lay in bed talking about nothing. This hand was a vise, yanking her forward, out of the tub, her feet slipping, her body colliding with his chest before he shoved her backward.

Her spine hit the marble wall.

The shock of cold stone against wet skin stole her breath. His other hand found her throat-not squeezing, not yet, but resting there with terrifying precision, his thumb pressing against her windpipe in silent warning.

"Look at me," he said.

She did.

And she didn't know him.

The face was Jordi's-the sharp cheekbones, the jawline she'd traced with her fingers a thousand times. But everything else was wrong. His eyes, those blue eyes that used to crinkle when he laughed, were sunken. Glacial. They looked at her like she was a specimen. A problem to be solved.

"Who sent you?"

His voice was gravel and smoke, stripped