Return Of The Billionaire's Ghost Wife

Hector left without another word.

Isadora watched him go, his Aston Martin screaming down the drive, gravel spraying from tires that cost more than most people's cars. She stood in the silence he left behind, her scalp stinging where she'd pulled her hair, her hands shaking with delayed adrenaline.

"That was-" Jordi started.

"Necessary." She didn't turn around. "Don't tell me it wasn't. Don't tell me I should have been gentler, should have given him time, should have-" She stopped, her voice cracking. "He called me a fraud. He threatened to have you declared incompetent. He-"

"I know."

She felt his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. His expression was careful, controlled, but his eyes-his eyes were blazing with something she couldn't name.

"You were magnificent," he said. "I've never-" He stopped, shook his head. "I've spent fifteen years learning to fight in boardrooms, in markets, in the kind of corporate warfare that makes people disappear. And you just-" He laughed, the sound wondering. "You just stood there and dared him to doubt you. With science. With truth. With-"

"With his mother's stubbornness." She pulled away, suddenly exhausted. "I need to sit down."

"Of course. The house is-Mr. Pim prepared the west wing, but if you'd prefer-"

"The master bedroom." She said it firmly, watching his expression flicker. "Our bedroom, Jordi. Unless you've moved someone else in?"

"Never." The word was fierce, immediate. "I've never-there hasn't been anyone. Not since-"

"Show me."

He led her through halls that were familiar and strange, past rooms she'd decorated and rooms that had been reimagined by strangers, until they reached the double doors at the end of the west wing. He pushed them open, stood aside, let her enter first.

It was exactly as she remembered.

The four-poster bed, draped in linen she'd chosen from a catalog on a rainy afternoon. The windows overlooking the garden, the ones she'd insisted on despite the security concerns. And above the fireplace, in a simple wooden frame that cost nothing and meant everything-

The lighthouse.

She crossed to it immediately, her fingers finding the familiar brushstrokes, the slightly crooked perspective that proved he'd painted it himself. The only light you ever needed. She'd teased him for weeks about that inscription, about the sentimentality he'd hidden beneath his polished exterior.

"It's been here," Jordi said behind her. "Every day. Every night. I couldn't-I tried to take it down once, in the first year. Hector found me holding it, and he-" His voice caught. "He didn't speak to me for a month."

She turned. He was closer than she'd expected, close enough to touch, his expression raw and unguarded in a way she hadn't seen since the bathroom.

"You should have told him," she said. "Told them. About how you searched, about what you-"

"That I spent a fortune chasing shadows? That I bankrupted three different research foundations on the slimmest of hopes? They would have locked me up, Issy. Hector almost tried." He stopped, his jaw working as he swallowed down the darkest parts of the last fifteen years, the parts he knew would terrify her. "There are ledgers I burned, Issy. Things I'm not proud of. Ways I tried to find you that I can't-"

"Tell me."

"Not yet." He reached for her hand, his fingers threading through hers with desperate care. "Please. Not yet. Let me have this. Let me have you back, just for a little while, before I have to explain how broken I became without you."

She looked at him-the man he'd become, the damage he'd carried, the love that had survived somehow, impossibly, through fifteen years of grief and madness.

"Okay," she said. "Not yet. But soon, Jordi. You can't-" She squeezed his hand. "You can't build a future on secrets. Not again. We tried that before, and it nearly destroyed us."

He nodded, his eyes suspiciously bright. "Soon," he agreed. "I promise."

They stood in silence, hand in hand, watching the afternoon light move across the painting of their beginning.

She found the photographs in a drawer.

Not hidden, exactly, but buried beneath silk scarves and jewelry boxes in the dresser she'd once shared with Jordi. Evidence of the life she'd missed, preserved in glossy prints and digital frames that showed dates she couldn't process.

Hector at thirteen, awkward and adolescent, receiving some kind of academic award. At sixteen, behind the wheel of a car that cost more than their first apartment. At twenty, in a tuxedo that didn't fit quite right, standing beside a woman with dark hair and a calculating smile.

"His date to the Met Gala," Jordi said from the doorway. She hadn't heard him enter, too absorbed in the evidence of her absence. "Last year. The relationship didn't last."

"Who is she?"

"Nobody important." He crossed to her, his hand finding her shoulder with careful neutrality. "A socialite. Someone the board thought would be-appropriate."

"Appropriate." Isadora turned the frame, studied her son's face. He looked happy, she realized. Or something like happy. The expression of a young man who'd learned to perform contentment because he'd forgotten what the real thing felt like. "And the twins? Where are their pictures?"

Jordi's hand tightened. Just for a moment. Then released.

"Benjamin keeps his distance. Oxford, as I said. He visits for holidays, sometimes. When he needs-" A pause. "When he needs something."

"And Blossom?"

The silence stretched. Isadora turned, found Jordi's expression carefully blank, and felt her stomach drop. She looked back at the photos, her eyes scanning the edges of the frames. There was one picture of Blossom, half-hidden behind Hector's graduation portrait. The girl in the photo was stunning, but her eyes were glassy, her smile brittle, and she was painfully thin.

"Jordi," Isadora said, picking up the frame, her thumb brushing the glass over her daughter's hollow cheek. "What happened to my daughter? She looks... she looks lost."

"Nothing happened." He said it too quickly, stepping forward to gently pry the frame from her hands. "She's just... finding her way. She's in the city, pursuing her-her art. She has an apartment, an allowance, everything she needs."

"Everything she needs." Isadora repeated the words, hearing the hollowness beneath them. "Or everything you think she should need? Why is her photo hidden, Jordi? Why does she look like she hasn't slept in a week?"

"Issy-"

"Show me." She stood, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. "I want to see her. Talk to her. I want to-"

"She won't answer." The admission came quietly, almost gently. "I've tried. Hundreds of times. She takes my calls when she wants money, hangs up when I ask about her life. The last time we spoke... she told me I was dead to her. That I'd been dead since you-since you left."

Isadora felt the words like a physical blow. She reached for the dresser, found its edge, held on. "Why?"

"Because I failed her." Jordi's voice was flat, stripped of the emotion he'd shown earlier, replaced by a rigid defensive posture he must have honed over years of board meetings and bitter arguments. "Because I was so busy searching for you that I missed... the warning signs. She had a difficult adolescence. She rebelled."

"Rebelled?" Isadora's voice rose. "That's not just rebellion in her eyes, Jordi. Tell me the truth."

He looked away, his jaw clenching so hard she thought his teeth might crack. "She had a bad phase. A few years ago. She made some poor choices with the wrong crowd."

Isadora closed her eyes, trying to breathe, reading between the lines of his corporate, sanitized explanation. Her daughter, her baby girl, alone in a world that had taken her mother and left her with a ghost for a father. "And now?" she pressed, her voice trembling.

"Now she keeps her distance," Jordi moved closer, his hand finding hers where it gripped the dresser. "I have people who watch. Discreetly. They report when she-when there's reason to be concerned."

"You have her spied on."

"I have her protected." The defensiveness was automatic, familiar. The Jordi she'd always known, the one who'd built walls first and asked questions later. "I couldn't-can't-lose another child, Issy. I can't survive that."

She opened her eyes. Looked at him-at the man who'd kept her clothes and her painting and her memory, who'd searched for her through madness and despair, who'd failed their children in ways he couldn't acknowledge and couldn't forgive.

"We need to fix this," she said. "All of it. Hector's anger, Blossom's-" She stopped, couldn't say the word. "Benjamin's distance. We need to find a way to be family again, even if-" She squeezed his hand. "Even if they never believe who I am. Even if the DNA tests prove nothing, change nothing. We need to try."

Jordi nodded, his expression shifting, hope and fear warring for dominance.

"There's a gala," he said. "Next week. Vaughan Foundation fundraiser. Hector will be there, representing the company. Blossom usually attends-the social aspect, the photographers, she enjoys that." He paused, his thumb tracing circles against her palm. "If you were there. If they saw you, spoke to you, in a setting where-"

"Where I could be impressive?" Isadora laughed, the sound brittle. "Where I could prove my value before they decide whether to accept me?"

"Where you could be seen." He corrected gently. "Where the world could see what I've seen. What I know." He brought her hand to his lips, pressed a kiss to her knuckles. "Where you could begin to claim your life back."