The house had never been colder.
Not even when she'd first arrived here as a frightened nine-year-old, unable to understand that her real parents were dead. Then, the mansion had appeared like a fairy-tale magic, too much to take in—like a dream spun of silk sheets, gold filigree chandeliers, and rooms too big for one girl to fill. But now it felt like a mausoleum. A place of ghosts.
Layla stood next to the marble staircase, her hand tracing down the cold polished rail one last time. The walls that had once been filled with subdued dinner parties and friendly conversation now rang with silence. After the funeral, the estate lawyers had seen to everything with cold efficiency. The house would be sold. The assets divided among distant relatives. And Layla—who was barely eighteen—would be left with enough money to survive, but no home to call her own.
Margaret and David Grey had died in what the accounts called a "tragic domestic accident." Blaze. Gas explosion. Instant. Irreversible. That was how they phrased it—safe, clinical, emotionless. But to Layla, it wasn't tragic. It was familiar. Much too familiar.
Exactly like the very first time.
Two sets of parents. Two unexplainable accidents. One girl extra.
But the world did not want to repeat itself unnecessarily. Even at eighteen, Layla knew that much. She did not have the equipment and the knowledge to dig deeper, and no one around her was asking questions. Everyone just wanted to move on. To forget.
So she did what she always did: she survived.
The first year was the hardest. She sublet a tiny studio in the seedy section of town, trading in her life of luxury for one of shadows. No butlers, no crystal dinner plates—only cracked walls, creaking floors, and the rumble of sirens rocking her to sleep at night. She did whatever she could find—waitressing, cleaning, even night clerk at a 24-hour convenience store—anything to keep her head above water.
But Layla was smart. And relentless.
By the time she was twenty-one, she had learned the art of blending in, of covering up her pain with a practiced smile. She won a scholarship to a second-rate business school, fueled by all-nighters, coffee, and a cold kind of determination that unnerved her professors. Her motivation wasn't built on dreams. It was built on a resolve to never be helpless again.
She never spoke of her past. Not to classmates. Not to suitors. Not even to herself.
The Greys were dead. Her real parents were dead. All she had left was scars stitched beneath the surface of her skin and a heart hardened through loss.
Years passed, and the ache dulled—but never ceased. It became a part of her. Like a second spine.
She grew up beautiful in a manner that turned heads—tall, striking, with eyes that pierced like a knife. But behind that beauty lay something else: something dangerous. Something unraveling.
At twenty-four, Layla Grey was a junior assistant in one of the city's top investment firms—Blackwell & Creed, a name spoken in influential circles. She'd fought tooth and nail to reach this point, clawed her way through a hundred interviews, late nights, and grueling tests. No one gave it to her. Not now.
She didn't trust anyone. Her boss, her coworkers, the smooth-talking men in business suits who slipped her drinks at networking receptions. She kept her head down, her heels up, and her eyes wide open.
It was a life based on control. And she clung to control for dear life.
But control has a way of slipping through even the best grasp.
And Layla was going to learn that the past—however deeply hidden—has a knack of returning.
The truth wouldn't arrive in a fireball of flames as before. It would arrive in stages, like a creeping mist seeping in through the gaps in her diligently built world.
And when it did, it would burn.