Chapter 33
“The Ghost from His Past
Vivienne? Is that really you?
The name dropped like a stone in a silent pond. It reverberated across the pristine marble floor of Calloway Tower’s totify and rang invide the high glass walls, freezing the murmurs and halting the foot traffic. Heads turned. Fingers paused mid–text. The soft sound of desig heels on polished marble slowed to stillness.
Vivienne Monroe.
She stood at the entrance like a blade drawn from its sheath, Graceful. Controlled. A storm disguised in elegance. Her coat, a sleek charcoal tailored to her slim frame, brushed her calves, and underneath it, the hem of her black wool dress flicked lightly with each step. No jewelry except a delicate gold chain at her throat, barely visible beneath the crisp collar of her blouse. Her curls were twisted high into a knot, revealing the graceful slope of her neck and cheekbones sculpted from old defiance.
She was no longer the girl they whispered about five years ago.
She was the ghost who’d learned how to walk among the living again.
Vivienne approached the front desk. Her movements precise. She didn’t fumble. Didn’t hesitate.
The receptionist, a young woman with a nameplate that read Brittany and eyes lined too sharply for the hour, blinked.
“You need an appointment,” Brittany managed.
“I’m aware.” Vivienne’s voice was low and velvety, but it cut. “But Magnus will want to see this.”
She opened her leather purse slowly, pulled out a thick beige envelope, and slid it across the desk. Brittany looked at it like it might detonate.
“Ma’am, we can’t just ”
Vivienne’s gaze didn’t flicker. “You can. You will.”
Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
Brittany’s cheeks flushed. She pressed the intercom.
“Mr. Calloway,” she said, voice suddenly less confident. “A woman’s here. No name. Left something urgent.”
Static. Then: “Send it up.”
The receptionist’s jaw tightened. “You can wait over there, ma’am.”
Vivienne didn’t move.
She stood, arms folded, facing the elevators.
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Chapter 33
Around her, whispers spread like fire. They didn’t know what they were saying yet, but they knew enough to whisper.
“Is that her?”
“Vivienne Monroe?
“Didn’t she disappear?”
“After her father got exposed? Bankrupt? Drunk at a gala? Something.”
“Why is she here now?”
Vivienne heard it all. Didn’t flinch.
She stood still, a silent challenge. Let them talk. Let the echoes carry her name back to the top floor.
Back to him.
А
(76)
She looked toward the glass doors. The world beyond shimmered, distorted by the sunlight and her own reflection. She barely recognized the woman staring back. Stronger. Harder. And tired not from life, but from the weight of always holding herself together.
Magnus Calloway didn’t sit behind his desk. He stood with his back to the room, hands buried in his trouser pockets, staring out over the city skyline as if it might answer questions he hadn’t asked in years. His office, all glass and cold sophistication, was bathed in morning light.
The envelope landed on his desk with a soft sound. His assistant left without a word. No explanations necessary.
Magnus turned slowly. His black shirt was crisp, collar unfastened at the neck, sleeves rolled back just enough to show forearms marked by tension. He moved like a man not used to being interrupted.
The envelope was ordinary. Plain. Unassuming.
He opened it.
A photo slid out.
Blue shutters. Fading paint. Ivy curled up an old porch post. A house built on history and memory and now, rot. His breath didn’t catch. He didn’t blink. But something behind his eyes shifted.
He knew that house.
Vivienne Monroe’s house.
He stared at the second page.
Final Notice. Property to be auctioned.
Past Due: $362,800.
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Chapter 33
Vivienne’s name is on it. Clear Sharp Legal
The wet the posper down
She was dredening
She’d come to him.
No message. No name. Just this.
He walked to the liquor cabinet. Poured a short glass of scotch. Didn’t drink it. He turned to the window again, glass in hand.
She had left him. No goodbye. No reason.
Now she was back with this.
He set the glass down without sipping.
He turned his phone over, then back again. A number still burned in his memory, long disconnected. He didn’t know where she had gone or what she had done, but some part of him had always imagined this. Her return. Her ruin.
And her needs.
Summer had smelled like rosemary and earth. Like her.
Vivienne had dragged him into the Monroe garden like he was just another weed she was determined to plant next to her wild blooms. She had no shoes. She’d insisted shoes disrupted her connection to the earth.
Magnus had laughed. He never laughed. Not really.
They sat side by side, knees touching, dirt smudging the sleeves of his linen shirt.
“You’re terrible at this,” she teased.
“You invited me.”
“I didn’t know you’d treat it like surgery,”
He grinned, watching her. “I’ve never been outside this long without cell service.”
“You’re surviving.”
“Barely.”
Vivienne brushed the hair from her face with the back of her wrist. A smudge of dirt streaked across her cheekbone. She was flushed from the sun, from the laughter, from the closeness.
“I like you like this,” she said.
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Chapter 33
“Like what?”
“Unbuttoned. Dirty. Present.”
He leaned back onto his elbows. “Don’t get used to it.”
“I won’t.”
76
That was the thing about Vivienne. She never pretended forever.
Later, they lay in the grass beneath the crooked oak tree behind the greenhouse. She rested her head on his chest, tracing lazy circles on
his collarbone.
“Stay with me,” he’d murmured.
“Always,” she whispered.
But always didn’t last past August.
One morning, she was gone. No warning. No goodbye. No explanation.
He drove to the house. The gate was locked. The garden is dead. The fountain is dry. No sign of her.
A week passed. Then another.
And then, a single note was left under his windshield wiper.
Twelve words.
I’m sorry. I can’t stay. Don’t look for me.
No signature.
He never did look.
But he never forgot.
And now, the past was back rattling the gates.
Magnus stared at her foreclosure notice again. His jaw is tight.
“She chose to vanish.”
He picked up the photo. Tapped it once against the desk.
“Let her drown.”
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THE PHOENIX’S REVENGE
