Return Of The Billionaire's Ghost Wife

The pressure on her throat didn't increase.

It didn't release, either. Jordi's thumb stayed pressed against her pulse, counting her heartbeats like a metronome, while his other hand kept her pinned to the marble. She could feel him watching her, the weight of his gaze physical, searching for something she didn't know how to give.

Her lungs burned. Not from lack of air-he was careful, terrifyingly careful-but from the sobs she was swallowing, the scream building in her chest that would only prove his point, would only convince him she was some kind of programmed doll playing at emotion.

She needed something he couldn't fake.

Something no surgeon could implant, no investigator could dig up from old photographs or gossip columns.

June fourth.

The date surfaced from somewhere deeper than conscious thought, dragging itself through the panic and the oxygen deprivation. She'd been wearing her favorite sundress, yellow with white polka dots. He'd been-

"June fourth," she rasped.

His fingers twitched. Barely. But she'd felt it.

"Brooklyn Bridge," she continued, forcing the words through her bruised throat. "You were wearing-that ridiculous Ramones t-shirt. The one with the hole in the shoulder. And mismatched socks. One blue, one gray."

The hand on her throat loosened.

Not much. Not enough. But she could breathe now, could drag in air that tasted of his cologne-something darker and more expensive than the citrus he'd worn fifteen years ago, but underneath it, still him. Still Jordi.

"Anyone could know that." His voice had changed. Still rough, still dangerous, but with something underneath now. Uncertainty. "Old photos. Interviews. It's not-"

"Our prenup." She didn't let him finish, didn't let him rebuild the wall she'd cracked. "Article 7. Section B. Subsection three."

His pupils dilated. She watched it happen, watched the shock move through his face like a wave.

She pressed her advantage, her voice gaining strength even as her body trembled against the wall. "'In the event of dissolution of marriage due to non-amicable separation, the ownership of the small, untitled watercolor painting of a lighthouse, currently hanging in the master bedroom of the Hamptons estate, defaults to Isadora Brennan-Vaughan, without condition.'"

The hand on her chin fell away.

Jordi stepped back. Just one step. Two. His face had gone gray, the blood draining from it so fast she thought he might faint. He reached out, found nothing to hold onto, and let his arm drop.

"You called it 'the only light you ever needed.'" Isadora pushed herself off the wall, her legs barely holding her, wrapping her arms around herself because she was still naked and suddenly, horribly cold. "You were so cheesy. I laughed at you for a week."

"I painted it the night before our wedding." His voice was barely audible. "In the hotel room. I was too nervous to sleep."

"I know."

"I never showed it to anyone. Never photographed it. The lawyer thought it was just a decoration, some thrift store garbage-"

"I know."

His eyes found hers. And this time, something broke. Something huge and structural, the foundation of whatever he'd built to survive the last fifteen years, cracking down the middle.

"Issy?"

The nickname hit her like a physical blow. She hadn't heard it in-he'd said fifteen years. He'd said she was dead. But he was looking at her now like she was a ghost he'd been chasing, a hallucination he'd finally caught.

She tried to step toward him. Her knees buckled.

He caught her. His arms closed around her with desperate strength, lifting her off her feet, crushing her against his chest. She felt his heart hammering against her cheek, felt the tremor running through his entire body, the way his breath came in short, sharp bursts that weren't quite sobs.

"I've got you," he whispered into her hair. "I've got you. I've got-"

His grip tightened until she couldn't breathe, until her ribs ached with it, and she didn't care. She clung to him, her fingers finding the familiar shape of his shoulder blades beneath his shirt, the scar on his collarbone from a sailing accident when they were twenty-five.

He was real. This was real.

"I looked for you." His voice cracked, muffled against her neck. "Every day. Every fucking day, Issy. I never stopped looking. I did... things. Things I'm not proud of. Just to feel close to you again, just for a second." He stopped, his whole body shuddering with the weight of a decade and a half of relentless, suffocating absence. "I tore the world apart looking for an answer that wasn't there."

She didn't ask what things. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"You're cold." He pulled back suddenly, his face ravaged, tears tracking down cheeks that had forgotten how to make them. "You're freezing. Here. Here-"

He grabbed a bathrobe from the hook by the door-her bathrobe, she realized, silk and cashmere in a color he'd always said matched her eyes-and wrapped it around her with clumsy, frantic hands. He tied the belt twice, three times, as if the knot could keep her from disappearing.

"Is this real?" He cupped her face, his thumbs brushing her cheekbones with terrifying gentleness. "Tell me this is real. Tell me I'm not-"

"It's real." She covered his hands with hers, felt the calluses that hadn't been there before, the rough skin of a man who'd worked with his hands in ways he never had as the polished CEO she'd married. "I'm here, Jordi. I'm here."

He lifted her again, carried her through the bedroom she didn't recognize-minimalist, cold, nothing of the warm clutter they'd built together-and settled her on a leather sofa that smelled of expensive tobacco and loneliness.

He knelt in front of her. Just knelt there, his hands on her knees, his forehead pressed against hers, breathing her in like she was air and he was drowning.

"I don't understand," he whispered. "I don't understand how. I don't-"

"Neither do I." She ran her fingers through his hair, found more gray than black, felt the tension coiled in his scalp. "The plane. I remember the plane going down. And then-water. Cold. And then here. Just here."

"Fifteen years." He said it like a prayer. Like a curse. "God, Issy. Fifteen years."

She looked at him then, really looked, and saw what time had done. The lines carved deep around his mouth and eyes. The permanent furrow between his brows. The way he held himself, coiled and ready, as if violence was his default state now.

"What happened to you?" she asked softly.

He didn't answer. Couldn't, maybe. His eyes were fixed on her face, drinking her in, his hands moving restlessly over her arms, her shoulders, as if confirming her solidity with every touch.

"I need to understand," she said. "I need you to tell me-"

A phone buzzed somewhere. Jordi ignored it.

"-about the children. About Hector. Blossom and Benji. Are they-"

"Safe." The word seemed to unlock something in him. He pulled back, just slightly, his hands settling on her knees with proprietary weight. "They're safe. They're-" He stopped, his jaw working. "They're not children anymore."

The statement landed between them like a stone.

"Issy." He took her hands in his, his grip almost painful. "Hector is twenty-three. The twins are twenty. They're-they've grown up. Without-"

He couldn't finish. She didn't need him to.

Twenty-three. Her Hector, who'd cried when she left for that conference because he was eight and eight was still young enough to believe that mothers came back from every trip. Who'd made her promise to bring him back a shell from the beach in San Francisco.

She'd promised.

"Where are they?" Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, distant and hollow. "I want to see them. I need to-"

"Not yet." Jordi's grip tightened. "Issy, you need to understand. They don't-they think you're dead. Everyone thinks you're dead. If I just-if I bring you to them like this, they'll-"

"What?"

He looked away. For the first time since he'd released her throat, he looked away.

"They'll think I've lost my mind," he said quietly. "Or worse. They'll think I've found some replacement. Some-" He laughed, harsh and broken. "Some trophy to fill the space where you used to be."

Isadora felt the words like a physical blow. The idea that her children could look at her face and see a stranger. That they could hate her on sight for being something she wasn't.

"I need proof," she said. "Evidence. Something that-"

"I'll get it." Jordi's head snapped up, his eyes fierce with sudden purpose. "Whatever you need. DNA testing, medical records, whatever it takes to prove-" He stopped, his expression shifting, something calculating moving behind the desperation. "But first, you need to rest. You need to eat. You're shaking."

She was. She hadn't noticed until he said it, but her hands were trembling in his grip, her whole body vibrating with delayed shock.

"There's food in the kitchen," he said, already standing, already moving toward the door with that restless energy she'd always found exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure. "I'll have something sent up. And clothes. You can't-" He gestured at the bathrobe, his expression flickering with something that might have been grief. "You need clothes."

"Jordi."

He stopped at the door, his hand on the frame, his back to her.

"Don't leave me alone."

The words came out smaller than she intended, smaller than she wanted them to be. She was Isadora Vaughan, she'd built empires beside this man, she'd faced down boardrooms and birthing rooms and the terrifying blankness of postpartum depression. She didn't beg.

But she was also a woman who'd lost fifteen years in the space of a breath, who'd woken up in a world where her children were strangers and her husband was a ghost wearing familiar skin.

He turned. Crossed the room in three strides. Knelt again and gathered her against his chest, his arms forming a cage she never wanted to leave.

"Never," he whispered into her hair. "I'm never leaving you again. I swear it. I swear-"

His voice broke. He held her tighter, his body shaking with silent sobs he was too proud, too broken, to let her hear.

She held him back. And wondered what price that promise would cost them both.