Eliza regretted agreeing the moment Alex carried his bag over the threshold. The little apartment above the café had once been her safe haven two rooms, a creaky old floor, salt air drifting through the cracked windows. It smelled like coffee and sea salt and freedom from him.

Now it smelled like him again, the faint hint of aftershave. He looked absurdly out of place setting his leather suitcase down beside her secondhand dresser.

She crossed her arms over her chest, bracing herself. “You can sleep in the guest room,” she said flatly.

He glanced around the tiny space faded floral curtains, a single narrow bed that sagged in the middle. “This is the guest room?”

“This is what you get.” She turned away before he could say something kind. Or worse, something honest.

Downstairs, she busied herself with the café. She scrubbed the counter even though it was already clean. She rearranged the pastries in the glass case. Anything to keep from hearing the soft creak of floorboards above her head proof that the man she’d once called husband was just upstairs, breathing the same air, haunting the same walls.

It didn’t take long for him to come down. He appeared in the kitchen doorway like a ghost she’d half-hoped was still a dream. His sleeves were rolled up, and for a heartbeat she remembered him in their old apartment sleeves rolled up, pouring over contracts at the kitchen table while she brought him tea he never drank.

“Do you want coffee?” she asked stiffly, her back to him.

“I didn’t come down for coffee,” he said. His voice was closer now, softer than she remembered like he knew how to step carefully around her bruised heart.

She turned, dish rag twisting in her fists. “Then what do you want, Alex? What’s this to you? Some game? An experiment to see if pretending will fix what you broke?”

He winced. She hated that she still noticed. Hated that it made him seem real, vulnerable human.

“I don’t know how to fix it,” he said, stepping closer. “I just know I need you to help me remember who I was supposed to be with you.”

She let out a hollow laugh. “Who you were supposed to be? You were supposed to be my husband, Alex. You were supposed to love me.”

Silence fell between them thick as the fog rolling in off the ocean outside. He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away before he could touch her.

“I’ll pretend for your precious memory,” she whispered. “But don’t think for a second this makes us real again.”

Upstairs, the guest room door creaked open and shut as he went back up alone. And Eliza stood in the kitchen, shaking fighting the ache in her chest that whispered maybe, just maybe, this man with no memory might break her all over again.

Alex had never felt fear the way he did now not when facing hostile boardrooms, not when clawing his way to the top. But waking up to find Eliza gone, her clothes vanished, her perfume only a ghost on his pillow… that fear was primal. It hollowed out his chest like a dull blade.

He found himself in the guest room she’d claimed as her own. The bed was made, the closet empty. On the dresser lay a single silver hairpin the one she’d worn the night he’d asked her, cold and mechanical, Will you sign the contract, Eliza? Not Will you marry me? Not Will you be mine?

His fingers trembled as he picked up the pin. His mind flared with fragments flashes of white silk, the taste of champagne, her eyes rimmed red as she signed the paper he’d pushed across the table.

How many nights had she lain awake beside him, a wife in name but a stranger in truth? How many mornings had she stared at his back as he left their bed for another woman’s arms?

He clenched the hairpin so tightly it bit into his palm.

“Mr. Reign?” Martha’s voice at the doorway startled him. The old housekeeper, who’d loved Eliza like a daughter, looked at him now with something close to pity. Or maybe contempt. He deserved both.

“She’s gone,” he rasped.

Martha nodded. “She asked me not to say. But you’d find out sooner or later.”

Alex forced his voice steady. “Where did she go, Martha?”

Her silence was answer enough.

“Martha please.”

It broke through then, the desperate crack in his voice. The housekeeper’s eyes softened, but she held her ground.

“Mr. Reign, all I can say is this: if you really love her you’ll find her yourself. And you’ll fix what you broke.”

She turned away, leaving him alone with the echo of his own cruelty.

Eliza didn’t belong in places like Reign House glass palaces with secrets tucked behind silk curtains. Here, by the gray northern sea, the world felt honest. Salt air on her skin, sand in her shoes, wind tangling her hair these things reminded her she was still real. That once, long before Alexander Reign, she’d dreamed of simple joys: a little shop, a garden, a man who looked at her like she was enough.

Now she sat behind the counter of the Sea Glass Café, scribbling invoices while gulls shrieked outside. Sunlight danced on the chipped tables and mismatched chairs. It wasn’t perfect, but it was hers. And no one here called her Mrs. Reign.

Some nights, when the wind howled and the oldw heater rattled, she’d remember his hands cold on her waist, hot on her skin. She’d remember how he’d turned away after, leaving her to curl up on her side of the bed. She’d remember Veronica’s perfume lingering on his suit.

She’d remember the vows he’d spoken to the shareholders, not to her.

A bell jingled. Eliza looked up, startled but it was only Iris, her new neighbor. Kind, motherly, all too curious.

“Still hiding out in here, sweetheart?” Iris teased, setting down a crate of fresh bread.

“I’m not hiding,” Eliza lied, smiling faintly.

“Mmm.” Iris leaned closer. “The ocean doesn’t keep secrets forever, you know.”

Eliza didn’t answer. She just slipped a strand of hair behind her ear and tried not to wonder if, somewhere, Alex was staring at the sea too.

Veronica’s stiletto heels clicked across the marble floors of Reign Holdings like gunfire. She liked that the sound of power echoing off glass and steel. She liked it even more when people pretended not to look as she passed. She liked the fear.

She pushed open Alex’s office door without knocking. Inside, the man himself sat behind his vast desk, tie askew, hair disheveled. The powerful Alexander Reign looked more like a ghost of himself now and Veronica relished it.

“You look terrible, darling,” she purred, sliding into the chair opposite him. “Still playing detective? Or did your little runaway wife send you a postcard yet?”

Alex didn’t lift his head. “What do you want, Veronica?”

She feigned a pout. “I’m worried about you, obviously.”

“Try someone else.”

She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Listen to me, Alex. You don’t need her. You never did. She was always temporary. A means to an end.”

He looked up then and she almost flinched at the ice in his eyes.

“She was my wife.”

Veronica laughed. “You keep saying was. Face it. She’s gone. She’s nobody now. And you you have a company to run. Investors to calm. A merger on the verge of collapse because your pretty little wife decided she’s a tragic heroine.”

He said nothing.

Veronica leaned closer, her breath sweet with expensive wine. “I can fix this. I can fix you. Let me come back, Alex. Let tand

by your side where I belong.”

She reached for his hand. For a moment, her fingers brushed his wrist and then he jerked away, standing so abruptly his chair nearly toppled.

“Get out,” he said, voice low and dangerous.

Veronica’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of rage marring her perfect smile.

“This obsession with her will ruin you, Alex. Remember who really knows you. Who knows what you’re capable of.”

His jaw flexed. “I know exactly what I’m capable of. And if you ever touch her again if you so much as whisper her name where she can hear I will bury you.”

Veronica stood, smoothing her skirt. “Careful, darling. Threats are ugly. And so very easy to twist.”

She slipped out, leaving the door swinging open behind her and Alex staring at the city skyline, wondering how to find a ghost who didn’t want to be found.