The chandeliers glistened like droplets of crystal rain above the ballroom, casting fractured light across designer suits and sequined gowns. Laughter floated like perfume, artificial and practiced, as the wealthy elite of Marlowe City danced between champagne glasses and whispered betrayals.

Selene Virelli stood still in the eye of that storm.

She wore red—not just any red, but a shade that burned against her pale skin like fresh blood. Her dress clung to her frame like liquid fire, silk rippling with each breath she took. It wasn't the kind of red you wore to be admired. It was the kind you wore to be remembered.

Every step she took across the marble floor was deliberate, a soundless strike against an invisible enemy. Her heels clicked like gunshots. Her eyes swept the crowd, cold and calculating, yet softened with a smile that could disarm gods. She was elegance carved from vengeance.

Victor Harrow noticed her immediately.

He was leaning against the balcony, surrounded by lesser men pretending to matter. A self-made billionaire with fingers in pharmaceuticals, tech, and politics—Victor was a man who bought power by the ounce and loyalty by the minute. But he had one fatal weakness: he always thought he was the smartest man in the room.

Selene would make sure he died believing that, too.

She approached slowly, giving him time to see her, to let desire dull his instincts. Their eyes met. His lips curled into the kind of smile that thought it had already won.

"You're not from here," he said, voice smooth as polished granite.

"No," Selene replied, reaching for a glass of champagne from a passing tray. She didn't drink it. "But men like you are everywhere."

He laughed, not realizing she'd insulted him. She leaned closer, her breath brushing his ear.

"Buy me a drink somewhere quieter," she said.

Victor raised an eyebrow. "Just like that?"

Selene’s smile was the curve of a dagger. “You’ll find I’m rarely complicated.”

It was a lie. She was a labyrinth lined with razors.

He offered his arm. She took it.

As they descended the stairs into the quieter lounge, Selene reached into her clutch and silently clicked open a hidden compartment. Inside lay a folded photo of a teenage girl with soft eyes and a blue orchid pinned in her hair.

Selene’s smile faltered for only half a second.

Then she sealed the compartment and followed Victor Harrow to his favorite corner table.

Tonight, she would make him fall in love.

Later, she would make him scream.

Aidan Rooke didn’t believe in ghosts—at least not the kind that rattled chains or haunted attics.

He believed in the ones that smiled in photographs, vanished without trace, and left bodies behind like broken promises.

He sat at his cluttered desk, fingers tapping against a mug of cold coffee, eyes locked on a string board that stretched across the back wall of his studio apartment. Red thread connected photos, police reports, and blacked-out financial documents. In the center of it all, pinned like a spider at the heart of a web, was a single name: Selene Virelli.

Or at least, the name she was using now.

Aidan leaned back and rubbed his jaw. He had stumbled across her by accident—or fate, depending on how drunk he was when he told the story. Three years ago, he'd been covering a high-profile suicide: a state senator found dead in a penthouse suite, pills scattered like candy across the tile. Open-and-shut, they said. Until Aidan found a surveillance shot—grainy, timestamped, almost lost in the data flood—that showed a woman leaving the hotel twenty minutes before the senator was found dead.

That woman had worn a red coat.

Her face was turned, just slightly, but it was enough. He’d kept digging. And the more he dug, the less he liked what he found.

Six dead men. All powerful. All connected by investments, secrets, or sins.

And all of them had been involved with a woman who had no past before five years ago. No childhood photos. No parents. No school records.

Selene Virelli had appeared out of nowhere, brilliant and beautiful, and every man who got too close to her ended up ruined, dead, or forgotten.

And now she was in Marlowe City.

Aidan turned to his laptop. Earlier that day, a contact from the gala had sent him a grainy photo from the Harrow Foundation event. Even pixelated, Selene’s red dress was unmistakable. He zoomed in, watching her smile as she walked beside Victor Harrow.

The bastard didn’t stand a chance.

He sighed. If Harrow ended up in a grave, it wouldn’t be the worst tragedy. The man was known for burying lawsuits and bribing health inspectors into silence. But Aidan wasn't here to mourn villains. He wanted the truth.

He wanted her truth.

What drove a woman like Selene to orchestrate destruction with the elegance of a violinist? Why did she make powerful men fall in love, only to ruin them?

Aidan didn’t want to destroy her.

He wanted to understand her.

That was his first mistake.

His phone buzzed. A new email: Subject: Blue Orchid. No sender name.

He opened it cautiously. Inside was a single image—an old yearbook photo. A teenage girl with soft features, holding a blue orchid.

The caption read:

Liliana Vale, Class of 2012.

Beneath it, in handwritten scrawl:

“You’re not looking at the ghost. You’re looking at the reason she became one.”

Aidan’s pulse quickened.

He reached for a pen.

Selene had a sister.

And someone out there wanted Aidan to find her.

Victor Harrow's penthouse was a palace in glass—walls of steel and skyline, ceilings that vanished into the stars. It wasn’t a home; it was a throne room, built for a man who believed in immortality through wealth.

Selene had been here before.

Not this exact one, but versions of it. Power always had a blueprint—sleek surfaces, rare wine, a woman-shaped shadow waiting to be conquered. She walked the space like she’d designed it.

Victor poured two glasses of bourbon and handed her one. She let it warm her palm, but didn’t drink.

“Tell me something true,” he said, eyes hungry for intimacy. “Something real.”

Selene gave him a soft laugh. “I hate elevators.”

Victor blinked. “That’s your truth?”

She stepped closer, voice velvet. “You didn’t say it had to be deep.”

His hand brushed her hip. “Fine. My truth? I don’t trust people who don’t drink.”

She tilted her head. “Then I’m exactly who I say I am.”

They clinked glasses, and he drank. She did not.

As he turned to admire the cityscape, she reached into her clutch and slipped out a tiny dropper. One drop of clear liquid fell into her untouched drink—undetectable, flavorless, a neuroinhibitor designed to mimic intoxication and mild confusion. She wouldn’t drink it. But he might later.

Selene needed time. Time to extract what Victor knew. Time to find out if he was just another arrogant businessman—or if he was part of the rot that killed Liliana.

She watched his reflection in the window. He smiled as if he owned the skyline. He didn’t even notice she wasn’t smiling back.

“Tell me about the blue orchids in your foyer,” she said casually, swirling her glass.

He turned. “Ah. Rare. Colombian. I had them flown in after a deal with one of our South American partners. Why?”

Selene’s voice didn’t waver. “My sister loved them.”

His expression shifted. “You have a sister?”

“Had.”

A pause.

Victor stepped closer, placing a hand on her back. “I'm sorry.”

Selene turned to face him, eyes shadowed with grief she didn’t fake. “She died alone. In a place men like you build.”

Victor blinked. “Excuse me?”

The moment tightened.

Then she smiled—too quickly—and the tension dissolved. “I mean the world. This world. Fast money. Cold nights. Empty promises.”

Victor relaxed again. “She sounds like she deserved better.”

Selene looked out the window. “She did.”

As Victor walked to the bar to pour himself a second drink, Selene slowly pulled out a flash drive from a hidden pocket in her clutch. She slipped it into the back of a digital frame sitting on the mantle—one Victor had carelessly connected to his office network.

The drive would copy everything by morning—emails, passwords, bank logs. All she had to do now was stay close. Close enough to see what he was hiding.

Victor turned back, smiling like a wolf.

“Stay the night,” he said.

Selene’s voice was silk and sorrow. “I’ll stay long enough to be unforgettable.”