Morning came slowly inside the mansion, dragging shadows across the marble floor as if time refused to move. Aria hadn't slept much. Every creak of the walls sounded like footsteps. Every whisper of wind reminded her she wasn't supposed to be here.
By the time she reached the study, the air already carried his presence, still, deliberate, impossible to ignore.
Mr. Cole was there.
Sitting behind the desk, eyes moving over a spread of old papers, his sleeves rolled up, one hand resting on the edge as though steadying himself against a storm that never ended.
"Good morning," Aria said carefully.
He didn't look up immediately. "You're early."
"I couldn't sleep."
"That will happen for a while," he said calmly. "Fear has a strange way of keeping people awake."
Aria hesitated. "And you? Do you sleep at all, Mr. Cole?"
Silence lingered. Then a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. "Only when I forget what I've lost."
He gestured to the seat across from him. "Sit. You wanted to write. Let's begin."
She lowered herself into the chair, her pulse uneven. Papers were stacked neatly, but between them were fragments, half-burned notes, names crossed out, dates erased. Every piece looked like it belonged to someone running from his own life.
"You kept all of this," she said softly.
"I don't throw away evidence of my mistakes."
Her gaze drifted to one page marked "Flight 83 — Confidential." The letters made her throat tighten.
"That was the crash," she whispered. "The one everyone believed you died in."
He didn't look away this time. His eyes were steady, unflinching. "Belief is a powerful thing, Miss Aria. Sometimes it saves you. Sometimes it kills you."
"But you were on that flight. They said no one—" Her words faltered. "How did you survive something like that?"
He leaned back slowly, the faint creak of the chair echoing in the stillness. "I shouldn't have," he said at last. "Luck, maybe. Or punishment. Depends on who's asking."
"That doesn't make sense."
"It's not supposed to."
She stared at him, waiting for more, but he had already turned his gaze back to the papers, the conversation sealed shut before it even began.
"I thought you were dead," she whispered.
"Everyone did," he said simply. "That's what made it work."
A chill spread through her chest. "Work? You mean you wanted them to believe it?"
He met her eyes then, and for a heartbeat, she saw something raw flicker behind that calm exterior, something that didn't belong to a man who had moved on.
"I wanted silence," he said quietly. "And sometimes the only way to get it is to let the world bury you."
She didn't know what to say. The weight of his words hung thick in the air between them.
When he finally stood and walked toward the window, the sunlight caught the faint scar running along the side of his neck, one she hadn't noticed before. It wasn't small. It looked earned. Real.
Her breath caught. "That's from the crash, isn't it?"
He didn't answer, but his reflection in the glass gave him away, the way his jaw tightened, the way his hand gripped the frame.
"Yes," he said finally. "Some fires don't burn everything. Just enough to remind you."
---
They worked in silence after that. The scratch of pen against paper filled the room, blending with the steady rhythm of his breathing. Sometimes, she caught him watching her, not with softness, but with calculation, as though measuring what she might uncover if he blinked too long.
Hours passed. The clock ticked itself toward evening.
When she rose to leave, her hand brushed a sheet that had slipped to the floor. She bent to pick it up and froze.
It wasn't business notes. It was handwriting rough and raw, nothing like the polished man before her. A single line stood out:
"Truth has teeth. And when it bites, it does not let go."
"Where did this come from?" she asked quietly.
His gaze flicked to it, then away. "Old thoughts. From a version of me that no longer exists."
"And what happened to him?"
Mr. Cole's expression didn't change, but something in his voice did, lower, distant. "He burned."
The air grew heavier. She didn't ask more.
---
When she finally returned to her room, her mind wouldn't stop spinning. She stared at the ceiling, the echo of his words circling in her head.
He burned.
Maybe that was the real ghost, the man he used to be.
Sleep came late. Shallow. Uneasy.
When it finally came, it wasn't peaceful.
She dreamt of fire, not flames she could see, but feel. Heat crawled beneath her skin, smoke pressed against her lungs until breathing hurt. She saw flashes, glass shattering, metal twisting, a sky ripped apart by thunder.
And through it all, he was there.
Mr. Cole, standing in the wreckage, unmoving. Smoke curled around him like it belonged to him. His eyes found hers through the chaos, dark and knowing, as if he had been waiting for her to see what he could never say.
"You wanted to know how I survived," he said. His voice was rougher, fractured, a sound torn between fire and silence.
"Maybe you should ask what didn't."
Then the world folded in on itself. Heat, sound, metal, gone.
And she was falling.
Aria woke with a gasp.
Her pulse thundered against her ribs. The room was silent, washed in silver moonlight. For a long moment she didn't move, afraid the world might still be burning around her.
It was just a dream, she told herself. Just a dream.
But as her breathing steadied, something felt wrong. The air held a faint scent, sharp, bitter, like burnt wood. She sat up, scanning the dark corners of her room. Nothing moved.
Only the candle on her desk, melted halfway down, though she remembered blowing it out before she slept.
Her hand trembled as she reached for it, and her heart whispered what her mind refused to believe.
Some fires don't need to burn to be real.