CHAPTER 2: THE GIRL WHO DIED
The news spreads before the sun can rise.
It starts as a whisper. A police scanner. A hospital source. Someone who knows someone who was at the scene. The words travel fast, jumping from phone to phone, from screen to screen, from mouth to mouth.
"Isla Prescott is dead."
By morning, it is everywhere.
Headlines scream across news websites. Breaking news banners flash on television screens. Social media lights up with speculation, with shock, with the kind of morbid curiosity that follows tragedy like a shadow. The only daughter of William Prescott. The heir to Prescott Holdings. Dead the night before her wedding.
A tragic accident. A bride-to-be was killed just hours before she was supposed to walk down the aisle.
A life cut short before it could begin.
The photos circulating online show a girl with soft brown hair and quiet eyes. She is not smiling in most of them. In the ones where she is, the smile is small. Uncertain. Like she was not sure she was allowed to be happy.
Now she is gone.
The comments pour in. Condolences from people who never knew her. Prayers from strangers who never once said her name while she was alive. Flowers are already being delivered to the Prescott mansion gates, piled against the iron bars like offerings to a ghost.
Inside the mansion, the atmosphere is heavy.
But not with grief.
Sophia Prescott stands in the living room, dressed in black from head to toe. The dress is expensive. The pearls around her neck are real. Her hair is pinned up in that perfect way she has worn it for twenty-three years, ever since she walked into this house as the new Mrs. Prescott.
She holds the phone to her ear, her voice calm and steady, like she is discussing quarterly earnings instead of her stepdaughter's death.
"Yes… it is unfortunate," she says smoothly. "These things happen."
Her voice carries the perfect amount of sadness. The right weight. The right tone. A widow's sorrow. A mother's pain.
Except she is not a widow. William Prescott is still alive, somewhere across the ocean, probably still unaware that his only blood child is gone. And she is not a mother. Not to Isla. She never has been.
She paces slowly in front of the window, her heels clicking against the marble floor. Outside, reporters are gathering at the gate. Cameras. Microphones. Vultures circling fresh meat.
"I will release a statement later this afternoon," Sophia continues, her voice never wavering. "The family requests privacy during this difficult time."
She pauses. Listens. A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, but she smooths it away before anyone could see.
"Yes, I understand. Thank you for calling."
She ends the call and sets the phone down on the table. Her reflection stares back at her from the dark screen—composed, elegant, every hair in place.
She does not look like a woman who lost a daughter.
She looks like a woman who won.
Across the room, Alexia sits on the couch, her legs tucked under her, her phone in her hands. Her thumb scrolls slowly through the headlines, pausing on the ones with Isla's picture. The same picture they always use. The one from the charity gala two years ago, where Isla stood in the corner holding a glass of champagne she never drank, looking like she was waiting for permission to exist.
Alexia's expression is unreadable. Her face is still. Her eyes move across the screen, reading, absorbing, cataloging.
"So fast," she murmurs, almost to herself. "The media works quickly."
Sophia turns to look at her daughter. Her eyes narrow slightly, sharp and assessing.
"Be careful with your expression."
Alexia looks up, raising one perfectly shaped eyebrow. "What expression?"
"That one." Sophia gestures vaguely toward her face. "You look pleased."
A brief silence stretches between them. Outside, a reporter's voice echoes from the gate, calling out questions no one will answer.
Alexia's lips curve into a faint smile. It is not warm. It is not kind. It is the smile of someone who has been waiting a very long time for something, and now that something is finally here.
"I am not pleased," she says softly. "I am relieved."
The word hangs in the air between them. Relieved. Not sad. Not grieving. Not even pretending to be.
Sophia studies her daughter for a long moment. Then she nods slowly, a flicker of approval in her eyes.
"Good," she says. "But keep it to yourself. The world is watching."
Alexia's smile fades back into something neutral, something acceptable. She looks down at her phone again, scrolling past the headlines, past the photos, past the comments from people who never knew Isla and already miss her.
"Have you spoken to Braxton?" Sophia asks.
Alexia's fingers pause on the screen. Her jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.
"He is not answering."
Sophia's eyebrows lift slightly. "Not answering?"
"He is upset." Alexia says the words like they leave a bad taste in her mouth. "He keeps saying it is his fault. That if he had answered her calls, she would not have left. That he should have gone after her."
Sophia lets out a small, dismissive sound. "He will get over it. Men always do."
Alexia does not respond. She stares at her phone, at the message she sent Isla last night, the one with the smiley face, the one that pushed her right over the edge. She should probably delete it. But she does not.
She wants to keep it.
Upstairs, Sam Prescott leans against the hallway wall, his phone pressed to his ear. His voice is low, casual, like he is discussing something ordinary. Something unimportant.
"Yeah, I heard," he says lazily. "Terrible accident."
He listens for a moment, his eyes drifting toward the closed door at the end of the hall. Isla's room. The door no one has opened since last night. The room no one will ever open again, probably. They will clear it out eventually. Pack up her things. Donate them. Throw them away. Erase her from this house the way they have been trying to erase her for twenty-three years.
His lips curl into a smirk.
"No," he says into the phone. "No investigation needed. It was clean."
Clean.
He likes that word. It makes it sound professional. Efficient. Like a job well done.
He hangs up and slips the phone into his pocket, glancing once more toward the empty hallway. The house is quiet. No maids rushing around. No wedding preparations. No Isla creeping through the halls like a mouse, trying not to be seen.
"Guess that solves that," he mutters.
He pushes off the wall and walks toward the stairs, his hands in his pockets, his steps unhurried. He has a phone call to make. A debt to clear. A man who was paid very well for a job that needed to look like an accident.
He pauses at the top of the stairs, looking down at the foyer below. His mother is in the living room, already planning the next move. His sister is on the couch, scrolling through her phone like nothing happened.
They are not mourning.
They are celebrating.
Sam smiles to himself and continues down the stairs.
At the hospital, things are not so calm.
The emergency room is quieter now than it was at midnight. The chaos has settled. The ambulances have stopped coming. The doctors are catching their breath, reviewing charts, stealing sips of cold coffee from paper cups.
But in the small trauma unit at the end of the hall, something is wrong.
A nurse walks toward Room 7, a clipboard in her hand, a pen tucked behind her ear. She is tired. Her shift was supposed to end four hours ago. Her feet hurt. Her eyes are heavy. She just needs to finish her rounds and go home.
She pushes open the door to Room 7.
The bed is empty.
She blinks. Looks around. The curtains are drawn back. The machines are off. The sheets are rumpled, pushed aside like someone got up in a hurry.
But the patient in Room 7 could not get up. The patient in Room 7 had severe trauma. Internal bleeding. Fractured ribs. A head injury that should have killed her.
The nurse's heart lurches. She steps into the room, her eyes scanning the floor, the walls, the corner. Nothing. No one.
"Doctor?" Her voice comes out shaky. "Doctor, we have a problem."
Another nurse appears in the doorway, her face pale. "Room 7?"
"Yes. She is gone."
"She was just here. I checked on her twenty minutes ago."
"Well, she is not here now."
The two women stare at the empty bed. The IV line is still hanging from the pole, the needle removed, a small smear of blood on the white sheet. The heart monitor is silent, the leads coiled on the bedside table. The bandages that were wrapped around her head, her chest, her arms—they are gone.
"Check again," the first nurse insists, panic rising in her voice. "She could not have walked out on her own. She was barely breathing when they brought her in."
"I am telling you, she is not here!" the second nurse replies, pulling back the curtain for the third time, like maybe she missed something. Like maybe the woman will reappear if she looks hard enough.
The bed is empty.
The room is empty.
She is gone.
The head nurse is called. Then the attending physician. Then security. The hallway outside Room 7 fills with voices, with questions, with the kind of controlled panic that happens when something impossible occurs.
Security footage is pulled immediately.
The cameras in the hallway show the same thing they always show. Nurses walking past. Doctors in scrubs. The occasional visitor looking lost. Room 7's door is closed, the curtain drawn, the lights dim.
Then, at exactly 2:13 AM, the screen flickers.
For seven seconds, everything goes dark.
No static. No glitch. Just black. Like someone reached into the system and turned it off with the push of a button.
When the footage returns, the hallway looks the same. The same lights. The same doors. The same silence.
But Room 7's door is slightly open.
And the woman inside is gone.
The security guard rewinds the footage. Play it again. Watch the flicker. Watch the darkness. Watch the door open without anyone appearing on screen.
His hand hovers over the mouse. His mouth is dry.
"No one came in," he says slowly. "No one went out."
The head nurse crosses her arms, her face tight. "That is impossible."
He shrugs, helpless. "That is what the footage shows."
They watch it again. And again. And again.
Each time, the same thing. Darkness. Then the door opened. Then an empty room.
No one walked in.
No one walked out.
She is just… gone.
Miles away, in a quiet corner of Bangkok, the sun is beginning to rise.
The city is waking up slowly. Street vendors are setting up their carts. Motorbikes weave through narrow streets. The smell of noodles and incense hangs in the humid air.
In a small building tucked between a temple and a market, a phone rings.
The woman who answers is not young, but she is not old either. Her face is weathered from years of sun and wind. Her hair is gray at the temples. Her hands are steady. Her eyes are sharp.
She picks up the phone on the second ring.
"Yes?"
A voice speaks on the other end. Calm. Measured. A voice that has given orders before and expects them to be followed.
"She survived."
The woman's eyes narrow slightly. Her gaze shifts toward the bed in the corner of the room, where a figure lies motionless beneath a thin blanket. Bandages wrap around her head, her chest, her arms. Her face is bruised. Her lips are pale. Her breathing is shallow, barely visible, like the smallest wind could snuff it out.
The woman has been watching her for three hours. Waiting. Wondering.
"The crash should have killed her," the voice continues. "The gunshot should have finished the job. But she is stubborn. She is alive."
The woman's jaw tightens. "And the body?"
The voice pauses. When it speaks again, there is something almost like amusement underneath the calm.
"Handled."
The woman waits. She knows better than to ask questions. The voice will tell her what she needs to know, and nothing more.
"You know who she is," the voice says. It is not a question.
The woman looks at the figure on the bed again. The brown hair matted with dried blood. At the face that is swollen and bruised but still, somehow, familiar. She saw the news this morning. Before the sun came up. Before the phone rang. She saw the headlines, the photos, the name.
Isla Prescott.
Dead heiress. Tragic accident. Life is cut short.
Except not dead. Not yet.
"I know," the woman says quietly.
"Good." The voice is firm now. Authoritative. "Then you know why she cannot be found. The people who want her dead will not stop. They will look for her. They will check hospitals, morgues, and police records. They will make sure she disappears permanently."
The woman's eyes harden. "She will not be found here."
"I am counting on that."
A long silence stretches between them. Outside, the city is waking up. A rooster crows somewhere in the distance. A child laughs. Life goes on, indifferent to the dead girl lying in the small room above the market.
"Why me?" the woman asks finally.
The voice on the other end softens, just for a moment.
"Because you owe me."
The woman's lips press together. She does not argue. She does not ask for more. Debts like this are not discussed. They are paid.
"How long?" she asks.
"I do not know. Months. Maybe longer. Until it is safe. Until she is strong enough to decide what comes next."
The woman looks at the figure on the bed. The girl who died in New York and woke up in Bangkok. At the girl who has no idea that the world is mourning her, that her family is celebrating her death, that her fiancé is drowning in guilt he does not deserve to feel.
"Does she know who she is?" the woman asks.
"Not yet. The head injury is severe. Her memory may come back slowly. Or it may not come back at all."
The woman nods slowly. She understands. The girl on the bed is a blank slate. A woman without a past. A ghost who does not know she is dead.
"What do I tell her when she wakes up?"
The voice is quiet for a long moment. Then—
"Tell her she is safe. That is all she needs to know for now."
The call ends.
The woman sets the phone down on the small table beside her. She looks at the figure on the bed, at the slow rise and fall of her chest, at the fingers that twitch slightly in sleep.
She reaches out and pulls the blanket up higher, tucking it around the girl's shoulders.
"You are safe," she says softly, even though the girl cannot hear her. "That is all you need to know."
The girl does not move. Do not stir. Does not open her eyes.
But her chest rises. And falls. And rises again.
She is alive.
The world believes Isla Prescott is dead. The headlines say so. The news reports say so. Her family is already planning how to spend her inheritance. Her fiancé is already drowning in guilt he does not deserve to carry.
But in a small room above a market in Bangkok, a woman with gray hair and steady hands watches over a girl who should have died.
And somewhere in the darkness between sleep and waking, Isla Prescott dreams of a man with a gun and a flash of light.
She does not know her name.
She does not know her face.
She does not know that the world buried her this morning.
But she is breathing.
And for now, that is enough.