---- Chapter 16 Hamilton Glass POV: The world came back to me in agonizingly slow pieces. The first thing | registered was the oppressive silence of the manor. The fever had broken, leaving behind a profound weakness and a chilling, hollow clarity. Kacey was gone. My grandfather, his face a grim mask of fury, informed me she had vanished in the night. It didn't matter. She was just a ghost, a symptom of the disease that had rotted my life from the inside out. The true source of the poison was my grandfather. | checked myself out of the clinic, ignoring the doctors ' protests. Every moment | spent under his roof felt like a betrayal to Anya's memory. | was a man adrift, haunted by the ghost of a love | had murdered with my own two hands. Why hadn't | seen her? The real her? The brilliant, fiery woman who could code circles around Silicon Valley's best and dreamed of the 'Death's Kiss' maneuver on the track. | had been so blinded by my own ego, by the need to be the protector, the provider, that | never realized she was the one holding up the sky. My man Davis finally tracked Kacey down. Her credit card had been used at a gas station near the Velocity Club. A desperate, ---- foolish hope sparked in my chest. Maybe she was trying to hurt Anya again. Maybe | could get there first. Maybe | could finally do one thing right. | pushed my car to its limit, the roar of the engine a poor substitute for the storm in my soul. | screeched to a halt in the club's private parking lot. And then | saw her. Anya. She was walking out of the clubhouse, laughing. Her pregnancy was more pronounced now, a beautiful, gentle curve under her simple dress. She looked... radiant. Healthy. Happy. The haunted, broken woman | had last seen was gone, replaced by someone | barely recognized. Someone confident and whole. And she wasn't alone. Walking beside her, his hand resting lightly on the small of her back in a gesture of casual intimacy that sent a spear of pure jealousy through my heart, was Dante Mullen. My rival. The one man in the industry whose genius could arguably match Anya's. He was looking at her not with possession, but with a raw, undisguised admiration that |, in all my arrogance, had never shown her. "Anya!" My voice was a shredded, desperate cry. | stumbled out of the car, running toward her. ---- She looked up. The laughter died on her lips. The light in her eyes vanished, replaced by a look of weary annoyance, the kind of look you give a persistent fly you just want to swat away. Dante Mullen stepped forward, placing himself between us. A protector. The role | had failed so spectacularly to play. "Glass," Mullen said, his voice cold and dismissive. "This is private property. You're not welcome here." | ignored him, my eyes locked on Anya. "Please," | begged, my voice breaking. "Just five minutes. | know about my grandfather. | know what they did. | need to make sure you're okay. That Kacey hasn't-" Anya cut me off, her voice devoid of any emotion. "I'm fine. As you can see." She gestured to the building. "| was just collecting the last of my things from my old locker." My old locker. At the racing club. The pieces slammed into place with the force of a physical blow. Her talk of racing. Her designs for the simulator. Her user tag on the coding forums: Ghost. The legendary anonymous driver who had dominated the underground racing circuit for years... it was her. It had always been her. And |, her partner, her supposed soulmate, had never even known. | had bought her the VIP passes to watch other people live her dream, a condescending pat on the head to the ---- woman who had built the very track they were racing on. "You..." | choked out, the word feeling like broken glass in my throat. "You're the Ghost." For the first time, a flicker of something registered in her eyes. It wasn't surprise. It was a cold, distant pity. "You're only just now figuring that out?" The shame was a physical thing, a hot, suffocating wave that threatened to drown me. | had lived with a goddess and never once thought to look up. "Why didn't you ever tell me?" | asked, the question a pathetic whisper. She looked at me then, truly looked at me, and what | saw in her eyes destroyed the last vestiges of my hope. It was a complete and utter lack of feeling. | wasn't the love of her life or the man who broke her heart. | was a stranger. A mild inconvenience. "Tell you what, Hamilton?" she asked, her voice calm and even. "That | had a life, a passion, a talent that had nothing to do with you? Would you have even listened? Or would you have just seen it as another liability? Another shadow you needed to 'protect' me from?" She didn't wait for an answer. She didn't need one. We both knew the humiliating truth. | had never loved Anya. | had loved the reflection of myself | ---- saw in her adoring eyes.