He looked at me, his eyes clearing for a moment. "You look like her today, Tiana. Your mother always loved the sun." He squeezed my hand, his grip surprisingly firm. "How is the work? Are they treating you well at the firm?"
He didn't know which firm. I couldn't tell him. It would kill the small amount of peace he had left to know his daughter was filing papers for the man who destroyed him.
"It's fine, Dad. Just law. Just paper."
"Don't let them turn you into paper," he muttered, his mind starting to drift again. "The Lahmans... they think they own the law. But the law is just a story. You tell a better one, Tiana. Promise me."
"I promise, Dad."
I sat with him until the sun began to dip below the tree line. The quiet moments here weren't like the ones in my apartment. These were heavy with the weight of what could have been.
As I walked back to the bus stop, the air turned cool. I thought about the "Good morning" I'd given Amir. I thought about the way Marcus had shouted at me in the lobby, calling me a "nobody."
They all thought I was a gear in their machine. They thought the Longman name was buried in the archives alongside the dusty files I spent my days organizing. But as I watched the city lights flicker on, reflecting off the glass towers of the billionaire's row, I felt a spark of something that wasn't quiet at all.
Amir Lahman didn't know what was ahead of him.
But I did.
The ghost was tired of being a ghost.
_________________________________
The neon pulse of L'Élysée was designed to drown out the world. It was a cathedral of excess, all velvet shadows, gold leaf, and the heavy bass of deep house that you didn't just hear—you felt it in your bone marrow. Usually, this was my element. This was where the "Polished Rogue" came to play.
I sat in the center of the VIP booth, a glass of crystal-clear scotch in my hand. To my left, Ashley was a vision in a silk slip dress that caught the strobe lights like liquid silver. She looked every bit the queen of this domain, her hand resting possessively on my thigh.
To my right, Maxwell was in high spirits, holding court with a group of influencers and designers, his laughter cutting through the thrum of the music.
"You're being awfully quiet tonight, Amir," Ashley whispered, leaning into my ear. Her breath smelled of mint and expensive champagne. "My father noticed it at dinner, too. You were... elsewhere."
"Just the merger, Ash," I said, the lie smooth as the scotch. I forced a smile, the kind that appeared in the society pages. "Big moves require big focus."
"Well, focus on me for a second," she teased, her eyes searching mine.
I wanted to. I really did. I looked at Ashley and saw the perfect future. I saw the alliance of two empires. I saw the tranquility my father, Ahmed, had worked so hard to preserve for me and Alisha.
But every time I closed my eyes, the strobe lights turned into the flickering fluorescent lamps of the parking garage. I didn't see Ashley; I saw the memory of Tiana Longman's shadow.
Maxwell turned toward us, his eyes bright with the manic energy of a man who had just finished a world-class collection.
"Enough talk about mergers and oil," Max shouted over the bass, pointing his glass at me. "Amir, you'll appreciate this. I found my new muse today. Total accident. I was at Lincoln Willow—don't ask why, I was bored—and I saw the most incredible silhouette near the archives."
My grip tightened on my glass. The ice clinked sharply.
"Oh?" Ashley asked, intrigued. "A lawyer, Max? That's a bit stiff for your brand, isn't it?"
"She wasn't a lawyer," Max said, leaning in, his tone turning conspiratorial. "She was... something else. She had this look. Defiant. Like she was wearing the building rather than working in it. I tried to talk to her, but she gave me this look that said I was about as interesting as a coat rack. Me! Maxwell Loberstein!"
Ashley laughed, but I felt the air leave my lungs.
"What was her name?" I asked. I tried to keep my voice casual, the bored billionaire, but the "bad boy" energy was rising to the surface, unbidden and raw.
"Longman. Tiana," Max said, snapping his fingers. "I saw her ID tag. I'm going to hire her. I don't care if she can walk a runway; I just want that energy in my campaign. She has this... familiarity.
Like a classic piece of vintage you forgot you owned until you opened a trunk in the attic."
The music seemed to stop, though the floor was still shaking. The "gnawing" in my chest turned into a full-blown roar.
"Tiana Longman?" Ashley repeated, her brow furrowing. She looked at me, her intuition finally catching a scent of the blood in the water. "Wait, isn't that the name of the girl whose family had that massive fallout with the board years ago? The ones who almost took down the Lahman-Heavens joint venture before it even started?"
The table went silent. Even Maxwell's entourage hushed.
I set my glass down on the table with a definitive thud. I remembered now. I remembered the name not from a scent, but from a file I wasn't supposed to see when I was eighteen.
The Longmans hadn't just been "staff." They had been the rivals. They had been the only family capable of matching the Lahmans until they were systematically dismantled by my father and Stephen Heavens.