The Ghost in the Boardroom

Chapter 1

Kara

A voice slices through the fog. Sharp, impatient, familiar.

“How much longer is this going to take? The board is asking questions.”

That’s Arabella. My cousin. Her voice is like cheap perfume, cloying and acidic.

A lower, smoother voice answers, a practiced balm on a wound. “Bella, please. The doctors said it could be days. We have to be patient.”

Marcus. My fiancé. His tone is the one he uses for difficult clients and frightened animals. I feel a wave of nausea that has nothing to do with the antiseptic smell flooding my senses.

“Patient? Marcus, look at her. Even if she wakes up, she can’t run the company looking like that. Devlin Industries needs a strong face, not… a victim.”

My eyes remain closed, but behind them, a fire ignites. Not the fire that melted steel and ate my skin, but a new one. A cold one. The memory hits me not as a dream, but as a prophecy. A year from this moment. The real fire. The one in my office, the locked door, their faces watching through the reinforced glass as I burned. As they murdered me.

But that hasn’t happened yet. This… this is the car crash. The ‘accident’ a full year before my death. I’m not a ghost haunting my own past. I’m a woman who just woke up with a year to live. Or a year to fight.

My eyelids feel like they’re glued shut, but I force a flicker. I make a small sound, a pathetic whimper that scrapes my throat raw.

Instantly, Marcus is at my side. His hand, cool and possessive, covers mine. “Kara? Darling, can you hear me? It’s Marcus.”

I can feel Arabella’s presence at the foot of the bed, her disapproval a palpable weight in the room. She doesn’t move closer.

I turn my head slightly towards the sound of his voice. The movement sends a galaxy of pain across my neck and shoulders. I let another moan escape, this one entirely genuine. “Marcus?” My voice is a ghost of itself, a dry rasp. “What… what happened?”

“Shhh, don’t try to talk,” he says, his thumb stroking my knuckles. The gesture that once felt like a comfort now feels like a cage. “There was an accident. Your car… the brakes failed on the canyon road. You’re very lucky, Kara. The car caught fire.”

I already know. I remember the screech of tires, the sickening lurch, the impact that threw me against the windshield. The first attempt on my life, the one I survived. The one they used as a trial run.

“The company,” I whisper, my voice cracking. It’s the perfect question. The question of the old Kara. The one whose life was her legacy.

Arabella finally speaks, her voice dripping with counterfeit sympathy. “Oh, Kara, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that. It’s the last thing you should be thinking about.”

My pretty little head. My pretty little face. I haven’t seen it yet. I’m afraid to.

“She’s right,” Marcus says, squeezing my hand. “Arabella and I have stepped in. We’re managing things. Keeping your seat warm until you’re back on your feet.”

Keeping my seat warm. Right. They were polishing it for themselves. I remember the press release from my first life, a week after the fire that killed me. ‘Arabella Devlin and Marcus Callahan to Lead Devlin Industries into a Bold New Era.’ They had it written before my ashes were even cool.

“So worried,” I manage to say, playing my part. “You must have been so worried.”

“Worried sick,” Marcus lies smoothly. “I haven’t left this hospital.”

I can smell the expensive cologne on him, the crisp starch of a fresh shirt. He smells like a boardroom, not a bedside vigil.

I let my gaze drift around the room, hazy and unfocused. The heart monitor beeps a steady rhythm beside me. A television is mounted on the wall, its screen dark. For a second, a distorted reflection stares back at me. A stranger with a face mapped by angry, red ridges and puckered skin. A monster. Arabella’s word.

My breath hitches. I use it. I let the shock and horror be real, because it is real. A single tear tracks a clean path through the grime on my temple. “My face,” I whisper, the words catching in my throat.

“It’s not so bad,” Arabella says quickly, too quickly. “Nothing the best plastic surgeons in the world can’t fix. We’ll spare no expense, of course. The company will cover everything.”

‘The company.’ Not ‘I will’ or ‘we will.’ The company. My company. My money. They were already treating it like it was theirs.

“Thank you,” I say, the ultimate deception. I try to smile, but the muscles in my face feel tight and alien. It probably looks like a grimace. “I’m just… so tired.”

“Of course you are,” Marcus coos. “You need to rest. We shouldn’t have stayed this long.”

A brisk knock precedes a nurse entering the room. She has kind eyes but a no-nonsense air. “Alright, visiting hours are nearly over. The patient needs her rest.”

“We were just leaving,” Arabella says, already moving toward the door, her relief almost comical. She stops and turns. “Just get better, Kara. That’s your only job now.”

Marcus leans down, his lips brushing my forehead. I fight the violent urge to recoil, to sink my teeth into his perfectly tanned skin. His touch feels like a brand. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning, my love,” he whispers. “We’ll take care of everything. I promise.”

And then they’re gone. The door clicks shut, sealing me in silence, alone with the rhythmic beeping of the machine that tells me I’m alive.

For a full minute, I don’t move. I lie perfectly still, letting the persona of the broken, timid victim dissolve. The hot tear of self-pity is replaced by the icy chill of pure, unadulterated rage. It’s so clear. They tried to kill me in the car. It failed. So a year from now, they’ll try again with a fire. They won’t fail twice.

Not in this life.

Slowly, painfully, I push myself into a sitting position. Every muscle screams in protest. The room spins, but I grit my teeth and wait for it to settle. My body is a wreck. A prison of pain. But my mind… my mind is a weapon. And it has never been sharper.

They think I’m fragile. They think I’m defeated. They’re counting on it. They left a wounded animal, expecting it to crawl into a corner and die. They have no idea they left a predator who is now learning to hunt in the dark.

My plan begins to form, a blueprint of revenge laid out in my mind. To fight them, I can’t be Kara Devlin, the powerful CEO. They crushed her. I have to be someone else. Someone they would never see coming. Someone invisible.

My eyes land on the small bedside table where the nurse has placed my personal effects in a clear plastic bag. My wallet. My keys. My phone, its screen shattered. But it’s not the phone I need. It’s the key. The small, simple key to a locker at the city’s central station.

I think of my mother. ‘For a real rainy day, Kara,’ she’d told me a decade ago, pressing the key into my palm. ‘For a day you need to disappear and start again.’ Inside that locker is a burner phone, ten thousand dollars in cash, and the details of an offshore trust. A fund so deeply buried, so separate from the Devlin fortune, that not even my father knew it existed. My escape. My beginning.

I press the call button for the nurse, my hand trembling just enough to be convincing.

She appears in the doorway a moment later. “Yes, dear? Do you need something for the pain?”

I look up at her, making my eyes wide and pleading. “Could you do me a favor?” I ask, my voice a fragile whisper. “My purse is in that bag. There’s a picture of my mother inside. I… I just really need to see her right now.”

The nurse’s expression softens. “Of course, sweetie.” She opens the bag and carefully retrieves my designer wallet. She hands it to me, her touch gentle.

“Thank you,” I say, my voice thick with emotion that is both real and manufactured.

She gives me a kind smile and leaves, closing the door behind her.

My fingers, clumsy and stiff, fumble with the clasp. I ignore the credit cards, the useless symbols of a life that is now over. I slide my thumb into a hidden inner pocket. There it is. Cold, solid, and real. The key.

I close my hand around it, the metal biting into my palm. This is my second chance. Not just to live, but to reclaim everything. They took my company, my future, and they tried to take my life. They left me with nothing but scars and a ghost’s knowledge.

They think they’ve won. They think the game is over.

But I am changing the rules. I am flipping the board. And I will not stop until I am the only one left standing.

This is not the end. It is the beginning of their end.

Chapter 2

Kara

Six months. Six months of cheap apartments, painful physical therapy, and the slow, meticulous death of Kara Devlin. Cora is born from her ashes.

Today is Cora’s first day. Her first day back in the lion’s den, dressed as a lamb.

The lobby of Devlin Industries is exactly as I designed it. Cool marble, soaring glass, and the subtle scent of white tea and citrus pumped through the vents. My scent. A bitter taste fills my mouth.

“Right this way, Cora.” The HR manager, a relentlessly cheerful woman named Brenda, chirps. She was a junior coordinator when I hired her. Now she walks with an air of unearned importance.

She leads me to the elevators, her heels clicking an upbeat rhythm on the floor I had imported from Italy. “You’re going to love it here. The energy is just electric these days.”

“I’m very excited for the opportunity,” I say. The voice is part of the costume. Soft, a little breathy, easily dismissed. I keep my eyes downcast and let the limp I’ve perfected carry me forward. One foot dragging just slightly, a constant, physical reminder of my weakness.

“Ms. Devlin and Mr. Callahan have created such a dynamic culture,” Brenda continues as the elevator ascends. “It’s all about forward momentum. A new era.”

My fingers curl into a fist inside the pocket of my cheap polyester blazer. A new era, built on my grave.

The elevator doors open onto the executive floor. My floor. It’s different. The warm mahogany walls have been painted a sterile, glossy white. The art, carefully curated pieces I’d collected, has been replaced by massive, ego-stroking photos of Arabella modeling Devlin handbags.

“Your desk is just over here,” Brenda says, leading me into the open-plan bullpen that supports the creative department. Heads pop up over monitors. Eyes, curious and then quickly dismissive, rake over me. They see the scar that slices from my temple to my jaw. They see the limp. They see a charity case.

Gary, a designer I personally promoted to a senior role, stands near the coffee machine. He looks at me, and his face pinches in confusion, then pity. “Brenda, who’s this?”

“Everyone, this is Cora!” Brenda announces to the room. “She’s our new administrative assistant, here to support the whole team. Let’s all give her a warm Devlin welcome!”

A few people offer weak, insincere smiles. Gary just stares at my face.

“Welcome,” he says, his voice flat. He turns back to his coffee without another word. The welcome is anything but warm. It’s the chill of a tomb.

“Your desk is right here,” Brenda says, gesturing to a small cubicle tucked away in a dark corner, right by the noisy copy machine. The lowest rung on the ladder. “You’ll be reporting directly to Ms. Devlin, so you’ll want to stay on your toes.”

“I will,” I whisper, sinking into the lumpy, uncomfortable chair. This is my view now. Not the sprawling city skyline from a corner office, but the back of a filing cabinet.

And then, they arrive. A wave of expensive perfume and palpable arrogance precedes them.

Arabella sweeps into the room, Marcus at her side. Her arm is linked through his, her laughter loud and performative. She’s wearing a crimson dress that costs more than my entire six-month budget. Diamonds glitter at her ears. Marcus looks every bit the powerful COO, his suit perfectly tailored, his smile confident.

“The board meeting was a complete waste of time,” Arabella says, her voice carrying across the entire office. “Old men who don’t understand that luxury is a feeling, not a balance sheet.”

“I handled them, Bella,” Marcus says, his voice a low thrum of reassurance. He kisses her temple. “They just need to see the quarterly projections. Your vision is gold.”

They stop near Gary’s desk, a king and queen surveying their court. No one makes eye contact with them for more than a second. Fear and awe radiate from every desk.

My heart pounds against my ribs, a frantic drum of pure hatred. I force myself to breathe. Slow, steady. I am Cora. I am no one.

Arabella’s gaze sweeps the room, a bored monarch’s glance, and then it snags on me. Her perfect brow furrows. She unlinks her arm from Marcus’s and saunters over, her crimson heels silent on the plush carpet.

She doesn’t look at me. She looks at Brenda, who has reappeared at my side as if summoned.

“Brenda,” Arabella says, her voice like chilled champagne. “What is this?”

‘This.’ Not ‘who.’ ‘This.’

“This is Cora, Ms. Devlin,” Brenda stammers, her cheerfulness evaporating. “The new administrative assistant. Per your request for additional support.”

Arabella’s eyes finally drop to me. She takes in the limp polyester suit, the scar, the downcast gaze. A flicker of disgust crosses her face before being replaced by a mask of saccharine pity.

“Oh,” she says. “Right. The… support.” She makes the word sound dirty.

Marcus approaches, his gaze lingering on my scar for a moment too long. Is there a flicker of recognition? A ghost of a memory? No. He sees what everyone else sees: a broken thing.

“Good to have you with us,” he says, the words rote and meaningless. He doesn’t offer a hand. He’s already turning his attention back to Arabella.

“Well, ‘Cora’,” Arabella says, drawing my name out like an insult. “I hope you’re a fast learner. I don’t have time for incompetence.”

“No, ma’am. Ms. Devlin,” I correct myself quickly, adding to the persona of a nervous, bumbling employee. “I’m a very hard worker.”

Her lips curl into a smirk. It’s not a smile. It’s the baring of teeth. “Good. My office is an absolute disaster. The filing for the Callahan collaboration is a mess. I want every document sorted, cross-referenced, and digitized. Financials, supplier contracts, logistical analyses, every single design spec from the initial pitch.”

My breath catches. The Callahan collaboration is their biggest project. A joint venture with our largest competitor, a deal that will make or break the company’s entire fiscal year. Access to those files is access to the company’s entire nervous system.

“The deadline for the final proposal is tomorrow,” she adds, a casual flick of her wrist. “So I’ll need it all on my desk by the time I arrive in the morning.”

An impossible task. A test designed for failure.

Brenda pales. “Ms. Devlin, that’s hundreds of documents…”

“Was I talking to you, Brenda?” Arabella snaps without looking at her.

Brenda flinches and shuts her mouth.

Arabella’s cold eyes lock back on me. “Is that a problem, Cora?”

Here it is. My first test. The old Kara would have argued. She would have pointed out the logistical insanity of the request. But Cora is not Kara.

Cora is obedient.

“No, Ms. Devlin,” I say, my voice steady despite the rage boiling in my veins. “Not at all. First thing in the morning.”

A glimmer of surprise, then satisfaction, appears in her eyes. She enjoys breaking people. She thinks she’s breaking me.

“See that you do,” she says, turning away dismissively. She takes Marcus’s arm again. “Darling, let’s get lunch. I’m suddenly starving.”

They walk away, their laughter echoing behind them, leaving me in the silent, judgmental wake of their passing.

The entire office is staring at me. I can feel the weight of their pity. ‘Poor woman,’ their looks say. ‘Eaten alive on her first day.’

I ignore them. I get to my feet, the practiced limp feeling more real than ever, and walk toward Arabella’s office.

My office.

Pushing the heavy glass door open, I’m hit by a wave of alien perfume. Jasmine and something musky. It smells like her. The room has been completely redone. White leather furniture, chrome accents, and a giant, abstract painting that looks like a blood splatter on the wall where my father’s portrait used to hang.

And on a massive table in the center of the room, a mountain of files. Binders, folders, stacks of loose paper. It’s chaos. It’s a punishment.

I walk over to the pile, my hand tracing the spine of a thick blue binder. The label, in Arabella’s loopy, arrogant script, reads: ‘Callahan Collaboration: Supply Chain Logistics.’

I pick it up. My hands don’t shake. The humiliation that burned my cheeks moments ago cools into something hard and sharp. A tool. A weapon.

Arabella thinks she gave me an impossible, menial task. She thinks she’s burying me in paperwork. She has no idea. She just handed me the keys to her kingdom. She just gave me the blueprint for her destruction.

Chapter 3

Kara

The hours bleed together. My world shrinks to the scent of paper, the low hum of the copy machine, and the glow of a monitor. I work through the night, fueled by lukewarm coffee and a rage so cold it feels like a second skeleton holding me upright.

This isn't just filing. It's archaeology. I am digging through the ruins of my own company, unearthing the story of its decay. Arabella's directives are scrawled in the margins of financial reports, all demanding more spending, more glamour, less oversight. Marcus’s notes are cautious counterpoints, consistently overruled.

By dawn, the mountain is a series of neat, digitized stacks on a hard drive. I know their suppliers, their margins, their shipping routes. I know every crack in the foundation because I laid the first stones.

I’m wiping down the last of the dust from my desk when the office begins to stir. People walk past my corner, their eyes sliding over me as if I’m part of the furniture. It’s exactly what I want.

Just before nine, Arabella’s personal assistant, a perpetually terrified young woman named Chloe, skitters over to my desk. Her hands are shaking.

“Cora? Ms. Devlin needs coffee for the Callahan meeting. A full tray. She said you are to bring it in. Exactly at nine-fifteen.”

“Of course,” I say, my voice soft. An errand. A servant’s task. Perfect.

“And please, please don’t be late. She’s… on edge. Mr. Callahan is already here.”

I nod reassuringly. “I’ll be right on time.”

In the kitchenette, I prepare the tray. Six porcelain cups, a silver pot of steaming coffee, sugar, cream. It’s heavy. As I lift it, my leg, the one I’ve trained to be weak, gives a genuine, protesting twinge from the long hours of sitting.

I walk slowly, carefully, my limp more pronounced than usual. I can hear the murmur of voices from the glass-walled conference room. My old conference room.

I push the door open with my shoulder. The room falls silent. All eyes turn to me.

There he is. Hunter Callahan. He’s exactly as I remember from industry events in my past life. Dark suit, sharper angles. His hair is black, his eyes a piercing, intelligent gray. He radiates a stillness, a coiled power that makes Marcus, sitting beside him, look like a boy playing dress-up.

Arabella is at the head of the table, mid-sentence, her expression souring as she sees me. “Put it on the sideboard, Cora. And be quiet about it.”

I nod, my eyes fixed on my task. I move toward the polished mahogany sideboard against the far wall. I’m halfway there when my ankle chooses this exact moment to buckle. A real, searing pain shoots up my calf.

I stumble. The tray tilts. For a horrifying, slow-motion second, I try to save it.

I fail.

Hot coffee sloshes over the silver rim, directly onto Hunter Callahan’s impeccably tailored trousers. He lets out a sharp, surprised hiss as the liquid hits his thigh. Porcelain cups clatter and shatter on the marble floor.

Silence. Absolute, deafening silence, broken only by the drip of coffee onto the floor.

“You useless, clumsy moron!” Arabella screeches, jumping to her feet. The mask of the elegant executive is gone, replaced by the face of the spoiled, vicious girl I grew up with. “Look what you’ve done!”

I’m on my knees, fumbling with napkins, my face burning with a humiliation that is ninety percent performance and ten percent genuine horror. “I’m so sorry, sir. I’m so, so sorry. My leg… it just gave out.”

Hunter Callahan stands, looking down at the dark stain spreading on his gray suit. His face is a granite mask of annoyance. “It’s fine.”

The words are clipped. Final. He is dismissing the incident, me, all of it.

“It is not fine!” Arabella snaps, her voice high and shrill. She’s not just angry about the coffee. She’s angry that her display of power in front of her rival has been ruined. She turns her fury on me. “Are you brain damaged as well as crippled? Do you have any idea how much that suit costs? Get out. Get out of my sight before I fire you.”

Marcus stands, trying to play the diplomat. “Bella, it was an accident. Let’s just get this cleaned up.”

“You stay out of this, Marcus,” she spits, not even looking at him. Her eyes are locked on me, enjoying my pathetic display on the floor amidst the broken china.

I keep my head bowed. I let a tear fall. “Yes, Ms. Devlin. I’m so sorry, Ms. Devlin.”

Hunter Callahan dabs at his leg with a napkin provided by a panicked Marcus. “Forget it. Let’s get back to the Q4 distribution logistics. As I was saying, the Shanghai hub is our most efficient option.”

This is it. The opening.

As I gather the last of the broken porcelain, my voice comes out, a timid whisper, barely audible.

“Excuse me.”

Arabella whirls around. “What did you just say? I told you to get out.”

I look up, not at her, but at the dark stain on Hunter Callahan’s trousers. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t speak. It’s just… you mentioned Shanghai.”

Hunter’s gray eyes flick down to me, cold and impatient. “We did. What about it?”

I take a breath, keeping the tremor in my voice. “The primary distribution hub in Shanghai puts the entire project at the mercy of the Q4 typhoon season, which historically creates a six-week bottleneck.”

I pause. I have his attention. His eyes have sharpened, the annoyance replaced by a flicker of something else. Analysis.

I deliver the second sentence, still in that same apologetic whisper. “Moving the primary hub to Singapore completely bypasses that meteorological risk.”

I stand, using the sideboard to steady myself, my limp pronounced. I look him directly in the eye, for just a second, and deliver the final blow.

“It also shortens the shipping lane to your European markets by three days.”

Silence again. But this time, it’s a different kind. It’s the sound of a gear shifting in a powerful engine. It’s the sound of a thought landing.

Hunter Callahan doesn’t move. His gaze is fixed on me, but he’s not looking at the scar or the limp anymore. He’s looking at my mind. He looks from me to the complex logistical chart on the screen, and then back to me.

Arabella breaks the spell, her voice dripping with venomous disbelief. “And what would you know about shipping lanes? You’re the help.”

“She’s right,” Marcus says slowly, looking at the chart. “The Singapore route… it’s faster. Why didn’t our team flag this?”

“Because our team is supposed to be competent!” Arabella hisses, shooting a murderous glare at her own logistics director, who suddenly looks very pale.

She turns back to me, her fury magnified by the public humiliation of being corrected by her lowest employee. “I don’t know who you think you are, offering your ridiculous opinions in a meeting that is so far above your pay grade you can’t even comprehend it. Clean this mess and get out.”

“Yes, Ms. Devlin,” I whisper, my eyes returning to the floor. I did my part. The seed is planted.

I gather the last of the debris and back out of the room, not looking at anyone. But I can feel it. A weight on my back. A stare.

As the heavy door clicks shut behind me, I lean against the cool wall of the hallway, my heart pounding. I risk a glance back through the glass panel in the door.

Arabella is yelling at Marcus. Marcus is staring at the presentation screen, a frown on his face. And Hunter Callahan… Hunter Callahan is not looking at either of them. He is staring directly at the door, at the spot where I just stood, his expression unreadable, his sharp eyes lingering for a moment too long.