The Ghost in the Boardroom

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.