The knock hit the door like a gavel. Baylor woke into a room that knew how to punish him. Relief and cold slid through the same channel in his chest—familiar as the brass handles on the wardrobe, unfamiliar like a knife-edge. He tasted the memory first: last life, last night—champagne gone warm, cameras flashing, Nolan Hart standing over him with that thin, polite voice that always meant something worse. He remembered the speeches, the staged lullabies, the press releases that erased pain. He remembered the end. This time, the face at his bedroom door belonged to a man who'd taught an entire city how to look benign and mean at once. Nolan Hart's fist rapped again. The sound sent a flock of servants scurrying in the hallway like punctuation. "Open up, Baylor," Nolan said. His voice came through the wood—controlled, like a broadcast. "We don't have all morning." Baylor swung his legs out of the bed. The silk sheets that used to make him feel like goddom were clingy and hot. He moved slowly on purpose. He let the moment stretch so he could feel where he stood now: in a body everybody believed had the Langford last name but not the blood. A labeled "fake" heir, raised under the gilded expectations of a dynasty that measured worth in company shares and public confessions. A ghost who'd been given a second shot. "Open it," Nolan said again, softer. He wanted this done