“Wait,” I said, stepping forward, the heavy silk dress rustling around my ankles. “You can’t just lock me away. You said I would be safe here. What happens on Thursday? How am I supposed to fool an entire family of people who actually knew her?”
Nicholas took a slow sip of his drink, staring at me over the rim of the glass. The dark, dangerous aura that had surrounded him in my father’s kitchen was back, magnified tenfold by the exhaustion of the night.
“By Thursday, I will have found the people who pushed Sofia’s car into the river,” he said, his voice dripping with venom. “And once they are dead, the threat to the alliance dies with them. Until then, you learn her voice, her habits, her history. Teresa has videos, journals, everything. You will memorize them until you believe you are Sofia.”
“And if I can’t?”
Nicholas walked over to me, stopping just inches away. He reached out, his thumb brushing against the dark red lipstick on my lower lip, smudging it slightly. “Then you become just as dead as she is.”
He turned on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving me alone with Teresa. The old woman gave me a look that was a mixture of pity and stern warning, gesturing for me to follow her up the grand staircase.
The master suite was massive, dominated by a king-sized bed with dark velvet hangings. But as soon as Teresa stepped out and the heavy click of the deadbolt echoed through the room, the luxury felt like nothing more than a gilded cage. I collapsed onto the bed, burying my face in the pillows, finally letting the tears I had held back all night flow freely.
I wept for my mother, who was probably still crying in her apron. I wept out of hatred for my father, who had ruined my life for a stack of poker chips. And I wept out of sheer terror for the ghost I was being forced to become.
Hours passed. The rain outside turned into a violent thunderstorm, lightning flashing through the high, arched windows, casting long, twisted shadows across the room. I managed to peel the heavy wedding dress off, leaving it in a crumpled white heap on the floor, and changed into a simple silk robe Teresa had left out.
I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the blood-stained pistol in Nicholas’s hand, or the lifeless, identical eyes of the girl in the photograph.
Around three in the morning, the storm reached its peak. A massive crack of thunder shook the entire house, rattling the glass panes. Right after the echo died down, I heard it.
A faint, scraping sound.
It wasn’t coming from the hallway where the locked doors were. It was coming from the balcony outside the bedroom windows.
I froze, my breath catching in my throat. I slid out of bed, keeping low to the floor, my eyes locked on the heavy sheer curtains obscuring the glass doors to the balcony.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the room.
Through the sheer fabric, I saw a silhouette. A tall, broad figure standing out in the pouring rain, staring directly into the bedroom.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Nicholas had said the perimeter was secure. He had said I was safe here. I looked around the room frantically, searching for anything I could use as a weapon, my hand closing around a heavy silver candlestick on the nightstand.
The silhouette moved. The balcony door, which I assumed was locked, creaked open with a slow, agonizing groan. The wet, cold wind rushed into the room, blowing the curtains inward like ghostly wings.
A man stepped into the bedroom, dripping water onto the hardwood floor. He wore tactical gear, a dark mask covering his face, and in his hand was a silenced pistol. He didn’t look around the room; his eyes locked directly onto the bed where I had been sleeping just moments before.
He raised the weapon, pointing it at the empty sheets, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Realizing the bed was empty, he paused, his head snapping toward the side of the room where I was hiding behind a heavy armchair.
“Sofia?” the man whispered. His voice wasn’t filled with malice. It was filled with utter, breathless shock. He raised his left hand, pulling down the dark mask covering his face.
The lightning flashed again, brightly illuminating his features. It was a young man, no older than twenty-five, with piercing blue eyes and a expression of profound disbelief.
“My God, Sofia…” he breathed, taking a step toward me, lowering his weapon completely. “Nicholas told everyone you were dead. He told your uncle your car went into the river. I thought… I thought I lost you. I came to kill him for what he did to you.”
I stared at him, my mind spinning into complete chaos. This man knew the real Sofia. He loved her—I could see it in the raw agony in his eyes. And he thought I was her.
If I told him the truth, that I was a fake, he would realize Nicholas’s deception and might kill me to keep the secret. If I played along, I was betraying Nicholas, the only man keeping my family alive.
Before I could make a choice, the heavy oak doors of the master suite were suddenly blown off their hinges with a deafening blast.
Nicholas stood in the doorway, his coat soaked with rain, his face twisted in a mask of pure fury. In his hand was the same blood-stained pistol from my father’s kitchen.
“Step away from my wife,” Nicholas growled, leveling the weapon at the intruder.
The young man didn’t hesitate. He spun around, grabbing me by the arm with a grip like iron, pulling me in front of him as a human shield, the cold barrel of his silenced pistol pressing hard against my temple.
“She’s not your wife, Barrera!” the man screamed back, his voice echoing over the thunder. “And if you take one more step, I’ll blow her brains out right here!”
Nicholas didn’t lower his gun. His dark eyes locked onto mine, and for the first time, I couldn’t read his expression at all. His finger rested firmly on the trigger.
