Chapter 2

The physical pain was a dull ache now, overshadowed by a deeper, colder agony.

I lay in the enormous bed, the silk sheets feeling like sandpaper against my skin.

Marcus finally came to see me, hours after the doctor left.

He perched on the edge of the bed, his expensive suit immaculate, not a hair out of place.

He didn't touch me.

"Unfortunate," he said, his voice smooth, controlled. "A terrible accident. That new caterer will be dealt with, of course."

He didn't even look at me when he said it.

He was already spinning the narrative, deflecting blame.

Protecting Leo, always protecting Leo.

His son. Madeleine's son.

"We can try again, Ava," he continued, his gaze distant, already on his next merger, his next triumph. "Once this deal with OmniCorp is finalized. We'll have a proper family then."

A conditional promise.

Just like everything else.

My mind flashed back ten years.

I was nineteen, working at a diner in Chicago, dreaming of art school.

Then Madeleine Thorne, his beautiful, beloved wife, died in a fiery car crash.

A week later, his men found me.

The resemblance, they said, was uncanny.

Identical.

He'd stood before me, a titan of industry, his eyes hollow with grief, or so I thought then.

He asked me to "help."

To care for his toddler son, Leo, who was lost without his mother.

He promised comfort, security. A life I couldn't imagine.

My mother, her eyes wide with the glint of Thorne's billions, practically pushed me into his chauffeured car.

"It's a chance, Ava," she'd said. "For all of us."

A chance.

Ten years.

Ten years of being Madeleine's echo, Madeleine's ghost.

Ten years of raising Leo, pouring my heart into a child who was slowly being taught to see me as an imposter.

Ten years of unfulfilled promises, of a life lived in the shadows.

And for what?

This.

This empty room, this empty womb, this empty man offering empty words.

The "fortune" was a gilded cage. The "privilege" was a life sentence of being someone else.

I had no agency then, a scared girl blinded by wealth and a powerful man's supposed grief.

I had none now, it seemed.

Just a body that had failed, and a face that wasn't truly mine.