Chapter 1

The news report showed the twisted metal of Innovatech Robotics, smoke still rising hours later.

"Catastrophic lab explosion," the reporter said, his face grim.

"CEO Mark Reinhart and his twin brother, David, were inside during a breakthrough experiment."

My breath caught. Mark. My husband.

Then, the update: "David Reinhart, tragically, has been declared dead at the scene. Mark Reinhart is critically injured but alive."

A wave of something cold washed over me, but it wasn't just grief. It was a memory, sharp and brutal, of a different life.

A life where this same news played, but the roles were reversed.

In that first life, they said Mark died.

Then "David" appeared, claiming amnesia but miraculously alive.

I knew him instantly.

That tiny scar, almost invisible, hidden by his hairline.

A scar only I knew, from a silly accident years ago, long before Emily, our daughter, was born.

"You're Mark," I had whispered then, my world tilting.

He denied it, his eyes cold, so unlike the Mark I thought I loved, or perhaps, so like the Mark I never truly knew.

Jessica, David' s wife, my sister-in-law, stood beside him, her expression a mask of concern that didn't reach her eyes.

Eleanor, Mark' s mother, clutched "David' s" arm, her gaze on me filled with pure venom.

"Clara, dear, you're confused," Eleanor had said, her voice like ice. "Mark is gone. This is David. Grief does strange things."

They called me unstable. Delusional.

When I confronted Mark, truly Mark, in private, his denial turned vicious.

"You're seeing ghosts, Clara."

An argument, a shove. I remember the stairs rushing up to meet me, the blinding pain.

Emily, my sweet three-year-old Emily, they neglected her, their words like little cuts, making her cry when she thought I wasn't looking.

We were moved to the guest house, barely fit to live in, while Mark, as David, took over everything.

He smeared my name, painted me as unhinged, promiscuous.

The community, fed lies by his PR machine, turned on me.

They saw a grieving brother, "David," tormented by a delusional sister-in-law.

The end came with fire and screams, a mob, their faces twisted with hate, stirred by Mark's whispers.

Emily and I, we didn't escape that guest house.

That was my first life, a nightmare of betrayal and agony.

Now, the TV droned on, but the names were switched. David dead, Mark alive.

But I knew. This was the beginning of the same lie, just a different script.

And this time, I wouldn't be the victim. This time, I would write the ending.

Emily needed me. And I would not fail her again.

The chill was still there, but now it was mixed with a resolve as hard as steel.

Let Mark have his new life with Jessica.

He would lose everything else.