Chapter 1

The first thing Chloe felt was a dull ache at the back of her head, a throbbing that matched the frantic beat of her heart. She opened her eyes to the sterile white ceiling of a hospital room. A woman in a nurse's uniform was checking the IV drip attached to her arm.

"You fainted at the clinic," the nurse said, her voice gentle but professional. "Your son... he's in the pediatric ICU. The doctors are with him now."

Her son. Leo.

The memory hit her like a physical blow. Leo's face, pale and slick with sweat. His eyes wide with a terror so profound it seemed to swallow the light in the room. And Jake's voice, cold and hard, echoing in the confined space of that therapy room.

"My son shouldn't be weak and afraid of the dark! His bad habits need to be cured."

Chloe, or Ava Miller as she had known herself to be for five years, had begged him. She remembered clawing at the locked door, her nails scraping against the wood.

"Leo is terrified of the dark, and extreme fright can be fatal. If you need to punish someone, punish me..."

Jake had just laughed, a sound devoid of any warmth. He stood there with his new girlfriend, Chloe Davis, the woman he claimed was the real Ava Miller, the woman who needed a kidney. The woman he had convinced her was her own reflection in a photograph, a past self she couldn't remember after the car accident.

A television was on in the corner of the hospital room, the volume low. A news anchor was reporting on a lavish wedding.

"Billionaire heir Jake Hayes is celebrating his wedding to Chloe Davis on a private island today. Sources say this is a makeup ceremony for their secret wedding years ago, a promise he made to his beloved wife..."

The camera panned across a sun-drenched beach, showing Jake in a sharp white tuxedo. He was looking at the woman beside him, the imposter Chloe Davis, with an expression of such adoration it made Chloe's breath catch in her throat. He lifted her hand to his lips, a picture of devotion.

And then, it happened.

The carefully constructed walls in her mind, the ones Jake had built with hypnosis and lies, shattered. It wasn't a trickle; it was a flood. Memories crashed into her, violent and agonizing.

Five years ago. A rainy night. The slick asphalt of a road leading to the airport. Her mother was in the driver's seat, her face tight with worry.

"Chloe, are you sure about this? Running away won't solve anything."

"He's using me, Mom! He wants to marry me for my kidney, to save Ava Miller!"

The screech of tires. The blinding glare of headlights. The sickening crunch of metal.

Then, the hospital. Jake's face, handsome and concerned, leaning over her. His voice was a soothing balm, a hypnotic poison.

"You're Ava Miller. You were in an accident. The woman who died was your father's mistress. A terrible woman. You feel so guilty, don't you? You want to atone for your mother's sins."

"Yes," she had whispered, the drugs and the hypnosis making her pliable, confused. "I want to atone."

He showed her a photo of a woman with a sickly, pale face. Ava Miller.

"This is you, before. You're sick. You need a kidney. But you feel so guilty, you want to give your kidney to someone else to make things right."

He had twisted everything. He didn't want her kidney for herself. He wanted it for the real Ava Miller. And he had turned her, the real Chloe Davis, into the "illegitimate" Ava Miller, a woman ashamed to even exist. He had stolen her identity, her health, and her memories.

The pain in her head was unbearable, a physical manifestation of the truth tearing through her. She was Chloe Davis. The woman on that island, wearing her name, had her kidney. And they were trying to steal her son.

Leo.

The pain in her heart was even worse. She remembered all the times Jake had been cold to Leo. The school events he never attended. The birthday parties he "forgot." The time Leo got into a fight defending himself from bullies who taunted him for not having a father present, and Jake, embarrassed by the call from the school, had locked him in the dark basement for "reflection." She had found Leo hours later, blue and barely breathing, his claustrophobia almost killing him.

This time, it was worse. The frantic, garbled voice message Leo had managed to send from inside that therapy room played over and over in her mind.

"Mom... if I overcome my fear... will Dad love me?"

Chloe grabbed her phone, her fingers fumbling, slick with a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the hospital room's temperature. She dialed the only number she could think of, the one person who had shown her a sliver of kindness in this five-year nightmare.

Her mother-in-law. Jake's mother.

The phone rang once, twice. A familiar, older voice answered. "Ava? What's wrong? The nurse said you fainted."

Tears streamed down Chloe's face, hot and silent. The agony was a physical weight, crushing her chest.

"Mom," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I remember everything. It's time for me to leave."

A sharp gasp on the other end of the line. Then, silence. Before Jake's mother could respond, Chloe hung up.

She ripped the IV from her arm, ignoring the sharp sting and the bead of blood that welled up. She stumbled out of the room, her bare feet cold against the linoleum floor. She had to get to Leo.

She found the pediatric ICU and pushed through the doors. Jake's mother, Eleanor Hayes, was already there, arriving with a speed that spoke of sheer panic. She was standing over Leo's bed, her face a mask of horror.

Leo was lying still, his small chest not rising or falling. His eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling, fixed in the same expression of pure terror she had seen before. They were like glass, reflecting nothing.

Eleanor collapsed against the bed, her body shaking with sobs. "Oh, Leo... my poor grandson... close your eyes, please, just close your eyes..."

Chloe walked to the other side of the bed, her heart a dead, heavy stone in her chest. She looked at the woman who had, for five years, treated her with a strange mixture of pity and guilt.

"Mom," Chloe said, her voice flat, devoid of all emotion. "I am Chloe Davis."

Eleanor's head snapped up, her eyes wide and red-rimmed. She remembered the phone call, the cryptic words. "Chloe... you... you remember?" she asked, her voice trembling. "How much do you remember?"

Chloe didn't answer. She reached out a shaking hand and gently tried to close Leo's eyelids. They wouldn't budge. It was as if his last moment of sheer, unadulterated fear had been frozen in time. As she struggled, the hypnotically implanted memories fought back, twisting and distorting, but the truth was a tidal wave, washing them away.

She leaned down, her lips close to Leo's ear, her own tears finally falling onto his cold cheek.

"Mommy's here, Leo," she whispered, her voice breaking. "Mommy will take you away from here. We'll go somewhere far away, and we'll be together forever."

As the words left her lips, Leo's eyes, those terrified, open eyes, finally, slowly, drifted shut.

In that same moment, a nurse in the hallway was looking at her phone, sighing with envy at a celebrity news feed.

"Oh my god," the nurse said to a colleague. "Look at this. They're an old couple, but Jake Hayes still looks at his wife like they're newlyweds! Who celebrates a birthday by promising a fantasy wedding every year? He truly loves her! It makes me want to get married!"

Chloe heard her, and a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob escaped her raw throat. If only they knew. If only they knew that Jake's real wife and son, lying dead in a hospital bed, couldn't earn a fraction of that look, despite giving him everything they had.