There were three things I learned the moment I opened my eyes.
First, was that my memory loss wasn't from some accident on the road like my grandfather wanted me to believe. I was attacked. In my own home. Or at least the home I shared with someone, because I remembered clawing toward my phone in the bedroom...trying to call him.
Second, was the voice. Faint, but unmistakable. I would know Josh's voice from anywhere. We've trained together, bled together, grew up in the same shadows ever since we were children. Which explained why he had known what had happened to me three years ago. But why? Why would he betray me like that?
Third, I didn't know where I was. The white ceiling was staring back at me. Too clean. Too clinical. But wrong, in a way hospitals never were. I should know, I've woken up in enough of those to know the smell, the distant hum of machines and the sterile quiet that settled into my bones. This place was different. It was silent, deliberate. Like someone had tried to recreate safety without understanding what it felt like.
I shut my eyes and inhaled slowly, trying to steady the pounding in my head. God. My mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. Or like I was hungover. I hate being feeling this weak.
"Don't even bother," a voice said beside me when I began to fidget, only to realize that my wrists were bound to the bed.
I froze.
It wasn't just any voice. no. No, it couldn't be.
I shot him. I knew I shot him. I didn't check for a pulse, sure, but he should've died from that wound alone.
A cold pressure lifted my chin before I could move. Metal. Hard. Unmistakable.
My breath snagged, as he leaned closer to the bed. The barrel of his gun nudging just beneath my jaw as if he were tilting up something fragile. Or disposable.
"Look at me," he murmured.
I didn't want to. But my body reacted anyway. And there he was, his dark green eyes colder than I've ever seen them. No warmth. No recognition. Just calculation, like he was studying a problem he wasn't sure he wanted to solve.
"You know," he said softly, almost conversational, "I was married once. Still am."
The words didn't match the violence in his grip. His thumb dragging along my chin like he was brushing off dust. Or claiming something.
"Years ago." His gaze flicked over my features with sadness in them. "She was nothing like this." The gun pressed harder. "Nothing like you."
I swallowed, the muzzle digging into the soft spot under my jaw.
"She was sunshine," he continued, tone sharpening with each word. "Light. Untouched by this world." A humorless laugh. "Innocent in ways people don't come in anymore."
His eyes pinned me, unblinking.
"So tell me..." His head tilted, voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Why do you try to look like her? How do you know her?"
The question punched harder than the threat.
I blinked. Once. Twice. Confusion tangled with something sharper. A hurt I didn't want him to see. I didn't even know how she looked like. The thought that he could've assumed something like that was preposterous. And downright disgusting.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I managed.
He smiled then. Slow. Wrong. A villain's smile carved onto a familiar face.
"Don't insult me, Isolda Ricci," he said, savoring my name like a curse. "Not after everything."
My pulse hammered. Because beneath the menace, beneath the accusation...there was something else there. Something like recognition. Fear. Pain. Or maybe obsession.
And none of that was better.
"I've spent many years trying to find her," he snarled. "And then you—" his eyes dragged down over me, sharp and disbelieving, "—you try to kill me while wearing her face. Insulting isn't even a word. So tell me, why bother? Your grandfather's certainly made his attempts. Half of our world still wants my head. So what made you think you had the right to try?"
I pressed my lips together and turned away, giving him nothing. He can shoot me all he wants. It wasn't like I had anything to live for, not anymore. I've failed.
"There's no way you're her," he growled, and the ice in his voice sank straight into my bones.
I stilled. Could it be?
"I knew her," His voice dropped, rougher now, like the memory had scraped him raw. He stepped back, the gun dropping to his side and turned away, as if he couldn't bare looking at me. "I knew her better than anyone." His jaw clenched. "And you...you're not her. You can't be."
"I don't care."
He finally turned, his eyes cutting back to me with something vicious flickering beneath the surface. His grief sharpened into cruelty.
"I should kill you," he murmured, almost thoughtful. "It would've been the wisest thing to do."
A humorless laugh slipped out of me. "You and me both, Alexandre. Or was it Alaric?"
His stare hardened. He must've been remembering that night. The night he crawled into someone else's bed, despite the fact that his wife was still missing. God help me, if I ever ended up with a man like that. At least with Dario, we had an understanding.
He crossed the room in two slow step. The kind that made my spine lock, but I couldn't move. My hands were strapped to the bed.
His hand snapped to my jaw, fingers digging in just enough to remind me he could break bone if he wanted. My breath caught, when he forced my face up to his, our bodies inches apart.
"Then let's make this simple," he said, his voice a soft blade at my throat. "Tell me where she is."
His thumb brushed the corner of my mouth. Gentle, intimate and all wrong. A ghost of a touch his wife probably once knew, and one he had no right to give to me.
"You must know something," he said quietly, a lethal calm settling over his features. "If you know how to make yourself look like her."
I met his stare, refusing to flinch even as his grip tightened just enough to hurt. His green eyes were a storm of anger, suspicion and grief, all twisted into something feral. A man who had lost too much, far too long.
"So tell me," he murmured, leaning in until his breath warmed my cheek, reminding me of that night. "Where is she?"
For a moment, the room pressed in. I could feel him. His fury, his desperation, the crack running straight through him. He wasn't just hunting for a ghost. He was begging the world to give her back to him.
Maybe that was why the words slipped out of me before I could stop them.
"Would it really kill you," I whispered, "if I was her?"
His entire body stilled.
The grip on my jaw loosened, his hand trembled. Those cold green eyes, controlled and merciless, fractured wide open like I've just shoved him back into a memory he had spent years running from.