~ Cassie ~
The sound of the metal door slamming shut did not fade. It lingered, vibrating through the bunker walls and settling deep into my marrow. Even after the physical echo died, I felt it pulsing in my chest—a heavy, mechanical rhythm that my heart was forced to follow.
Silence followed, thick and suffocating. It pressed against my lungs until every breath felt borrowed, as if the very oxygen in the room was being metered out at a price I could not afford.
Miranda's smile stayed with me even after she stepped out of my immediate circle of light. It was sharp, triumphant, and poisonous. It hung in the stale air like smoke that refused to clear, stinging my eyes and coating the back of my throat. My nightmare had a face now. It had a name, and a history tangled with mine—shared summers and whispered secrets that now felt like a decade-long con intended to ruin me.
Miranda Lin.
The realization hollowed me out. Something inside my chest cracked open and emptied, leaving me weightless and unreal, as if my soul had loosened its grip on my body and was hovering just above it, watching me slowly fall apart.
The single bulb above flickered with a rhythmic hum. Its weak, yellow light stretched shadows across the salt-stained walls.
Those shadows twisted into grotesque shapes that seemed more alive than I felt. They crawled and bent as Miranda's heels clicked against the floor. Each step was calm, measured, and elegant.
She walked as though she had stepped into a gilded ballroom instead of a bunker soaked in rust and the metallic tang of old blood. I swallowed hard, and the movement was agonizing. My throat burned, parched and raw from a scream I had not realized I let out.
"Why?" I whispered. My voice barely existed. It was a thin, trembling thread of sound that seemed to vanish before it even hit the air. "Why are you doing this? What did I ever do to you, Miranda? We were sisters in everything but blood."
She stopped. She crouched in front of me, slow and deliberate, the fabric of her expensive trousers whispering against the floor. She waited until our eyes were level. Up close, her face was a masterpiece of porcelain smoothness, untouched by the years of stress and fear that had scraped me raw.
But her eyes betrayed the mask. They looked fractured, like mirrors shattered from the inside and glued back together by a trembling hand. Rot lived in the depths of her pupils. Envy was there too, something old, festering, and deeply, darkly patient.
"What did you do?" she repeated softly, almost fondly. "Cassie, you existed. That was your first mistake."
My breath came shallow and fast. I blinked up at her, trying to understand how existence itself could be a crime.
I thought of the birthdays we shared and the way she used to braid my hair when we were ten. I remembered the way she had looked at me with what I thought was love. It was all a lie. Every second of it had been a performance.
She leaned closer, her perfume filling my senses. It was sweet, cloying, horribly wrong in a room that smelled of metal and decay.
"You were born with a name that should have been mine," she continued. "A life that should have been mine. A family that should have been mine."
Her jaw tightened. The mask of elegance slipped for just a moment to reveal the jagged edges of her rage.
"And a love that should have been mine."
She brushed my hair back gently, almost tenderly. For half a second, my body betrayed me and leaned into the touch. Then her hand tightened into a fist, yanking my head upward by the roots. Pain exploded across my scalp and I cried out, my hands scrambling uselessly against the floor.
"We grew up together," I whispered, my voice cracking. "You found your family. And Anthony… you were always praising him to me. Why didn't you tell me you liked him?"
Her face twisted, lips curling back as a sound escaped her that was more hiss than laugh.
"Found my family?" she scoffed. "You really are funny, Cassandra." Her laughter was sharp and empty. "And love? What would you know about love? I have always loved Lucian. Always. But he never looked at me. He looked at you. Every time. As if your name was the only one his soul could remember."
I shook my head weakly, dizziness washing over me. "Lucian never…"
"Do not lie to yourself," she snapped. "You took everything without even trying. Without even knowing you were stealing it."
Through the haze of pain and the stars dancing in my eyes, I looked past her. Behind her, Anthony stood frozen. He was a shadow pretending to be a person, his silhouette cast long and thin against the far door.
His hands trembled at his sides, his fingers twitching as if he wanted to reach out but had forgotten how. He looked diminished, a ghost of the man I thought I knew. I searched his face through the haze of fear, looking for a spark of the protector or a glimmer of the man who had promised to keep me safe.
But all I saw was a hollowed-out shell. He was just watching the woman he supposedly loved being broken by the woman he had helped.