The two words reverberated through Elena's mind long after the medical staff's voices had faded into the background. Her brows drew together, confusion settling into her face as she stood in the center of the room. Conversations continued to swirl around her — overlapping, rising and falling — but none of it made sense anymore.
What baby?
Her gaze shifted from face to face, searching for answers she couldn't ask for. Finally her eyes stopped on Luca. She held there, questioning, uncertain, pleading for a shred of clarity.
What are they talking about?
But Luca didn't look back at her. He stood motionless, his jaw set, offering nothing. His silence was worse than any answer, and a cold dread crept into her chest.
Then a thought struck her, sharp and unwelcome.
The girl who died.
Her fingers trembled at her sides. The missing person reports, the search along the cliff road, the body under the white sheet in the morgue. Could the girl who died have been pregnant? Had someone died in her place carrying a child too? A wave of guilt wrapped around her heart, tightening with every second. She didn't understand why she was inheriting the sins of a stranger, but she felt the weight of them anyway.
Later that evening, the estate had grown quiet, settling into a tense stillness. The friction from the afternoon's revelations still hung in the air, but the servants moved like ghosts and no one spoke of it, as if silence could erase what had been exposed.
Luca appeared beside her without warning. "Come," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm.
Elena hesitated before stepping forward to follow. She didn't know where they were going, but within these walls, she had no choice. They walked through dim corridors lined with polished marble. At night, the estate felt larger and more hostile. Neither of them spoke.
Luca stopped in front of a carved mahogany door at the end of the private wing and pushed it open. "Go in."
Elena stepped inside, her bare feet pressing against a woven rug. The air in this room felt different from the rest of the house — personal, preserved. This wasn't just another room. It was the archive of someone's life.
Her eyes moved across the space until they stopped.
Photographs. Everywhere. Framed in silver and gold, lining the walls, crowding the shelves. In every one, Luca stood beside another woman. They were smiling, laughing, close.
Elena's steps slowed to a halt. Her gaze lingered on one photograph longer than the rest — soft features, a gentle smile, eyes full of warmth.
Sarah. The real one. The woman whose life she had accidentally stolen.
A bitter thought slipped into her mind before she could stop it. You cheated on your wife. All men are the same. She had no way of knowing the face in the frames belonged to the very woman she was being forced to become.
Luca watched her from the doorway, his expression unreadable. "Do you have something to say about these?"
Elena's hands stayed at her sides. She had no way to answer him — not the way he wanted, not with the truth he couldn't hear.
"Nothing?" His voice dropped. "You stand there looking at her like she's a stranger, and you have nothing to say?"
Elena shook her head, desperate to explain, but the only language she had was the one he refused to watch.
Something in his face closed off entirely.
His hand shot forward, fingers closing around her neck, pinning her against the wall. Elena's body jerked in shock, her breath catching as the air was cut off.
"How dare you lie to me," he whispered, his voice shaking.
Elena grasped at his wrist, kicking against the floor, her breath coming in broken, silent gasps.
"I got a call this morning," Luca continued, his voice rising. "From the director of intelligence and the lead obstetrician. They confirmed everything." His grip tightened. "You were never pregnant."
The words stalled her frantic movements. Pregnant?
"I thought you were carrying my child. My heir." His jaw clenched. "You knew what my grandmother wanted before she passed. She was dying, Sarah. And you used that. Her last wish, her deepest regret — just to trap me into this marriage."
Elena shook her head, her chest burning. Her hands moved in the small space between them, trying to form the desperate signs of her true language — trying to deny, trying to explain that she wasn't Sarah.
But her silence only fed his anger.
"I don't want to see that," Luca snapped. "You think this act erases what you did?"
Her vision blurred at the edges, her strength failing.
Then he let go.
Elena collapsed against the floor, coughing silently, dragging air back into her lungs. Something shifted across Luca's face — a flicker of realization, quickly buried. He looked down at his own hand as if it belonged to someone else. Before she could recover, he closed his fingers around her wrist again, gentler this time, but no less absolute.
"Come."
His voice was colder now, controlled. He led her into the adjoining bathroom and flicked on the lights. The tap ran hard into the marble basin.
"You're filthy," he muttered, eyes tracking the dried blood and mountain dirt still on her skin. "Completely filthy."
Elena froze as the water touched her — cold, sharp, unforgiving.
"As if washing you will fix anything," he said, scrubbing at her face with more force than the task required, guided by the momentum of his own anger.
But slowly, the force began to drain from his hands. His movements slowed against her cheek. His grip softened.
Elena tilted her head up, meeting his eyes for the first time since he'd grabbed her. It wasn't just anger looking back. It was pain — deep and unspoken. Behind the gray of his eyes, something was being held back with visible effort.
A single tear escaped and slid down his jaw before he could stop it.
Elena's breath caught. Slowly, carefully, she lifted her hand and brushed the tear away with the backs of her fingers.
Luca went still. He didn't pull away.
His breathing slowed, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. He sat down heavily on the edge of the tub, elbows on his knees, and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
"How could you do this to me," he said, his voice cracking. "Why would you do this to me, Sarah?"
Elena said nothing. She couldn't. She didn't have the answers meant for another woman. But she stayed where she was, close enough that he wasn't alone in the room, and she understood — in the only language she had left — the particular shape of his grief. The agony of betrayal. The horror of being lied to by the people who were supposed to protect you.
Tears slipped quietly down Luca's face, and for a long moment, neither of them moved. Two people sitting in the wreckage of the same kind of pain, separated by a truth neither of them could see.