C2

"Where’s the will, you lying piece of shit?"

The cold bite of steel pressed into my windpipe. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. My eyes snapped open to see a face I’d spent the last twelve hours hating, but the hands holding the blade were trembling. This wasn't the polished, icy Seraphina from the ballroom. Her hair was a bird's nest. Her silk robe was torn at the shoulder.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

My voice was a raspy grating sound. I tried to swallow, but the knife dug in. A bead of blood blossomed and rolled down my neck.

"Don't lie to me. Alexander knew. He told me before he" She stopped. Her eyes were bloodshot. Desperate. "Before he left. Where did she put it?"

"She?" I shifted, my muscles coiling. "You mean Elinor? Or do you mean yourself, Seraphina?"

"Don't call me that." She spat the words. "Tell me where it is or I'll carve the truth out of your chest. I know you're not him. Alexander had a mole on his thigh. I checked while you were passed out. You're a fake. A beautiful, expensive fake."

I moved. Fast.

My hand shot up, grabbing her wrist and twisting. She shrieked, the knife clattering to the hardwood floor. I flipped her, pinning her face-down into the silk sheets, my knee heavy in the small of her back.

"Who the hell are you?" I hissed.

"Evangeline." She choked out the name into the pillow. "Her sister. Her shadow. The one she keeps in the basement while she plays queen."

"Where’s Seraphina?"

"Dead. Or dying. Does it matter? We’re both dead if we don't find that will."

The door to the master suite burst open. I didn't let go of her. I didn't cover my nakedness. Elinor Blackwood stood there, two guards flanking her. She didn't look at the knife on the floor. She didn't look at the girl pinned under my knee.

"Get up, Kai." Elinor’s voice was a dead calm. "We have a change of schedule."

"She tried to kill me." I pointed at the girl.

"She’s a nuisance. One we will deal with later." Elinor stepped into the room, her heels clicking like a countdown. "Your sister had a relapse ten minutes ago. The doctors say her lungs are collapsing. They’re waiting for my signal to start the bypass."

The air left my lungs. "Mei? You said she was stable."

"She’s as stable as my mood, Kai." Elinor reached into her bag and pulled out a tablet. She turned the screen toward me. Mei was behind glass. Tubes snaked out of her throat. She looked like a broken doll. "She’s been moved to a private facility. My facility. No one gets in without my thumbprint."

I stood up, letting Evangeline scramble away. My hands were shaking. I balled them into fists. "What do you want?"

"The Council needs proof of union. Physical proof." Elinor signaled to the guards. They began mounting cameras on the walls. Small, black lenses that looked like insect eyes. "The marriage must be consummated. Now. On camera. If the footage isn't in my inbox in twenty minutes, I tell the doctors to go to lunch. Mei won't last forty."

"You're a monster," Evangeline whispered from the corner of the bed.

"I'm a businesswoman." Elinor looked at me. "Do it. Or watch her die."

The door clicked shut. The locks engaged.

Silence descended on the room, heavy and suffocating. The red lights on the cameras began to blink.

I looked at Evangeline. She was huddled at the headboard, her eyes wide. She wasn't Seraphina. She was a ghost, a twin kept in the dark, now forced into the light for a snuff film.

"I can't," she whispered. "I won't."

"She'll kill my sister." I walked toward the bed. My heart was a hammer. "She'll let her suffocate while we watch."

"I'm not her. I'm not the bitch you hate."

"I don't care who you are." I grabbed her waist, pulling her toward the center of the bed. "Look at the cameras. Make them believe it."

"No—"

I kissed her. It wasn't soft. It was a collision. I tasted the salt of her tears and the metallic tang of the blood on my own lip. She fought me for a second, her hands hitting my chest, then her fingers curled into my hair. A low, broken sound came from her throat.

It wasn't Seraphina’s practiced grace. It was something raw. Something hungry.

I pushed the robe off her shoulders. She was pale, her skin mapped with faint blue veins. I pressed her down into the mattress. The cameras watched. Elinor watched. Somewhere, my sister was dying.

"Don't look at them," I muttered against her neck. "Look at me."

She wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling me closer. Her skin was hot. Burning. "Make it real," she whispered. "Make me forget who I am."

I didn't use a condom. There was no time. No point. I pushed into her, a sharp, sudden entry that made her back arch and her teeth sink into my shoulder. I moved with a desperate, frantic rhythm. It wasn't love. It wasn't even lust. It was survival.

Every thrust was for Mei. Every groan was a lie.

"Kai," she gasped. She used my real name. The name I’d whispered to her in the dark of the hallway.

I stopped. I looked down at her. Her hair was splayed out like a halo of straw. I saw it then. A tiny, jagged scar behind her left ear. It wasn't in the files. The Blackwood dossier on Seraphina showed perfect, unblemished skin.

This wasn't just a twin. This was the person who had disposed of the body.

"You did it," I whispered, my hips still moving, my voice drowned out by the heavy thud of the headboard against the wall. "You killed her."

Her eyes went wide. She didn't deny it. She just pulled me deeper, her nails carving red furrows down my back. "She deserved it. She was going to sell us both."

I came with a shout that felt like a curse. I collapsed on top of her, the weight of the lie pressing us into the bed. We lay there, tangled and wet, our breath coming in ragged stabs.

The locks on the door groaned.

Marcus Blackwood walked in. He wasn't wearing a suit. He was in a leather jacket, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He looked at the cameras, then at us. He smiled. It was a shark’s grin.

"Well. That was a hell of a show."

I grabbed a sheet, pulling it over Evangeline. "Get out, Marcus."

"I don't think so." He walked to the center of the room and dropped a bundle of fabric onto the floor. It hit the wood with a wet thud.

It was a dress. The silver sequins from the night before. It was shredded. Soaked in dark, drying blood.

"I found this in the incinerator," Marcus said. He pulled a chair out and sat down, crossing his legs. "And I found the rest of her in the trunk of a Bentley. It’s amazing what a little gasoline can't hide."

Evangeline shivered beside me.

"Now," Marcus continued, leaning forward. "We have a problem. Elinor wants a wedding. The Council wants a bloodline. And I? I want the keys to the kingdom."

"You helped her," I said. It wasn't a question. "You helped Evangeline hide the body."

"Guilty as charged." Marcus pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. The smoke swirled around the bed. "The real Alexander was a bore. Kai, you’re much more interesting. And Evangeline... you have your sister’s face but none of her annoying morals."

"What do you want?" Evangeline asked, her voice trembling.

"I want a seat at the table. A permanent one." Marcus looked at the door. "I’ve disabled the cameras. Elinor got what she wanted. But now we’re going to talk about what I want."

He stood up and walked to the door, turning the deadbolt. Click.

"We’re all murderers and liars in this room," Marcus said. "A perfect family."

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I grabbed it.

It was a video call. Elinor.

I swiped. The screen showed a flatline on a heart monitor. The high-pitched, continuous beep pierced the room.

"She’s flatlining, Kai," Elinor’s voice came through the speaker, cold and detached. "The doctors are standing by the door. I told them not to enter until you sign the final confession. The one that says you murdered Alexander and Seraphina."

I looked at the phone. Then at Marcus. Then at the girl with the scar behind her ear.

"Sign it," Marcus whispered. "Or let the little girl go."

"I didn't kill them!" I screamed at the phone.

"Doesn't matter," Elinor replied. "The clock is ticking. Thirty seconds, Kai. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight..."

I looked at the digital pen on the nightstand. My hand hovered over the tablet. If I signed, I was a dead man walking. If I didn't, Mei was just a dead girl.

"Twenty..." Elinor counted.

The door handle rattled. Someone was on the other side.

"Open the door!" a voice yelled. It wasn't a guard. It was high, frantic.

I looked at the monitor on the phone. Mei’s hand twitched.

"Ten... nine..."

I pressed the pen to the screen. My name. My real name.

"Wait!"

The door didn't open, but the voice came through the vents.

"Don't sign! I'm here! I have the real will!"

I froze. I knew that voice.

It was Mei.

I looked at the phone. The flatline was still there. The video was a loop.

"Elinor, you bitch," I whispered.

The monitor on the wall the one Elinor used to watch us flickered. The image of the bedroom vanished. It was replaced by a dark, damp basement.

My sister wasn't in a hospital. She was sitting in a chair, a gun pointed at her head.

And the person holding the gun was the woman from the ballroom. The other Seraphina.

"Which one do you want to save, Kai?" the woman on the screen asked. She smiled, and it was the same smile as the girl in my bed. "The sister who's about to get a bullet, or the lover who's about to go to jail?"

The phone in my hand rang again. A different number.

I answered.

"The wedding is in five minutes," a voice said. It was the High Priest of the Council. "The carriage is waiting. Where are you?"

I looked at the three people in the room. The murderer. The blackmailer. The ghost.

"We’re coming," I said.

I hung up and looked at Evangeline.

"We have to kill them all," I said. "Every single one of them."

The cliffhanger: As they walk toward the gala, Kai feels a sharp prick in his neck. He reaches back and pulls out a small dart. His legs turn to water.

"Sorry, Kai," Evangeline whispers, catching him as he falls. "But I’m the only one who survives this."