C3

"Sign the transfer, Kai. Or the girl’s lungs stop working in three minutes."

Marcus Blackwood leaned against the mahogany desk, spinning a silver fountain pen between his fingers. He looked at me with a lazy, heavy-lidded stare that made my skin crawl. On the tablet between us, the live feed of Mei’s isolation room showed a nurse checking the oxygen levels.

"I signed the confession," I snapped. My hand went to the back of my neck, where the dart had left a swollen, throbbing knot. "I gave you what you wanted."

"You gave Elinor what she wanted. I'm different. I want the codes." Marcus stood up, his shadow stretching across the floor. "The Blackwood offshore accounts. Alexander had the primary key embedded in his biometric signature. Which means it’s in yours now."

"I don't have them."

"Then your sister doesn't have a heartbeat." He tapped the screen. The nurse in the video paused, her hand hovering over a red dial. "Choose, Kai. Be a ghost or be a brother."

I lunged. My hands went for his throat, but Marcus didn't flinch. He just stepped back, and the door behind me clicked. Two guards, necks thick as fire hydrants, stepped into the light.

"Don't be a hero. It doesn't suit the face." Marcus tossed the pen onto the desk. "Here’s the deal. You want the codes to the life-support? You want to see Mei breathe without a machine? You're going to fix the mess in the east wing."

"What mess?"

"Evangeline. She’s falling apart. The maid caught her eating with her hands. The gardener heard her swearing like a longshoreman. If the Council suspects she’s not Seraphina, the inheritance freezes. If the money freezes, I can’t pay for your sister’s 'specialized' care."

"You want me to train her?" I let out a jagged laugh. "I’m a ghostwriter, Marcus. I don't teach socialites how to use a salad fork."

"You're a professional liar. Teach her how to lie. Make her a queen, or I'll make you both fertilizer."

Marcus walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the handle. "And Kai? Try to keep your hands off her. Consummation was for the cameras. Anything else is a breach of my patience."

The east wing of the Blackwood estate felt like a tomb. I found Evangeline in the library. She wasn't holding a crystal flute of champagne. She was huddled in a velvet armchair, a tattered book of fairytales open on her lap. The spine was broken. The pages were yellowed.

"He sent you to fix me?" She didn't look up. Her voice was thin, brittle.

"He sent me to make sure you don't get us killed." I walked over, my boots heavy on the Persian rug. "Put the book away. We start with the walk."

"I can't." She finally looked at me. Her face was pale, almost translucent in the dim light. She pushed back the sleeve of her silk robe.

Her wrists were ringed with purple-black bruises. Fingerprints. Small, precise marks of violence.

"Marcus?" My voice dropped.

"He wanted the location of the will. When I told him I didn't have it, he... he reminded me who owns this house." She pulled the robe shut, her fingers trembling. "I'm just a replacement part to him. Like you."

I reached out. I didn't think about the cameras or the guards or the poison in the air. I took her hand. Her skin was cold. I traced the edge of a bruise with my thumb.

"I'm not a replacement," I whispered. "I'm the one who's going to burn this place down."

She looked into my eyes. For the first time, the mask of the terrified twin slipped. I saw the girl who had lived in a basement, the girl who had been erased before she was even born.

"My name is Kai." I let the secret out like a breath of smoke. "Not Alexander. Not 'Subject Four.' Just Kai."

She leaned in, her forehead resting against my chest. I could smell the faint scent of her soap—not the jasmine poison Seraphina wore, but something clean. Something real.

"I didn't kill her for the money," she whispered.

"I know."

"She drowned them. When we were six. My kittens. She put them in a bucket and watched me cry while she held the lid down. She told me if I ever told Father, I’d be next." Evangeline’s breath hitched. "I didn't kill a sister. I killed a monster."

"Then let’s finish the job."

I pulled her up. We spent the next four hours in a war of posture and tone. I taught her how to look through people, not at them. How to hold a glass like it was a weapon. How to say 'get out' with a tilt of the chin. By the time the sun began to bleed through the stained-glass windows, she looked like a Blackwood.

"The payment went through," Marcus said, walking in without knocking. He held up a phone. "Elinor is satisfied. The first installment for Mei’s surgery has been released to your offshore account."

I grabbed the phone, my heart racing. "The hospital confirmed it?"

"Better. The funds are cleared. You’re a savior, Kai." Marcus smiled, but his eyes remained flat, dead. "Of course, there’s a tiny catch. There always is."

"What did you do?"

"I routed the transfer through a shell company in Macau. A little outfit called Golden Lotus. They handle the... logistics for the trafficking routes in the southeast." Marcus leaned back against a bookshelf, his grin widening. "If you touch that money to pay the hospital, you’re laundering funds for a global crime syndicate. The feds will have a warrant out for your arrest before the first incision is made on your sister’s chest."

The phone felt hot in my hand. I wanted to hurl it at his face. "You tied my sister's life to a human trafficking ring?"

"I tied your life to it. You’re the one who signed the account forms, 'Alexander.' You’re the one who will take the fall if anyone looks too closely." He walked over and patted my shoulder. "You're a Blackwood now. We don't do 'clean' money."

I watched him walk out. The silence in the library felt like it was crushing my ribs. Evangeline stood by the window, her silhouette sharp against the rising sun.

"We have to kill him," I said. My voice was a low, steady vibration. "Tonight. Before the wedding."

"He has guards everywhere, Kai. He has the codes."

"I'll get the codes from his dead hands."

I turned to go to my room, my mind already mapping out the corridors, the blind spots in the security, the exact weight of the knife I’d hidden under the floorboards. I needed a distraction. I needed a plan.

I walked into my bedroom and stopped.

The air smelled like ozone and cheap cologne. My bed had been turned down, but something was sitting on the pillow.

It was a small, velvet box.

I opened it. Inside wasn't a ring. It was a lock of dark hair, tied with a thin, black ribbon. It was soft. It smelled like the antiseptic of a hospital room.

Mei’s hair.

There was a note tucked under the silk lining. One line in Marcus’s elegant, looping script.

She’s so pretty when she sleeps. I think I’ll keep her for myself once you’re in prison.

My vision went red. The walls of the room seemed to pulse with the rhythm of my own blood. The alliance with Evangeline, the plan for the will, the hope of escape it all evaporated.

Marcus wasn't just holding the purse strings. He was a predator who had found a new toy. My sister wasn't just a patient anymore; she was a trophy.

I grabbed the knife from the floorboards. I didn't care about the cameras. I didn't care about the Federal warrant.

The door to my room creaked open.

"Kai?" It was Evangeline. She looked frantic. "We have to go. Now."

"I'm going to kill him," I growled, turning toward her with the blade visible.

"You can't." She held up her own phone. The screen was flickering with a new video feed. "Look."

It wasn't a basement. It wasn't a hospital.

It was a live stream of the ballroom. A priest was standing at the altar. The Council members were in their seats. And in the front row, sitting in a wheelchair with a look of pure, glazed terror on her face, was Mei.

She wasn't in a coma. She was awake. And she was wearing a flower girl’s dress that was stained with fresh, wet blood.

"The wedding isn't in five minutes," Evangeline whispered, her face ashen. "It started ten minutes ago. And if we’re not there in sixty seconds, Marcus told the guards to start with her fingers."

The phone in my hand buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

Walk fast, ghost. Your bride is waiting. And so am I.

I looked at the lock of hair in the box. I looked at the knife.

"The will," I said, grabbing Evangeline’s arm. "Where is it?"

"I told you, I don't know!"

"Think!" I shook her. "Where would Seraphina hide the one thing that could destroy the family?"

Evangeline’s eyes darted around the room, then landed on the book of fairytales she was still clutching. She ripped the cover open. A small, micro-SD card fell out.

"She didn't hide it," Evangeline breathed. "She made me carry it."

I grabbed the card. We ran.

We burst into the ballroom just as the priest raised his hands. The music stopped. Every head turned. Marcus stood at the altar, looking at his watch. He looked at me, then at Mei.

"You're late," Marcus said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small remote. "Give me the card, Kai. Or she stops breathing. For real this time."

I looked at my sister. Her eyes were wide, pleading. I looked at the remote in Marcus’s hand.

"I have a better idea," I said, holding the card up for the Council to see. "How about we talk about what's actually on this drive?"

Marcus’s thumb hovered over the button. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Then don't be me," I said.

I didn't give him the card. I swallowed it.

The room went dead silent. Marcus’s face twisted into a mask of pure rage.

"You think you can hide it in your stomach?" Marcus snarled. "I'll cut it out of you right here."

He pressed the button.

Mei didn't gasp. She didn't die.

Instead, the massive chandeliers in the ballroom flickered and died. The emergency lights kicked on, bathing the room in a sickly, pulsing red.

"What did you do?" Elinor screamed from the front row.

"I didn't do anything," I said, stepping toward the altar as the guards moved in. "But the person who just hacked your security system did."

The massive doors at the back of the ballroom slammed open.

A woman walked in. She was wearing a blood-stained silver dress. She was pale, her hair matted with dirt, and she was carrying a shotgun.

It was Seraphina. The real one.

"Did you miss me, Marcus?" she asked, leveling the barrels at his chest. "Because I definitely missed you."

Seraphina pulls the trigger, but the gun clicks empty. She looks at Kai, then at Evangeline. "Which one of you is going to help me finish this?"