LOGIN~ ALLISON ~ The first thing I registered when I opened my eyes was a heavy, suffocating darkness. I couldn't see my own hands or the floor beneath me. The air was cold and stale, carrying the sharp, metallic tang of damp concrete and rust. My head throbbed with a vicious, rhythmic pulse behind my temples. I tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea forced me to stay still as the memories of what had happened in the laboratory came rushing back in a chaotic wave. The thick glass door crashing open. The sudden burst of tactical flashbangs. Armed, masked men swarming the workspace before Richard or I could even react. I remembered the dreadful panic as they shoved us to the floor. I remembered watching one of them douse the main servers and microfluidic analyzers in chemical accelerant, tossing a flare onto the equipment. The fire had roared to life in seconds, devouring the monitors, the raw spectrograph files, and every shred of evidence we had just uncovered. They had burned it all to
~ ALLISON ~The laboratory that Richard had secured for our DNA testing was a hidden basement beneath a private research facility, tucked far away from any main hospital or public records office. It belonged to a trusted old colleague of his—someone who simply handed over the keycard without asking a single question.There were no automatic uploads here. No shared hospital databases. No paper trails for Harriet or her network to buy; I had made sure of that.I stood over the steel workspace, pulling a pair of latex gloves over my hands. My palms were already slick with sweat, my pulse thumping loudly behind my ears. I was consumed by anxiety, because whatever came out of this test would be nothing less than the absolute truth.To prevent any possibility of tampering, I had gathered the samples myself—carefully securing fresh swabs, keeping them sealed, and guarding them every second since. If we were going to tear Harriet's lie apart, I had to be the one handling the evidence."Everyt
~ ALISTAIR ~The air inside the high-security conference room of Montgomery Tower was nothing short of oppressive.Maps, digital traffic renders, deleted server logs, and cold-case files were plastered across the floor-to-ceiling glass screens. My top IT team, cyber-forensic analysts, and the best private investigators on my payroll had been locked inside this room for eight hours. Eight straight hours of dead silence, broken only by the fast, frantic clacking of keyboards and quiet, nervous whispers.And they still had no leads. Absolutely nothing."Mr. Montgomery..." My head investigator stepped forward, his throat visibly moving as he swallowed hard, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "We've run every single facial recognition algorithm across the eastern seaboard for the man who presented himself as Lindsay Morris's legal counsel. The ID he used at City Bank was a master-grade ghost profile. The moment he walked out with the vault release forms, his digital footprint vanished.
~ ALLISON ~The heavy hum of the cab's engine was the only sound accompanying the storm brewing inside my mind.I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window, watching the city streets blur past. My mind was racing, sifting through memories from thirty years ago like a chemist analyzing a corrupted formula.It didn't make sense. None of it added up. The timeline Harriet presented felt completely fractured and suspicious.Looking back, Harriet and I shared a long, deep history. We had known each other since our university days when we were getting our master's degrees under the guidance of our mentor, Professor Morris. Back then, I was still putting the shattered pieces of my identity together.When I was eleven years old, a horrific field trip accident separated me from my biological parents and left me with temporary amnesia. I was taken in by the Reed family and brought to Chicago. Growing up, they were the ones I believed were my real parents. They fed me well and sent me t
~ ISLA ~The heavy silence in the room was the first thing that greeted me the moment I opened my eyes.For a brief, naive second, my mind was mercifully blank. I stared up at the familiar white ceiling of the hospital room, feeling the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of my chest. But then, like a flood bursting through a dam, every single memory from last night came crashing down on me all at once. The grand banquet hall. The whispering crowds. The dark, suffocating revelation that had shattered our world into pieces.Siblings.The word felt like a physical strike to my entire being, stealing the air right out of my lungs. It was a sick, twisted joke. A nightmare I was desperately praying to wake up from—except the cold air against my skin and the steady, agonizing beat of my heart proved I was wide awake.My hand flew instinctively to my lower stomach, my fingers trembling as I cupped the fragile, silent life growing inside me. A sudden, violent wave of panic surged through my blood, f
~ ALISTAIR ~I didn’t care what five high-tech laboratory machines printed out on those papers. I didn’t care that ten of the best geneticists in New York had looked me in the eye and delivered the same sentence.I refused to accept that Antonio Vitale’s blood ran through my veins. The math of it was too convenient. The timing was too sharp. My mother had spent thirty years letting hatred rot her from the inside out, obsessed with destroying Vitale and anyone related to him. A woman who had faked her own death and built a life in the shadows didn't just leave things to chance.She had done something. She had engineered this nightmare to drag us all to hell with her, and if anyone knew the truth behind this biological curse, it was the monster who created it.That was why I was standing outside the high-security holding facility, breathing in the stale, damp air of the underground interrogation wing. The heavy iron door groaned on its hinges as the guard unlocked it.Inside, the once-f







