Chapter 8: Unmasked

The air in the hospital room felt thin, vibrating with Ethan’s lethal silence.

Henry paused, leaning against the doorframe, with a smirk on his face, “Oh! You're here too, cousin-in-law.” He said mockingly as he looked at her outfit. “Seems like you're the one sick in the head.”

"He’s the one, Ethan!" the woman wailed, as she tried clutching at Ethan's trousers. "He tried to frame me!"

Ethan didn't look at Henry. Instead, his obsidian gaze dropped to the woman’s hands. She was trembling, her palms splayed open. His heart stopped, then turned to ice. The silver crescent-moon scar was missing.

The investigation into the coastal accident finally yielded results that evening. It turned out that Gabrielle had been his saviour. She had even suffered a scar on her palm, cut by the jagged glass of his car door that night.

Driven by urgency, he rushed home to see her, only to find her sneaking out, her movements suspicious. He already knew who was responsible for the information theft, yet trust had never been his strength. Doubt gnawed at him.

So he followed her from a distance, hiding in the shadows, watching closely to determine whether she was connected to the enemy—until her scream tore through the night.

In one fluid, violent motion, Ethan grabbed the woman by the throat and hoisted her up. "Who are you?" he roared, his voice shaking the room. "Where is my wife?”

The imposter’s tears fell for real this time as she struggled to gain freedom to breath.

"Ethan, what are you—" Henry began, but was cut short by Ethan's chilling voice.

"Lock down every exit!" Ethan commanded his bodyguards, his face a mask of pure unadulterated rage. "Seal the North Wing. If a single fly leaves this building, I’ll have everyone’s heads. Find secret passages in this room. Now!”

Ethan threw the imposter to his ground. "Talk, Where is Gabrielle?" he hissed at her. "Who do you work for?”

She coughed violently, curling in on herself as she dragged air back into her lungs. Her fingers trembled against the marble floor, her throat burning, her vision swimming.

“I—I am Gabrielle,” she rasped, shaking her head in frantic denial. “Ethan, please… look at me.”

A bitter, disbelieving laugh tore from him. “Don’t insult me,” he said softly, the quiet far more dangerous than his rage. “You might wear her face, but you’re not her.”

She forced herself upright despite the pain, tears streaking down her cheeks. “Why are you treating me like this!” She choked out. “I–I saved your life—”

“Enough,” Ethan snapped. “You imposter.”

His gaze swept over her, contempt etched into every line of his face. “If you're truly Gabrielle, why are you dressed in a patient’s gown?”

He didn’t wait for her answer. “And don’t try to lie to me. Gabrielle bears a scar on her right palm.” His eyes locked onto hers. “So tell me—where is it?”

The woman froze.

Slowly—too slowly—she turned her hands over, staring at her own palms as though seeing them for the first time. Smooth. Unmarked. Bare.

The room seemed to exhale.

Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

Ethan’s jaw tightened. The last fragile thread inside him snapped. “Speechless now are you?” Ethan’s gaze slid back to his men. “Take her,” he ordered coldly. “Interrogate her until she remembers and spills out everything.”

Two men moved instantly, hauling her to her feet as she sobbed and fought.

“No—Ethan, please!” she cried, her voice breaking. “You’re making a mistake! I'm Gabrielle—”

The doors slammed shut behind her screams.

The room fell deathly still.

Ethan turned his freezing gaze to the back wall of Room 402, where his men were already tearing away a heavy industrial cabinet. Behind it, the faint outline of a seam in the drywall revealed the secret door.

"Open it," Ethan commanded, his voice a low vibration of lethal intent.

One of the guards slammed a breaching tool into the mechanism. The panel groaned and slid back, revealing a dimly lit, narrow service corridor that smelled of stagnant air and damp concrete.

"Henry," Ethan said without turning around.

The cousin, who had been trying to make sense of everything by the doorway, stiffened. "Ethan, I had no idea about any of this. I just came to check on a—".

Ethan’s hand blurred. He grabbed Henry by the lapels of his designer coat and slammed him against the jagged edge of the opened secret passage. "If she has so much as a scratch on her, Henry, I won't turn you over to the police. I’ll turn you over to the fishes in the ocean".

He tossed Henry toward his lead security detail. "Watch him closely. The rest of you, follow me".

The service tunnel led downward in a steep, spiraling staircase. Ethan moved with the predatory grace of a man who had spent four years looking for the woman who saved him, only to realize he had been pushing her away for the last month. Every step he took was fueled by a crushing guilt. He had accused her of theft when she was the only person who had ever truly protected him.

At the bottom of the stairs, the tunnel opened into an abandoned boiler room in the hospital’s basement.

Empty!