5…

~~Evans~~

I know he’s playing along. But who cares? It’s just a matter of a few hours before he realizes I’m not lying, or rather, before he believes I’m not lying. There’s a difference, and I’m well aware of it. I already have it all planned out, every contingency mapped, every question he might throw at me already answered three moves in advance. That’s the one advantage I’ve always had over him, even before all this. I plan. He improvises. And right now, improvising is a hard game to win when you’re missing an entire year of source material.

He wants a parent, I’ll give him a parent. He wants a phone, I’ll give him a fucking phone. I’m going to be the better player here, and honestly, I should be. I’m the one with the memories. He’s the one without them. So let’s wait and see who blinks first.

“We’re home, baby~~,” I said as the car rolled to a stop in front of the villa, gravel crunching under the tires like the whole property was applauding my own genius.

“This is home?” He asked, unimpressed, staring up at it like it owed him rent.

“This is our home, baby,” I said, dragging the word out extra cute, extra sickening, on purpose.

God, I’m cringy as hell. I know it. I’ve always known it. But there’s something deeply satisfying about watching the twitch of discomfort cross his face every single time the word “baby” leaves my mouth. It’s like poking a very dangerous, very expensive bruise. He hates it so much he can’t even fully hide the hate, and that tiny slip of honesty is worth every ounce of my own dignity I’m sacrificing to get it.

“Let’s go inside our home,” I said, already unbuckling.

I got out fast, meaning to jog around and open his door like the doting husband I was supposed to be, the kind of gesture that would look perfect in a photo album full of memories that technically didn’t exist. I didn’t even make it two steps before he’d already popped his own door open and swung his legs out, wincing slightly at the pull of his stitches but refusing, apparently on principle, to let me do a single romantic thing for him.

Asshole. Can’t let me have this.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said anyway, walking up beside him like it hadn’t bothered me at all.

“I didn’t have to do a lot of things,” he muttered, eyes already scanning the front of the villa the way I imagined he scanned every room he walked into, cataloguing exits, cataloguing threats, cataloguing me. “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna wait around for someone else to do them for me.”

Stubborn. Even without a year of memory, some things about a person just don’t change. Honestly, it was almost comforting.

The staff had the doors open before we reached them, and I watched his eyes move across the entryway, the wide staircase, the framed photos I’d had Marcus place strategically along the wall where anyone walking up would have no choice but to see them. Us, laughing at some rooftop dinner that never happened. Us, at a beach that existed only in an editing software. Us, at the altar, his hand in mine, both of us dressed sharp and smiling like the whole world hadn’t been trying to kill either of us for years.

He didn’t say anything about the photos. Just looked. Filed it away, probably, the same way he filed everything away. I made a mental note of that too.

The moment we stepped fully inside, one of my security guards materialized from the hallway with a phone held out on a small tray like we were in some absurd hotel and this was room service. I took it, thanked him with a small nod, and turned to Felix with what I hoped read as pure, uncomplicated joy.

“Here you go, baby~~. Your phone. All intact.”

“Finally,” he said, snatching it out of my hand a little faster than a man who trusted me would’ve grabbed anything.

I watched him power it on. Watched the home screen light up, familiar wallpaper, familiar app layout, everything down to the cracked corner of the case exactly the way his real phone looked, because it wasn’t actually his real phone at all. It was a mirror. A very expensive, very carefully built mirror, cloned down to the icon placement, populated with contacts I’d curated myself, stripped of every message and photo and call log that could’ve told him anything true about the last year of his life, or about the eight months since his parents’ funeral, or about exactly how much he used to despise the man currently watching him unlock it with a fake passcode I’d made sure he’d still remember.

The genius of it wasn’t even the phone itself. It was what came after. Every search he ran through that browser, every name he typed in, every website he opened trying to piece his own life back together, all of it funneled through a server my people controlled completely. Search his own name, and he’d get exactly the story I wanted him to find. Search mine, and he’d get eight months of a marriage that never happened, built out in enough detail to survive a deep dive. Search his parents, and, well. I hadn’t finished building that part yet. That was tonight’s problem. But I would.

Any information he needed, I controlled the supply of it.

It felt a little like cheating, if I was being honest with myself, watching him thumb through the screen with such raw, quiet relief, like this small rectangle of glass and metal was proof that at least one piece of his old life had survived intact. He had no idea he was holding a leash I’d built with my own two hands and handed to him gift-wrapped.

“See,” I said, watching him scroll, unable to resist twisting the knife just slightly, just enough to enjoy myself. “I told you I’d take care of everything.”

He looked up at me, and for just a second, something raw and unguarded passed behind his eyes, something that looked almost like he wanted to believe me.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “You did.”