Chapter 2

Silas strode toward me and grabbed my arm. “Where’s the scar on your arm?”

I looked at him with a faint, mocking smile. “I told you already. I’m not Jenna. So no, I’m not the one who saved your life.

“That ugly scar was never on me.”

The color drained from his face.

He stared at me, his body going unsteady for a second. “You… you’re really not Jenna?

“She has a twin sister? Why have I never heard about this?”

I nodded, ready to explain.

But before I could say a word, Sienna gave a soft laugh.

“Jenna, I’ll admit it—this is your most convincing performance yet.

“Maybe you can fool Silas, but you can’t fool me. Woman to woman, I can see right through this.”

She crossed her arms and smiled smugly. “Scar removal is so advanced now. I’m guessing that’s what you’ve been doing these past two months.

“That explains why you stayed away so long this time. Before, I even bet Silas you wouldn’t last more than three days before crawling back and calling him. I never thought you’d actually hold out for two whole months.”

She clicked her tongue. “For a second, I thought you’d finally found some self-respect. Turns out you were just setting up a bigger act.”

As she spoke, Silas slowly let go of my arm.

His face hardened again, and when he spoke, his voice was icy with impatience.

“That’s enough, Jenna. Haven’t you dragged this out long enough?

“All this does is make me hate you more.”

I let out a cold laugh and got straight to the point.

“Didn’t you get the kidnappers’ call? You never paid the ransom, so my sister—”

“Mhm, mhm, mhm!” Sienna nodded enthusiastically, interrupting me with a bright little smile. “That part was good. Honestly, with acting like this, you could break into TV.

“Got any more? Come on, do another scene for me.”

The crack of a slap cut her off.

I hit her hard enough to send her face to the side.

It still didn’t feel like enough. I was about to hit her again when Silas caught my wrist.

“You’re the one who caused all this, and you still think you get to hit people first?

“Do you have any idea what I went through when I got that kidnapping call? I really thought something had happened to you. I was standing on the stairs when I heard it—I almost fell.

“Thank God Sienna caught me. And after she found out what was going on, she told me the truth.”

As he said that, Silas pulled a photo from his pocket and threw it at me.

In the picture, my sister was linked arm-in-arm with a strange man, the two of them looking suspiciously close.

The timestamp in the corner matched the exact period when she’d supposedly been kidnapped.

Silas’s eyes were bloodshot. “While I was worried sick about you, you were out shopping with another man?

“If Sienna hadn’t shown me this picture, I’d still be letting you make a fool out of me.”

I knew almost immediately that the photo had been doctored.

But I didn’t say that right away.

Instead, I took out a photo of my own.

It was the only picture I had of me and my sister together. However…

It had been taken ten years ago, when we were fifteen. We were younger, obviously, but our faces were still recognizable.

Silas’s hand shook as he stared at it.

Then he looked up at me in shock.

Sienna touched her chin, putting on an exaggeratedly thoughtful expression. “That could be fake too, you know. Edited. AI-generated. Something like that.”

Silas hesitated for half a second, then nodded as if he’d found solid ground again.

“Right. Exactly. Yours looks fake too.”

I gave a small laugh. “Interesting. You took one look at my photo and called it fake.

“But somehow you couldn’t tell that in yours, the man’s elbow is visibly warped from bad editing?”

Sienna’s expression changed instantly.

A flicker of panic flashed across her face.

Just then, a middle-aged man in a butler’s suit rushed into the room.

“Sir, ma’am—something’s happened to Mrs. Pembroke!”

Then he saw me.

His anxious expression froze, then twisted into outright fear.

“Mrs. Pembroke? Why are you here?”