The hum of the monitors was the only sound in the sterile, icy room. Each screen displayed a different moment of my life—some I remembered, others I didn't. Me walking through the heavy snow of London, me sitting in a quiet library in Zurich, me looking lost in the crowded streets of Paris. It was a mosaic of a stolen life.
But my eyes were glued to the center of the room. The stone coffin.
David's hand was still wrapped tightly around mine, his skin burning hot against my frozen fingers. He didn't look at the monitors. He looked at the coffin with a gaze so tender it was terrifying.
"Who is in there, David?" I whispered, my voice cracking. "And who is the woman in the photo? Why does she have my face?"
David finally turned to me. The madness in his eyes had softened into something resembling grief, but a dark, twisted kind of grief. He stepped closer, pulling me toward the heavy stone lid. "She isn't just a woman, Zoya. She was the original masterpiece. The one your father and his associates tried to erase from existence."
He placed his hand on the lid. "The woman in the photo is Eleanor. And twenty years ago, she was everything. But she was fragile. Humans are fragile, Zoya. They break. They die. They leave you behind in the dark."
"Is she... dead?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs.
David's lips curled into a slow, haunting smile. "In this world, death is just a canvas waiting to be repainted."
With a sudden, powerful shove, he slid the stone lid aside. The sound of stone grinding against stone echoed like a scream. I wanted to look away, to run, but I was paralyzed.
I looked inside.
The coffin wasn't filled with bones. It was filled with a shimmering, blue liquid—some kind of preservative. And floating within it was a woman. She looked exactly like me, but her hair was longer, her skin like polished marble. She looked like she was merely sleeping, waiting for a kiss to wake her.
"She is the past," David breathed, his voice vibrating with obsession. He reached out and stroked my cheek, his thumb dragging across my lower lip. "And you, Zoya... you are the perfection of that past. You are the second chance I carved out of the stars."
"You cloned me?" The realization hit me like a physical blow. "My whole life... everything... it was all a lie?"
"Your father—Arthur—was her guardian. He failed her," David snarled. "I didn't clone you, Zoya. I transcribed you. Every memory you think you have? They are hers. Every dream you have of Blackwood Manor? That was her reality. I brought you back because the world was too grey without this face."
The horror was suffocating. I wasn't a person. I was a revival. A puppet made of flesh and blood.
"You're insane," I choked out, tears blurring my vision.
David pulled me into him, his chest a hard wall against my trembling body. He leaned down, his breath ghosting over my neck. "Insanity is just another word for devotion, Zoya. I killed the version of you that was weak so that this version could be eternal."
Suddenly, a red light began to flash on the monitors. An alarm blared, a sharp, piercing sound.
"They're through the first perimeter," David muttered, his eyes snapping to the screens.
"Who?" I asked, trembling.
"The Watchers," he hissed. "The men your father works for. They think you are an abomination. They want to bury the secret of Blackwood forever."
He grabbed a silver briefcase and pulled me toward a heavy steel door. "We don't have much time. If they catch us, they will dismantle you."
"I'm not going anywhere with you!" I screamed, trying to wrench my hand free.
David stopped. He pinned me against the steel door, his body trapping mine. "You think you have a choice?" he whispered, his voice dropping to a dangerous, gravelly tone. "Outside those doors is a world that wants you dead. In here, with me, you are a queen."
He leaned in, and the kiss wasn't just territorial. It was desperate, hungry, and full of a dark promise. It tasted like copper and old secrets. For a moment, my mind went blank. I hated him, but my body responded to him with a terrifying intensity.
The sound of an explosion rocked the room. The monitors flickered and died.
"Go! Through the tunnel!" David commanded, pushing me into a dark, narrow corridor just as the steel door behind us began to buckle.
We ran through the darkness, the sound of boots echoing behind us. We reached the end of the tunnel, which opened up to a hidden pier at the edge of the Thames River. A sleek, black boat was waiting. But standing on the pier, bathed in the moonlight, was a figure that made David stop dead in his tracks.
It was a woman. She was older, dressed in a sharp grey suit, her eyes cold and calculating. Beside her stood three men with silenced submachine guns.
"David," the woman said, her voice like cracking ice. "You thought you could keep her hidden forever?"
David stepped in front of me, shielding me. "She stays with me, Mother."
Mother?
The woman looked directly at me. "You want to know why you look like her, Zoya? Eleanor was my daughter. And David... David is the brother who couldn't let his sister go."
My heart stopped. I looked at David—the man who had stalked me, painted me, and kissed me with a lover's passion.
"You're my... brother?" I gasped.
David didn't look back. He just stared at the woman with a murderous rage. "She is NOT my sister anymore," he snarled. "She is mine."
Just then, a shot rang out from the darkness of the boat.
[To be continued in Chapter 6...]