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I bolt out of her room, slamming the door behind me. My fingers shake around the phone as I run. I don’t stop running until I’m outside.
My heart hammers in my throat and I’m almost sure the guards notice it, but if they do, they don’t comment on it.
I force myself to walk at a moderate pace until I reach the main house. I sprint up the stairs, barge into the bedroom, and hide under the covers.
My hand is still wrapped tightly around the phone as if it’s a safe line from the ghostly fingers I feel trying to peel the covers off me or the marionette strings attempting to direct me to a dark tunnel.
What if Lia followed me? What if she’ll kill me now?
Sweat covers my brow and my fingers are stiff as I stare at the phone’s light under the darkness of the covers.
The texts from the unknown number glare back at me. He knows something. He said I took her place for a reason. But what? Aside from being coerced by Adrian into this, I had no reason to be Lia. I don’twantto be Lia.
Then the realization of what I saw hits me like a sledgehammer.
She’s alive.
Lia Volkov is alive.
I was barely hanging by a thread before, but now that I know she’s alive, I feel tenfold worse than I did this morning.
Everything Adrian did to me has been fucked-up, but I thought I was up against someone dead, someone who doesn’t exist. But shedoesexist. Shebreathes. She’s right there, in the same damn house while a homeless lookalike is fucking her husband day in and day out.
I took her life, her son, her husband. Everything.
I think I’m going to throw up.
No wonder I had nightmares about her killing me or attempting to. I would’ve done the same. If my husband, the man I love, brought another woman to fuck under my roof, I would murder him with my own hands.
I wouldn’t care that he calls her by my name or that he only brought her as a replacement. She’s not me.
It’s cheating.
It’s fuckingwrong.
I might have stayed quiet about it before, but now that I know, I can’t go on like this.
I’m not as sick as Adrian. I’m not a homewrecker.
The other woman.
Bringing out my conversation with the shadow, I know that he’s the only one who can allow me an escape.
After all, he kidnapped me from that birthday party, in the midst of all that security, just for a talk. He can do it again if I lie and say I know the mission.
This time, I won’t go back to Adrian’s side and his sick, twisted games.
This time, I’ll need to fucking leave.
30
Adrian
When I step into our bedroom, the first thing I smell is…roses.
There are a few candles lit on the nightstand, their lights flickering in the otherwise dark room.
I pause at the entrance as I shrug off my jacket. Today has been tedious as fuck and the meeting at Sergei’s table was all about throwing jabs. While I don’t usually bat an eye at that, the visible threat Vladimir and Sergei are showing toward me have made me wary.
