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To a place where I couldn’t reach.
Lia startles but then flips off the driver when he calls her names. I make sure to memorize his license plate so I can cut out his tongue later.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
I probably shouldn’t be talking to her, in case she has a panic attack like in the hospital, but I couldn’t resist.
I miss her.
I miss my Lia, and the fact that she doesn’t remember me has been eating at my soul like the crashing waves that swallowed her that night.
Lia finally looks at me and she pauses, her aqua eyes widening and her breath audibly hitching.
She observes me intently as if she knows me. Maybe not on the surface, but deep in her heart.
Hope blossoms in my chest because I know, I just know that I can have my wife back.
Lia
Four weeks later
Ithink I’m crazy.
Either that or everything I just learned is true and I’ve lost nearly two months of my life.
Two months of believing I was Winter.
Two months of escaping my true identity.
Two months of…lies.
Flashback upon flashback slice through my battered head with the wrecking force of a thunderstorm.
My life plays in front of me like a distorted movie, one where the audience doesn’t know the ending until it strikes them in the face.
My name is Lia Volkov.
It’s not Winter. I’m not homeless.
I have a husband, and Jeremy is indeed my son.
Winter has always been a figment of my imagination. No, not my imagination. She’s a real person whose identity I used so I could escape my own.
Why…? Just why…would I do that?
I sag against the wall in the dim, narrow alleyway and stare up at Luca through my blurry vision. When I planned to escape with Jeremy and texted my childhood friend for help, I didn’t think he’d plot an entire masquerade. I never would’ve anticipated it was he who sent the circus clown to where I was waiting in the park in order to distract the guards and Jeremy so that he could pull me into this alley.
This is the same Luca who wanted me to not only spy on Adrian, but to also kill him—because I killed the mercenary he hired for the job.
Bile rises to my throat and I slap a hand on my mouth as the realization coils inside me, twisting and tugging on my heartstrings.
Ikilledsomeone.
To protect Adrian, I didn’t think twice about ending a person’s life. That’s why I went mad. That’s why somewhere in my mind, being Winter made more sense for my sanity.
She might have been homeless, but she was free and definitely not a murderer.
Luca snaps two fingers in front of my face, his impatience etched in his hard features. The leather jacket, black baseball cap, and mask give him the anonymity he religiously tries to achieve. I don’t remember him ever showing up in public with his face entirely visible. The stench of bleach coming from him fills my nostrils. He always has that distinctive smell, because he’s obsessed with cleaning. Before, I thought he had an OCD, but maybe it’s more to do with cleaning bodies and killing.
