Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
ANNA
I stare down at the journal entry, my fingers trembling as they trace over the unfamiliar handwriting—neither mine nor Mads'. The pit in my stomach feels like it's lined with lead, heavy and poisonous.
RED.
Just seeing the signature makes my throat close up.
I knew something was wrong the moment I blinked and found myself standing in the shower this morning with no memory of getting there.
One second, I'd been in the kitchen, rolling out pie dough, watching the afternoon light spill across the counter.
The next—nothing. Just steam and water and the disorienting sensation of time having slipped away from me.
At first, I thought Mads was back. God, I'd almost been relieved.
But Mads doesn't clean like this. I got out of the shower to find that it's ten in the morning, and I don't have any clue what the fuck happened to the rest of yesterday.
I touch the spotless counter, smelling bleach and industrial cleaners. I walk through the house and find the fire roaring in the library, though I didn't light it. Everything is immaculate, sterile, as if someone tried to erase all evidence of... something.
So, of course, I scramble at the back of the closet for the journal, and when I open it, the words knock the breath out of my lungs.
ANNA. I EXIST NOW. ACCEPT THIS FACT. YOU WERE ATTACKED IN OUR HOME YESTERDAY AT 1:42 PM. A MAN ATTEMPTED TO STRANGLE YOU. I EMERGED TO HANDLE THE SITUATION. THE THREAT HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY NEUTRALIZED.
My hands fly to my throat, feeling for bruises I don't remember receiving.
Immediately, I wince. Fuck! It's not a lie.
I'll need to wear turtlenecks for days if I don't want Domhnall to find out about what happened.
If today is tomorrow, that means he could be back in a few hours.
What if this new alter didn't clean everything up and Domhn finds out?
Wait. Why was my first impulse to hide it from him?
I just came clean to him about everything—okay, most things—and it had felt so good.
I keep reading desperately.
I HAVE CLEANED THE HOUSE. ALL EVIDENCE HAS EEN DISPOSED OF. YOU DO NOT NEED DETAILS. BUT UNDERSTAND THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR FROM THAT PARTICULAR INDIVIDUAL AGAIN.
"Permanently neutralized." My voice sounds thin and strange in the empty room. Clinical words for something that must be far from clinical.
YOUR DESIRE FOR NORMALCY AND MADS’ RECKLESSNESS HAVE CREATED VULNERABILITIES. I NOW EXIST TO ADDRESS THESE DEFICIENCIES.
I'm shaking as I read the rest, each word hammering another nail into the coffin of the life I thought I was building.
DO NOT ATTEMPT THERAPY OR HYPNOSIS TO REMOVE ME. I AM NECESSARY.
THE MAN WHO ATTACKED US HAD A TATTOO INDICATING PARAMILITARY TRAINING. HIS PHONE CONTAINED ENCRYPTED COMMUNICATIONS. THIS WAS NOT RANDOM.
DO NOT TELL DOMHNALL WHAT I’VE DONE. HE WOULD NOT UNDERSTAND THE NECESSITY.
REMEMBER: I DO NOT EXIST TO COMFORT YOU. I EXIST TO KEEP US ALIVE.
- RED
I slam the journal shut, then reopen it, desperate for the words to change or be a joke. Mads playing one of her cruel pranks, maybe.
But the words remain, stark and uncompromising.
"No," I whisper, then louder, "No!" I rip the page from the journal, the sound of tearing paper like a scream in the quiet house.
I sprint to the library, the page clutched in my fist. The fire will destroy this evidence, this impossible reality I refuse to accept. I'll burn it away like it never existed.
But at the threshold, I stop. Something makes me look down at my hands. The afternoon light streaming through the arched windows illuminates them with unforgiving clarity.
Under my fingernails—only a couple, my thumb and fourth nail, and barely there—are rusty stains. Brownish-red. Stubborn against the fierce scrubbing they've clearly endured. The sight of them sends a cold shock through my system, like ice water injected directly into my veins.
Blood.
The room tilts around me, the bookshelves seeming to lean inward, the leather-bound volumes blurring into streaks of color.
I drop the paper and stumble backward, a scream building in my throat but dying before it escapes, caught behind my teeth like a caged thing.
My back hits the wall with a solid thud, the impact vibrating through my bones, and I slide down, hugging my knees to my chest like I did when I was a child, hiding from my father's rage. The hardwood floor is cool and solid beneath me, the only real thing in a world suddenly turned to quicksand.
"Oh god, oh god, oh god." The words tumble from my lips in a desperate prayer to a deity who's never answered me before. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my temples, a frantic drumbeat. "Did I kill someone?"
Then, like a door slamming open in my mind: wait, did someone come to kill me?
The thoughts crash into each other, a violent collision of horror and realization. Mads ran for a reason. She left Domhnall—the love of her life, the center of her universe—for a reason. The bitter taste of truth floods my mouth.
"She was protecting him," I whisper to the empty room, my voice barely audible over the crackling fire. A log shifts in the grate, sending up a shower of sparks that dance and die. "Us. She was protecting us."
While I was busy hating her, resenting her, plotting to get rid of her... she was the one making the sacrifice I couldn't bear to make. The weight of this realization presses down on me like a physical force, making it hard to breathe in the suddenly too-warm room.
I stagger to my feet, knees weak and trembling, snatching the page from the floor, and stumble back to the bathroom.
The cold tile shocks my bare feet, a grounding sensation amid the chaos of my thoughts.
The woman in the mirror is a stranger—hollow-eyed, pale as death, with panic bleeding from every pore.
Strands of hair stick to her sweat-dampened forehead, and her pupils are so dilated her eyes look black in the harsh fluorescent light.
"Mads," I call to her, pressing my palms against the cold glass, feeling its smooth, unyielding surface. "Mads, I need you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't see it. I need you back."
Nothing. Just my own terrified reflection staring back at me, the bathroom's stark lighting casting harsh shadows under my eyes, highlighting every fear written across my face.
I fumble for my phone on the counter, nearly knocking over a bottle of Domhnall's cologne, its spicy scent briefly filling the air as it wobbles. I dial Dr. Resnick with shaking fingers, leaving smudges on the screen.
"I need a session," I blurt when he answers, the phone pressed so hard against my ear it hurts. "I made a terrible mistake. I need Mads back. I need you to undo it."
The silence on the line stretches so long I think he's hung up. All I can hear is the soft static of the connection and my own ragged breathing echoing back at me.
"Dr. Resnick!"
"I'm here." His voice is measured, careful, with that clinical calm that suddenly feels like sandpaper against my raw nerves. "I explained when we began that this therapy can have unexpected consequences—"
"I don't give a shit about consequences!" My voice cracks like thin ice, the words bouncing off the bathroom tiles. "Just put me back the way I was! Make her come back!"
"The mind isn't like children's blocks, Anna." The patronizing gentleness in his tone makes me want to scream. "You can't knock them down and set them up the same way again. The brain is—"
“Can you at least try?” Desperation claws at my throat, making my words come out strangled. I catch sight of myself in the mirror again—eyes wild, chest heaving, knuckles white around the phone. “I need her. I need her now.”
He sighs, the sound of a man who knows his limitations, the exhale crackling through the phone’s speaker. “I have an appointment at two—”
“I’ll be there.” I hang up before he can say anything else, the phone slipping from my sweaty palm. I slide down the bathroom door until I’m a crumpled heap on the cold tile floor, the paper signed ‘RED’ crushed in my fist, its edges digging into my palm.
The hypnosis is a failure.
I sit in my car in the parking lot of Dr. Resnick’s office after our session, hands strangling the steering wheel as I try to catch my breath.
The leather is cool under my white-knuckled grip, the car’s interior still and silent save for my ragged breathing.
The afternoon sun slants through the windshield, too bright, too normal for the nightmare unfolding around me.
He couldn’t reach Mads. Couldn’t find a trace of her in the echoing chambers of my fractured mind.
“What have I done?” I whisper to my reflection in the rearview mirror, the words fogging the glass briefly before disappearing. “What have I done?”
The bitter irony isn’t lost on me. After months of therapy to get Mads out of the picture, to have my fiancé all to myself, to be whole and normal and unbroken—I finally got what I wanted.
I can have sex with Domhnall now, from the sweetest love-making to the most primal, without disappearing into the darkness of my mind. The memory of his touch, his weight upon me, the pleasure uninterrupted by blackness—it should be a victory.
But at what cost?
I’ve lost the one person who understood the danger we were in.
I’ve traded Mads for Red—a cold, ruthless protector who killed a man in our home and disposed of him like garbage.
The air conditioning blows cold against my skin, raising goosebumps, but I barely notice, lost in the horror of what I’ve unleashed.
Maybe I’m more like my father than I ever dared admit. Selfish. Calculating. Willing to hurt even those I claim to love to get what I want.
The thought turns my stomach, bile rising in my throat, bitter and burning.
Dr. Ezra always insisted Mads wasn’t separate from me—just another facet of who I am, dealing with our shared trauma in her own way.
Still, it’s a blow to realize that I might be far more like the plotting, sociopathic alter I wanted to be rid of after all.
And she might have been more like who you thought you were, sacrificing what she wanted in order to take care of the one she loved most.
I drop my face into my hands, paralyzed by the thought and so, so confused. Does this mean Mads and I have integrated? If so, why then has another alter emerged?
A car door slams nearby, making me flinch, my heart leaping into my throat.
And now? Now I’ve buried the part of me that would protect him, that would make the painful choices, and replaced her with something far more dangerous. Something that kills without hesitation and cleans up afterward with chilling efficiency.
“Damn it!” I slam my palm against the steering wheel, the impact sending a shock wave up my arm, the pain barely registering through my rising panic.
A woman walking by glances at me, startled, then hurries past. I don’t know what’s happening in my own head anymore.
I don’t know who I am or what I’m capable of.
There’s only one person who might have answers now.
I start the car, the engine purring to life, my decision made. I’ll have to face Dr. Ezra after all. After months of avoiding him and thinking I knew better, I’ll have to admit how catastrophically wrong I’ve been. The admission tastes like ash in my mouth.
As I pull out of the parking lot, my tires crunching over loose gravel, a chill runs down my spine, raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck.
For just a second, I swear I feel someone else’s presence—not Mads, but something colder, more calculating.
Something that watches and waits in the shadows of my mind, its gaze a physical weight pressing against the back of my skull.
I press harder on the accelerator, the car surging forward, as if I could outrun what’s inside me. The world outside blurs—green trees, blue sky, normal people going about their normal lives, all of it seeming unreal.
But there’s no escaping what lives in your own head. No matter how fast I drive, how far I go, it comes with me, patient and waiting.
And I’m terrified of what it plans to do next.