Chapter 63She Is Me, and I Am Her
She Is Me, and I Am Her
Isabella
The last time we were alone like this, I was someone else.
The last time we were here , he was someone else.
I remember it differently, but the house is still the same.
It’s the house he brought me after abducting me from prison, the cell in the basement confirms it.
We arrived last night, long after dark, the drive long and silent except for the hum of the engine. No one saw us, no one can know he is still breathing.
Dominik didn’t stay long after he dropped us off. He helped Aslanov inside, got him to bed—though that word feels wrong. Laid him down , maybe. As if the weight he carries can ever be light enough to rest. And then I told Dominik to go. We would be fine, I said.
I would be fine, in here, with him.
Ada, Sawyer, and Karpov, they all left the clinic too, after spending nearly two weeks there.
A few days. A few days to rest, to pretend we’re still people and not ghosts walking among the ruins of our own choices.
It’s funny, in a sick way. That safety now lives in the same walls where I once lost my mind.
That he would bring us here, to the beginning.
That he’d bring me back here , after everything I’ve learned.
That we are now two completely different people, as individuals and as a pair.
He never decorated for beauty. He designed for control. The furniture is sleek, masculine, minimal. Nothing has changed. But I have.
My hand trails along the edge of the banister as I pass it, my fingers brushing wood I once gripped in desperation, begging for the door to open, for someone— anyone —to find me.
And now, I walk freely past the basement door.
It’s shut. Locked, maybe. But the key is mine now.
I know that. I could open it. Walk down the steps. Face the cell again. But I don’t.
Not yet.
I have to admit: it’s too fragile a barrier yet.
I can still hear the echo of my own voice down there. Screaming. Cursing him. Pleading, until my throat went dry and I was forced into silence. It wasn’t the cell that broke me. It was the not knowing. Of what he wanted from me. Of what he saw in me. Of why I wasn’t dead.
And now I know.
Now I know exactly who I am.
It wasn’t a coincidence. It was never chance. He didn’t just see me. He recognized me.
The girl behind the nurse’s badge, behind the ordinary clothes and the soft, rehearsed voice, that wasn’t the real me.
She was a disguise. One I wore so well, I forgot I was even wearing it.
I’d been trained for it. Programmed by the people who raised me.
Nothing truly disappears. Not bloodlines.
Not history. Not the way I have always been attracted to certain people, to danger.
Always being too curious. Not the way my pulse slows when things go quiet.
When I look in the mirror now, I don’t see a victim. I don’t even see a survivor.
I just see myself, whoever this person is.
My eyes are darker than I remember. Not in color, but in depth.
Like something’s been pulled up from the bottom of a well and it hasn’t stopped rising.
There’s a tension to my face that never used to be there.
A permanent readiness. My jaw is set hard.
My mouth, unsmiling. My hair is loose, falling over my shoulders in waves. I should look soft. But I don’t.
I look like her, this new version of me.
Not the nurse. Not the hostage. Not the abused child. Her. The one they tried to bury.
And I wonder; how could she have kept this from me? How long had my ‘mother’ looked at me and seen that shadow beneath my skin?
And why didn’t she say anything? Why didn’t she say anything after my stepfather was erased? I remember her text messages and swallow, would that have been it? Perhaps she wanted to speak to me about it. I never replied, I couldn’t bear it.
But now that I know, now that the weight of my past finally sits in my hands instead of pressing on my back, I have to ask myself—what am I going to do with it?
Because I can’t unknow it. I can’t go back to being the girl who thought she was innocent. Who thought love and kindness would be enough to save us all.
They lied to me. She lied to me. Everyone lied to me, but I won’t lie to myself.
I see me .
And they will see me too, unshaken, unleased and inevitable .