Mrs. Ellen’s hand flew to her throat, her eyes widening as she stared at the screen. The scarred woman—the real mother I had been told was a ghost of my past—clung to the camera lens on the other side of the digital void.
“Lucia, run!” she screamed, her voice cracking through the high-end speakers Marcus used for his ‘therapeutic’ recordings.
Marcus didn’t panic. That was the most terrifying thing about him. His heart rate didn’t seem to rise; he simply set the pen down on the gurney with the practiced grace of a surgeon. He looked at the monitor, then back at me, his gaze cold and analytical.
“Technically,” Marcus said, his voice dropping an octave, “the sedation should have lasted another four hours. Your metabolism is accelerating, Lucia. Or should I call you Valentina? You seemed to like that name so much more.”
“Who am I?” I rasped. My throat felt like it was filled with glass. Two years of chemicals had turned my vocal cords to rust.
“You are the key to a kingdom you were too young to rule,” Mrs. Ellen hissed, regaining her composure. She stepped toward the gurney, her elegant coat swirling around her like a shroud. “And you are a very expensive mistake your mother made when she tried to hide you from us.”
“I am Lucia Armenta,” I whispered, the name feeling heavy and ancient on my tongue. The memories didn’t come back in a flood; they came in sharp, jagged shards. A garden with blue hydrangeas. A heavy iron gate. The smell of the same clinical alcohol Marcus used, but on the hands of an older man.
Marcus’s father.
“You were a brilliant study in neuro-plasticity,” Marcus said, walking toward a tray of syringes. “My father broke the map of your mind, and I… I spent two years rebuilding it into something I could love. Something I could control. You weren’t just a wife, Lucia. You were my masterpiece.”
“You drugged me,” I said, my voice gaining strength as adrenaline began to flush the last of the residual toxins from my blood. “You watched me sleep. You stole my life.”
“I gave you a life!” he shouted, a flash of genuine rage breaking his polished veneer. “You were a vegetable when I took over your case! A traumatized, broken girl with a fortune she didn’t know she had. I gave you NYU. I gave you this house. I gave you a name!”
“And now you’re going to give me my inheritance,” I said, my eyes darting to the red folder.
On the monitor, my mother was screaming, but Marcus reached out and tapped a key on the keyboard, muting her. She became a silent, weeping ghost on the wall.
“The transfer is already prepared,” Marcus said, picking up a syringe filled with a thick, amber liquid. “Phase 4 was always meant to be the end of the Valentina persona. I didn’t want it to be like this. I wanted you to sign it while you still loved me. I wanted you to think we were moving to Switzerland to start over.”
He moved toward the gurney. I tried to sit up, but my muscles were still sluggish. My legs felt like lead weights.
“Don’t struggle, darling,” he murmured. “This is just a sedative. We’ll sign the papers, and then… well, then you can go back to sleep for a very long time.”
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