Chapter 6: The Sister’s Shadow
Elena did not sleep that night.
Every time the old building settled, every time a car passed on the wet street below, her body tensed as if expecting the door to break open. The twins slept curled together in the narrow bed, Mila’s rabbit crushed between them, Leo’s small hand resting near his sister’s sleeve. They looked peaceful. Safe. Unaware that the life their mother had built around them was already beginning to crack.
By dawn, Elena had made a decision.
She could not keep pretending Marco’s arrival was an isolated accident. The black SUVs had not followed him by chance. Someone else had tracked her to Gray Hollow, and the only person who had ever wanted her erased that completely was Sophia.
Her sister had always been ambitious in a quiet, patient way. Where Elena had once believed in loyalty, Sophia had believed in advantage. Looking back now, the signs had been there long before the night in the penthouse. The way Sophia watched Marco during family dinners. The way she positioned herself as the more practical, less emotional alternative. The way she always seemed to know a little too much about Elena’s schedule.
Elena opened the old metal box she kept under the floorboard in the closet. Inside were the few remaining pieces of her former life: a disconnected phone, a folded ultrasound photo, and a single newspaper clipping she had been unable to throw away.
The clipping was from three weeks after she vanished.
Sophia, photographed on Marco’s arm at a charity function, eyes lowered in perfect grief. The caption had called her a source of strength during a difficult time.
Elena stared at the image until her hands began to shake.
Sophia had not merely taken her place for a night.
She had stepped into the vacancy Elena left behind and made herself permanent.
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And if Sophia was sending people into Gray Hollow now, it was not to apologize.
It was to finish what she started.
