They’d lived in luxury. Enough gold and silver décor to clash like a bad headache. It aged this place up by giving it a twisted, regal flair like a madman had done his worst in trying to pretty up the place.
We climbed a vast staircase.
“Anya,” she called out into the void. “Archie!”
I startled, but then realized she was calling out to them.
My chest ached with the harsh reality that she was calling to her real children. My name wasn’t my own. Not even stolen but given away to a girl who was meant to die because of it—me. That was what this woman had planned. Spending one more second with her felt sacrilegious, like insanity weaving around my body.
Jesus. They’d even gone with the family portraits on the walls as though no one would see their warped minds. The photo of them all as one happy family was sickening to look at. She was pretty, the other Anya, brunette like me and with the sweetest face. Archie wore glasses and looked so damn innocent it made my heart break for him. My jealousy melted into sympathy.
Please be alive.
We found the same thing in each room as we searched.
Nothing.
Not one person in this place.
The only sign anyone had ever lived here was the half-eaten sandwich we found on a blue china plate in the kitchen. Life, that was what had happened here. Two children who mirrored the ones in the Garden District, but these were the precious ones.
There was no way to tell how long that food had lain discarded.
Where were they?
“The security room,” my mother said.
I looked over at her. “There’s a security room?”
“Of course.”
She clarified in her answer that security for them differed from security for us. The security I had was to lock me in. To keep up the façade that I mattered. In truth, this was what mattered. This place and the people residing within.
I was scared for them.
This was what it felt like to die inside yet live on. To know your entire life had been filled with deceit.
Silently, she led me to the security room.
On the floor, lying with his hands tied behind his back was a man I had never seen before. His eyes were closed, his pallor gray from the strain. I wondered if he was dead or unconscious, but when my mother ran toward him and ripped the tape off his mouth, his eyes opened.
“Where are they?” She shook him.
Confusion marred his face.
Running forward, I worked at the binds at his wrists until he was free from the tape. He righted himself, sitting up but not meeting our stares.
“He took them.” His voice was low, defeated. “We tried to stop him.”
“Who?”
“Calvetti.”
No, I refused to believe it, but I knew he’d been here. I could feel his presence even if I couldn’t see him. Feel his pain dripping off the walls.
“Where are the others?” Victoria yelled. “The other guards.”
“Your children sent them away this morning.”
“They have names!” She slapped him across the face, and he flinched.
Cassius has them.
My choked sob echoed through the room. My soul thinned into glass that Cassius was hammering into pieces, a continuous pounding away at me until I was nothing but shattered and useless on the floor.
Was he really fulfilling his threat to my father all those years ago? Was he really going to kill them?
Or maybe he already had.
My knees buckled, and I slumped to the floor.
What have you done?
Anya
Even though Mom was in shock, she wanted to drive us back.
The security guard refused to let her, insisting he drive Mom’s Mercedes to take us home after he saw the state we were both in.
She’d seemingly lost everything—her children. She certainly didn’t come off as a woman who’d brought all of this on herself. She played the victim so damn well.
I was worried about the guard, too, and all he’d been through, but the man wouldn’t take no for an answer. Feeling responsible for losing the children seemed to motivate him. Perhaps fear of what my father might do if he didn’t put it right. It wasn’t his guilt to bear, though.
Mom sat in the passenger seat in silence while I was in the back.
Her feelings for me evident by the way she refused to even look my way. She blamed me for Cassius finding them. But of course, she did. Nothing I could have told her would have changed her mind.
Keeping my mouth shut, keeping my screams at bay, I remained silent during the entire ride home. I didn’t trust myself to speak to her. I couldn’t trust the emotions rising. Hurt and confusion bled out like an open wound refusing to clot.
I wanted to tell the driver to pull over and let me out, but I had to stay and see this through. I had to make sure Archie was safe.
Cassius’s hate for Stephen Glassman had once fueled his bloodlust. The thought of all the damage I’d done by leaving him made me feel like I was drowning. I could have prevented this—had I known. That was just it. I’d gone in blind to Cassius’s estate and only now saw more than I ever had. A veil lifted to pull back all the lies I’d been living under. All that time, Cassius had been the one saving me, even if he hadn’t intended that at first.
Eventually, the car came to a stop, and I realized we were home.
Home?
I could no longer call this place that. I no longer belonged, but then again, I never had.
And with the children dead or at least exposed, there was no need for me. No need for a decoy for protection.
Before this, before Lafayette Cemetery, I’d believed saving Archie was possible. I had to stay until I knew where he was. It was no small thing to fake my way for a few more hours.
As I climbed out of the Mercedes into the night air, it felt almost comforting. As if the sky void of light purposely reflected these swirling emotions. A vacant feeling. Trepidation of walking back into the prison I’d once called home.
Dad stood on the front step to greet us. “Get in!”
He was talking to both of us. Not just me but Mom, too. His guards stood behind him, silently threatening us to follow his order.
If he blamed me for losing his children, he didn’t say it.
The sound of my mother’s sobs was heart-wrenching. She went on ahead, but her wails became muffled in my ears like I was stuck underwater, drowning, and worse still, like I was okay with not breaking free.
Letting the darkness devour me felt reasonable.
Dazed, I made my way into the house and then ran up to my room for refuge.
The one I grew up in. The room Cassius had discovered me in. Then swept me out of here too quickly for me to catch my breath. Yet all I could think about was him.
On the desk, I found the name “Anya” written in my handwriting on a notepad to now be a screaming mess of a lie. I’d never been allowed to be me. I’d been kept here all that time. They would probably keep Archie and me apart for the rest of our lives. Grabbing the paper and balling it up, I threw it across the room.
That wasn’t me. But then who was I?
It didn’t matter now.
Lying on my bed, I withered into a ball, not deserving the warmth of a blanket. Because I should have come back for Archie sooner. Sobbing even as my heart couldn’t take the aching anymore. Even after my soul bled out.
Even after there were no tears left.