I was born broken. A bad seed. By the time I was six, I knew how to kill. My sister, Claire, was my opposite. She was the golden girl, the angel everyone adored. Including me. Mother locked me in a hidden room behind the wine cellar for ten years. Only Claire ever came to visit. But ten years later, Claire was carried back into the house, broken, bloody, and ruined beyond recognition. For the first time in a decade, Mother unlocked my chains. Her voice was trembling with a hatred that finally matched my own. "I want you to... kill everyone who did this to your sister." 1 In the esteemed locking-away of the wealthy elite, twins were seen as a liability—a split inheritance, a redundancy. Mother built a hidden room the year we were born. She rotated us, letting Claire and me take turns being the "perfect daughter" in public. That arrangement shattered when I turned six. That year, I looked at the white rabbit we’d raised for two years and felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to explore. I used a pair of silver embroidery scissors to open it up. I walked into the drawing room, hands red, smiling, and offered the dissected creature to Mother. Mother fainted. When she woke up, she took a riding crop to me until I was covered in welts. I didn't cry. I didn't feel pain. I just stared at her with dead eyes. "Monster," she screamed. "You are a monster!" She threw me into the dark room to "reflect" for a month. I spent those days bored, toying with the blood-stained scissors. Only Claire came to see me. She brought pastries and toys. I ignored them. I grabbed her hand, my eyes wide and excited. "Claire, catch me another bunny?" Claire’s face went pale, but she swallowed her fear. "Blaire... why did you open the bunny's tummy?" "Because I felt something thumping inside," I said innocently. "I wanted to see what was making the noise." "Oh..." Claire forced a smile, though it trembled. "Maybe you’re just a natural surgeon, Blaire. But next time, let's look at books to learn about anatomy. I’ll bring you books." I froze. I looked at my sister like she was a rare artifact. She was the first person who didn’t call me a monster. She tried to understand the why. I wanted to tell her I didn't care about medicine, but her smile was so fragile I didn't want to break it. Mother eventually let me out. The first thing I did was stab a fork through the hand of our nanny. Claire was soft; she didn't hold grudges. I did. While I was locked up, the nanny had been whispering that Claire was "cursed" and feeding her weird herbal concoctions to "purge the evil." No one knew there were two of us except Mother and the staff. They thought Claire was the one who killed the rabbit. When the nanny leaned over to force-feed Claire that bitter sludge, I drove the fork into her palm. It was fun. A satisfying crunch. I poured the sludge over her screaming face. "Consider it a bonus." 2 That was the last straw. Mother was terrified. She had her bodyguards bind me and dump me in the city’s derelict industrial zone—the Boneyard. "I don't have a monster for a daughter! The rumors were right, twins are a curse. From now on, I only have Claire!" Three days later, I walked back into the estate. I was covered in filth and dried blood, gripping those same silver scissors. To Mother, I must have looked like a demon crawling out of hell. I grinned, revealing teeth that looked too white against the dirt. "Mother, I’m hungry." After that, Mother tried to kill me multiple times. But every attempt failed. And strangely, every time she tried to hurt me, Claire would get violently ill. High fevers, seizures. When I was on the brink of death, Claire’s breathing would shallow. Mother couldn't risk losing her perfect daughter. She compromised. She chained me in the hidden room. I found out later that Claire had been inducing those illnesses—taking ice baths in winter, eating foods she was allergic to—just to make Mother think our lives were linked. She risked dying to save me. I stayed in that room for ten years. Mother never visited. Only Claire. She brought me novels so I wouldn't be bored. She bought me a high-tech nightlight with her allowance so I wouldn't be scared of the dark. She taught me how to read, how to sing. Even when I had episodes and bit her, she never got angry. Aside from a boy I met in the Boneyard, Claire was the only human being I tolerated. But this time, I waited a month, and Claire didn't come. The heavy steel door creaked open. Mother, looking ten years older, stepped in. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face haggard. "Your sister... something has happened." 3 Claire was in a coma. Her head had been shaved. Her face was a roadmap of deep, jagged scars. Her fingers had been crushed. "Who?" I asked. My voice was rusty from disuse. That’s when I learned what my gentle sister had endured. Three powerful men. The untouchables of the city. They had played with her like a toy. I laughed, a cold, dry sound. "Mother, you know what happens if you let me off this chain, right?" Mother shredded the silk handkerchief in her hands. Her eyes burned with a venomous light. "I want the men who hurt my Claire... to die." And so, I became Claire. For a month, no one was allowed in Claire’s room except the doctors and Mother. I spent that month starving myself to match her wasted frame, studying her mannerisms. We were identical, and Claire had taught me everything she knew in that secret room. I softened my gaze. I hid the predator behind a mask of doe-eyed innocence. Even Mother flinched when she looked at me; the resemblance was terrifying. But it wasn't enough. Claire had been branded. "Your father knows," Mother whispered, stirring a bowl of soup laced with arsenic for her husband. "But he needed the political connections. He turned a blind eye." Father had climbed from a low-level bureaucrat to a top government official on Claire’s back. Julian Vance, the Senator’s son, had a "savior complex." He loved gentle, broken things. He had met Claire at a charity gala and became obsessed. He wanted her as a trophy wife, but Claire refused. Enraged by the rejection, and jealous of her friendship with the academic prodigy Oliver Thorne, Julian broke into her room. Because Julian was powerful, Father let it happen. He treated it like a business transaction. I picked up a scalpel. I needed to replicate the scar Julian had left on her thigh. A jagged 'V'. I carved it into my own flesh without blinking. I put the bloody scalpel in a velvet box. One day, I would use it on Julian Vance. 4 There was more. Sterling Cross, heir to a shipping empire, had burned a lotus flower brand onto her lower back. Claire was brilliant. A pianist, a painter, a scholar. She was better than any man in their circle. Sterling hated that. He liked to destroy beautiful things. He wanted to break her spirit. I heated the iron. I pressed it into my skin until the smell of burning meat filled the room. When the wounds healed enough to pass as old scars, I moved back into Claire’s bedroom. Her personal assistant, Maya, looked at me with a flicker of surprise. "Don't recognize me after a few months?" I asked, mimicking Claire’s soft, melodic voice. Maya looked down, shifting her feet. "You just seem... even more beautiful than before, Miss Claire." "Miss, Oliver Thorne heard you were recovering. He invited you to the Skyline Lounge." Oliver Thorne. The youngest professor at the university. Claire’s "soulmate." The public knew Claire was entangled with Sterling and Julian. They called her a social climber, a whore who played powerful men against each other. Only Oliver defended her. He admired her mind. He was the "good guy." But I didn't miss the way Maya blushed when she said his name.
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