Chapter 3

Rhys called at 6 a.m. "Don't go outside."

"I've seen it," I said.

"It gets worse," he replied. "Naomi's lawyer filed an emergency restraining order against you at midnight. The basis: you're a convicted drug trafficker posing a threat to a minor child. The hearing is at nine—three hours before ours."

I sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress springs groaned.

"Can she do that?" I asked, though I already knew.

"She can file anything," Rhys said. "Whether it holds depends on whether the judge sees our evidence first. I'm filing an emergency counter-motion now. But if that restraining order goes through before our custody petition is heard, you won't be allowed within five hundred feet of Lily."

"And if I violate it?"

"Arrest. Which, given your 'history,' means detention—and this time, Naomi will make sure there's no sympathetic guard."

I closed my eyes. Twenty-two months of planning, and she had dismantled it in twelve hours with a tabloid leak and a midnight filing.

"There's more," Rhys said. "Ethan's team released a statement this morning. Quote: 'Mr. Cross is deeply disturbed by these fraudulent claims. His first wife tragically passed away in custody abroad. Any individual impersonating her is committing a criminal act and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.'"

I laughed. It came out broken.

He still believed I was dead. Or he wanted to.

"Rhys," I said. "I need to see Ethan before nine."

"Absolutely not. If you approach him with a restraining order pending—"

"The restraining order hasn't been granted yet. It's filed, not approved. I have a three-hour window."

Silence. Then: "What exactly are you going to do?"

"Show him the blood test," I said. "Face to face. If he sees the DNA match and still calls me a fraud, then I'll know where he stands."

"And if Naomi is there?"

"Then she'll have to explain why a dead woman's DNA matches her daughter's."

Rhys exhaled. "I can't advise this."

"You don't have to," I said. "Just make sure the counter-motion is filed before nine."

I hung up, dressed in the only clean clothes I had—jeans, a gray sweater, boots with cracked soles—and walked toward the Cross Estate.

The house hadn't changed. Limestone façade, ivy climbing the east wall, iron gates with the Cross family crest. I had chosen that ivy. I had designed the garden path. I had painted the nursery on the second floor in pale yellow because Ethan said he didn't care about the color, and I said the baby would.

The guard at the gate was new. He didn't recognize me.

"Delivery," I said, holding up a manila envelope.

"Leave it at the box."

"It requires a signature. From Mr. Cross personally. It's legal correspondence from Calloway & Rhys."

The name worked. Rhys's reputation opened doors that money couldn't. The guard called inside. Two minutes later, the gate buzzed open.

I walked up the path I had designed, past the garden I had planted, to the door of the house I had made a home.

Margaret opened it. She was sixty now, gray-haired, reading glasses on a chain. She looked at me and went pale.

"Mrs. Cross," she whispered.

"Hello, Margaret."

Her hand shook on the doorframe. "They said you were—"

"I know what they said."

She stepped aside without another word.

The foyer was the same—marble floors, the Rothko print I'd bought at auction, the console table where Ethan always dropped his keys.

His keys were there now.

I heard his voice from the study. He was on the phone, clipped, furious.

"—I don't care what the tabloid says. Find the source and shut it down. If someone is impersonating Sera, I want them arrested by noon—"

I pushed the door open.

Ethan looked up.

His phone dropped.

For five full seconds, neither of us breathed.

He was standing behind his desk, shirt wrinkled, tie loose, dark circles under eyes that hadn't slept. He looked at me the way you look at something that can't exist—with terror, not joy.

"Sera," he said. My name. My real name. Not a question. A fracture.

"Hello, Ethan."

"You're dead," he said.

"Naomi lied." I set the envelope on his desk. "About everything."

He didn't touch it. His eyes stayed locked on my face, scanning—the scar above my left eyebrow from the detention transfer, the weight I'd lost, the years that had carved themselves into my skin.

"Open it," I said.

His hand trembled as he reached for the envelope. He pulled out the blood test first. Read it. Read it again.

Then the arrest footage still frames. Then the wire transfer. Then the phone transcript.

The color drained from his face in stages—confusion, then recognition, then something darker.

"Where is Naomi," he said. Not a question for me. A question for the room.

"Upstairs," Margaret said from the doorway. "With Lily."

Ethan looked at me. His mouth opened.

Before he could speak, footsteps clicked down the staircase—sharp, deliberate, unhurried.

Naomi appeared in the study doorway, Lily balanced on her hip.

She saw me and smiled.

"Oh good," she said lightly. "You're early. I was hoping to do this with an audience."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.

"Ethan, darling, before you believe a single word from this woman—let me show you something she doesn't want you to see."