But not long after I was discharged, the "accidents" began.

The first time, I was dragged into the mountains.

I was thrown into a cellar like a piece of garbage. A man named Laurence Lawrence clamped handcuffs around my wrists and shackles around my ankles.

"Behave!" He slapped me hard across the face once the locks clicked shut. "From now on, you're staying here to breed for me!"

I'd been sheltered my whole life, protected by my three older brothers since the day I was born.

Nothing could have prepared me for this. I screamed until my throat tore, begging him to stop.

But that man was no human. He was a monster.

He ripped my clothes off and brutalized me through the night. Over and over and over again.

A month later.

When I found out I was carrying his child, the shock and the crushing weight of it all shattered something inside me. I collapsed.

When I woke, another two months had passed.

I found myself in a hospital bed. My brothers had rescued me.

After I came to, they acted no different than before. Still loving. Still caring.

But the very next day, I was kidnapped again.

This time, the abductors threw me into a pool teeming with starving piranhas.

"No!" The water churned with them, hundreds of them, their dark bodies writhing over one another. My mind nearly split apart.

They were crazed with hunger. They latched onto me and wouldn't stop biting.

Tearing away flesh.

My blood turned the entire pool red.

The terror consumed me whole, and I blacked out again.

When I woke, another two months had slipped away.

That very night, the third accident happened. I was dragged into a psychiatric ward, where electric batons and beatings were routine.

And then came now.

The more I thought about it, the more my heart felt like it was being carved out of my chest, slice by slow slice, until I couldn't breathe.

"Miss Harding? Why are you sitting on the floor?"

A maid appeared out of nowhere, her voice cutting through the hall. The three men in the living room fell silent at once, their gazes snapping toward me.

I met their eyes and smiled. A wretched, hollow smile.

Before any of them could react, I vaulted over the third-floor railing and jumped.

"Lorna!"

All three of them lunged from the couch, screaming.

I closed my eyes. The pain I'd braced for never came. Neither did the relief.

Instead, I crashed into a trembling pair of arms, and we both tumbled hard to one side.

Cole had thrown himself beneath me. He didn't even pause to register his own pain before scrambling to my side, his voice shaking with barely contained shock.

"Have you lost your mind?!"

Finn saw that I was unharmed and let out a heavy breath. The panic drained from his face in an instant.

What replaced it was pure, undisguised irritation.

"We went through hell getting you out of that psychiatric ward, and this is what you do?!"

I sat crumpled on the floor, my skirt pooling over an ankle that had snapped on impact.

"Getting me out?"

My gaze drifted up to Finn's eyes, mocking and miserable all at once. "Is that really what you'd call it, Finn?"

All three of their expressions locked up at the same time.

They exchanged a glance. A flicker of alarm, barely perceptible, passed between them.

"Of course we rescued you!" Malcolm frowned and pulled me to my feet. "Lorna, what's gotten into you?"

Cole followed up, his tone careful, probing.

"Did you hear something at the ward?"

I didn't answer. I just kept smiling, and the longer I smiled, the darker their faces grew.

"Are you done?!"

Cole's composure finally cracked. The mask fell away, and so did his patience.

"The three of us have empires to run. We don't have time to stand here and indulge your breakdown!"

He let out a cold scoff and stormed off.

Finn shook his head and followed right behind.

Malcolm, my twin, reached out and patted my head. The gesture was impossibly gentle. His words were not.

"Stop acting crazy. Got it?"

The hall fell quiet. I sat there, turning Malcolm's words over in my mind.

Was he worried about me, or was he worried the transmigrator would never come back?

The answer was obvious enough.

"It's okay," I murmured, my eyes hollow and unfocused. "I'll manage to die eventually..."

I dragged my feet, pain ground into every bone, stumbling step after step toward Cole's study.

My hands shook as I opened the computer.

I pulled up the security footage from the villa, timestamped to the periods I'd been "unconscious."

And there she was, on the living room feed. The same body as mine, but a completely different person wearing it.

A chill crawled up from the soles of my feet.

My brothers and Miriam.

From outright rejection and disgust, to tenderness and doting.

From snapping "Miriam! Get out of our sister's body!" to "Miri, please don't leave us, okay?"

Tears struck the keyboard one by one. My rigid fingers moved again.

I clicked on the study's camera feed.

"Cole, I feel guilty," Finn said, clutching fistfuls of his own hair, his head bowed in anguish.

"Lorna is our real sister. But now, in my heart, Miri already matters more than she does..."

Malcolm sighed in agreement.

"Yeah. It's not just you. I feel the same way."

"Lorna and I are twins. But I haven't thought about her in a long time. I even hope Miri stays forever."

Cole took a deep drag of his cigarette, his brow knotted tight.

After a long silence, his Adam's apple bobbed, and what came out was hoarse and utterly devoid of warmth.

"You think I'm any different?"

My breath seized.

Something behind my eyes collapsed and fell into a place it would never come back from.

On the footage, Miriam appeared.

Her face was pale and frail.

"Cole, Finn, Malcolm. Lorna might be about to take back control..."

All three shot to their feet, panic flooding their faces.

"What?! How is it happening so fast? Isn't there any way to suppress her?!"

Miriam leaned into Cole's arms.

"The System says if Lorna experiences genuine terror while she's conscious, or something that shatters her mentally, it should work..."

Before she even finished, Miriam collapsed.

"Miri!" All three screamed in unison, scooping her up and sprinting out of the room.

And after that, I supposed, came the moment they found me awake instead. The shock. The irritation. The barely concealed revulsion on their faces.

The footage froze.

I slumped back in the chair and let the despair swallow me whole.

My phone buzzed. I picked it up, and my body jerked upright.

Lorna, save me!

"Marilyn Marsh..." I choked through the agony and bolted for the door, reason gone. "You have to be okay!"

I should have known. Of course. The moment I woke up this time, they'd use my best friend's life to break me.

To bring Miriam back.

My thoughts were a tangled wreck. Grief, fury, and something close to hatred.

I barely made it out the door and into the car before the driver slammed the brakes, then wrenched the steering wheel hard.

The car flipped.

A black van plowed straight into us.

Men poured out and dragged me from the wreckage.

"Beat her!"

My body was already studded with glass shards from the shattered windows, each one buried in my skin.

"Ahhh!"

They snapped my leg while I was barely conscious. The white-hot burst of pain ripped my eyes open and tore a scream from my throat.

When they were done, the van sped off without a backward glance.

I lay on the ground, watching the blood from my own thrashing pool beneath me, spreading and spreading.

The grief stacked higher. Layer upon layer upon layer.

I blacked out.

I didn't know how long I was gone. Voices filtered in, distant and overlapping.

"That should do it, right? When she wakes up this time, it should be Miri."

My eyes stayed shut. My consciousness drifted in and out like a bad signal, but my ears caught every word.

Finn paced back and forth, his anxiety filling the room.

"It has to be Miri! So why isn't she waking up?!"

Malcolm's voice was rough.

"To trigger Lorna's most primal, genuine fear of death, the van wasn't told to hold back."

"Don't worry, though. It's not life-threatening. Otherwise, how would Miri take over the body?"

My lashes trembled. Inside, I was screaming, clawing, sobbing.

Why are you doing this to me? Why?

They hadn't mentioned me once. Not a single time, from start to finish.

No one cared how I felt.

Whether I might actually die.

A moment later, I opened my eyes slowly. The conversation between the three of them cut off at once.

"Miri!"

My eyes were hollow as I fell into Malcolm's warm, trembling arms. Above my head, his voice cracked with joy.

"You're finally back. I missed you so much."

"The System can block your pain, right? Use it now. We'll get rid of Lorna and—"

"Malcolm!"

Cole's voice sliced through the air, sharp enough to stop Malcolm mid-sentence.

Malcolm turned, confused, and met Cole's wide, stricken eyes.

"It's Lorna."

Malcolm's body went rigid. He jerked back three inches, pulling away from me.

I tugged at the corners of my mouth, playing dumb.

"Malcolm? Who's this 'Miri' you were talking about?"

The air in the room solidified.

So quiet I could hear all three of their heartbeats, uneven and panicked.

"You misheard."

Finn was the first to speak, breaking the silence.

"Lorna, the car accident scared Malcolm half to death. He was rambling. He's just worried about you."

Malcolm nodded frantically in agreement.

His face was stiff, the color all wrong.

"...Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry, Lori. I was just so worried about you."

I pulled up the corners of my lips and didn't ask again.

But under the blanket, my fingers curled tighter and tighter until my nails bit into my palms. The pain was blinding, and I didn't so much as flinch.

My mind kept circling back to what Malcolm had just said. The System blocks her pain.

So that was it.

I'd never been able to figure it out before. They tortured my body so brutally. Wouldn't Miriam feel the pain too, once she took over?

But no.

Everything was rigged in her favor. In theirs.

What a joke.

"Cole. Finn. Malcolm."

I lifted my head suddenly, my gaze bleak. "It hurts so much. My whole body. It hurts so much I want to die."

Their expressions froze. "What?"

I didn't answer. Just looked at them, eyes full of mockery.

Then I bolted, limping and lurching, and threw myself into the oncoming traffic.

The second attempt failed too.

Finn yanked me back from the edge of death, his face white with shock.

The driver leaned on his horn and screamed out the window. "Are you insane? You wanna die, do it somewhere else!"

All I felt was disappointment that I'd failed again.

Next time, I'd have to use the simplest method. The most final one.

Cole and Malcolm caught up, doubled over and gasping for air.

Cole kicked me hard enough to send me stumbling. "You don't get to die, Lorna Harding!"

"I'm telling you, I—"

"Cole! Finn! Malcolm!"

A sweet, urgent voice rang out from down the street, cutting him off.

All three of them whipped around. A figure fluttered toward them like a butterfly and threw herself into their arms, clinging.

"I missed you all so much!"

Cole's cold eyes erupted with pure, unguarded joy. "Miri?!"

He shot a wary glance at me, then turned his back and lowered his voice. "How did you—"

Miriam bit her lip, her face crumpling with rehearsed hurt.

"I missed you too much. I begged the System to give me five minutes to see you."

"Cole..." Tears streamed down her cheeks.

"You have to hurry. If you can't take the body back soon, the System will declare my mission a failure."

Three men who commanded boardrooms and crushed rivals were suddenly helpless, tripping over themselves.

"Don't worry, Miri. We've got you."

I stood off to the side, forgotten, watching them cling to each other like a family being reunited. Like I wasn't even there.