THE TWIN

Rosaline's POV

The silence that followed what he said felt like screamings in my ears.

We both stared at each other and for a moment I genuinely could not speak. I had thoughts of a lot of things I wanted to say on the drive to his place but everything had abandoned me.

Then, like a tidal wave, it all came rushing back at once.

"Why?" My voice cracked, my throat burning with painful heat. "Why would you do that to me? To your own brother?"

Wesley moved to the window. He stood with his back to me for a moment, looking out of the window like he was trying to carefully select the next words he was going to say. He finally stared at me and with such calm that I wanted to throw something at his face.

"I've been in love with you for three years, Rosaline."

I blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Since the engagement party. The first night Donald brought you home." He said it so plainly.

I laughed. Not because anything was funny. I guess the only reaction I could let off was a hollow laugh that only came out when something unbelievable happens.

"You've been in love with me," I repeated slowly. "So you decided that the best thing to do was climb into my bed on my wedding night and…" I couldn't even finish the sentence. "You call that love? That's not love, Wesley. That's not even close to love. This is something else entirely."

"I know." He looked pained about it, and somehow this only made me angrier. "I know it was wrong."

"Wrong." I took a step toward him. "I was a virgin. Did you know that? Did Donald tell you that?"

My voice was rising and I didn't try to stop it. "I saved myself. Twenty-eight years I waited and I gave that to you thinking you were my husband. You took something from me that you had absolutely no right to touch and you're standing there telling me it was wrong like you accidentally stepped on my foot."

His face changed into something genuine. Shame? Regret? I couldn't tell exactly.

"Rosaline…"

"Don't." I held up a hand. "Don't say my name like that."

I opened my fist and threw the cufflink at his chest.

"You're going to keep your mouth shut. You are never going to tell Donald what happened. Not ever. As far as anyone in this family is concerned, last night did not happen. Do you understand me?"

He looked at the cufflink at the floor and then at me.

"And if I don't agree to that?"

“Then I will do everything in my power to ruin you. I’ll tell Donald and everyone else what you did today and show them what kind of man you are. Is that really what you want?”

A long pause.

"No," he said finally.

"Good. Stay away from me."

I walked out of the house feeling like I couldn’t breathe.

I was on autopilot throughout the entire drive back home.

***

Donald came home two days later, totally clueless about what had happened. He came back with a bouquet of flowers and an expensive pendant he had especially picked out for me and this made my chest hurt even more. He held me like he had missed me and kissed my forehead and called me his wife and I smiled back at every single thing he said, that made me feel dirty and shameful.

I had done nothing wrong.

I knew that.

But try telling that to the guilt weighing on my chest.

I tried acting totally normal. I cooked for him, laughed at his stories about Singapore. But sitting across from him at the dining table, looking at his face, a face that looked identical to his twin brother that had taken advantage of me, I felt an emotion I couldn’t quite put a tag on.

I was so busy being normal that I almost didn't hear the phone ring.

Donald reached for it first, glanced at the screen and stood up from the table. His expression shifted.

"I need to take this," he said. "Work."

He stepped out of the dining room.

I sat with my fork halfway to my mouth and told myself it was nothing.

Except it kept happening.

Calls that he had to move away to take. Late nights that extended to early mornings. Whenever he was with me he still acted the same. He still called me baby and held my hands in public.

But something was different.

I didn't have the emotional space to dig into it. Not with everything I was already carrying.

Then three weeks after Donald came home, my phone rang at eleven in the morning. I was sitting in the living area, doing nothing in particular when a call from my mother came in.

Except it wasn't my mother calling.

It was her housekeeper, Maria. Her voice sounded wrong before she even said anything.

"Miss Rosaline," she said. "You need to come. Something has happened."

"What?" I sat up, my voice turning anxious . "Maria, what happened? Where is my mother?"

"Please just come," she whispered. "And call your husband."

Twenty minutes later I pulled up to my parents' house to find two police cars parked outside and my father sitting on the front steps with his face buried in his hands. Panic shot through my body and I froze for a minute, my mind going through the worst possible scenarios.

I ran to him. "Dad. Dad, where is Mom? Where is she?"

He looked up at me and his eyes were so empty it stopped me cold.

"She's gone, Rosaline," he said. His voice was barely above a whisper. "Your mother is gone."

The world basically came to a pause.

And somewhere in that silence, before I could even begin to process what he had just said, my phone buzzed in my hand.

A message from an unknown number.

Four words.

This is just the beginning.

THE CONTRACT

Rosaline's POV

My mother was dead.

I kept repeating it to myself like if I did, it would start to feel real to me. It didn't. It just sat there in my chest. It felt heavy and distant, like something i wasnt ready to accept yet..

The police said it was a heart attack. Quick. She likely didn't suffer.

This was probably supposed to make me feel better.

Except it didn't.

Donald arrived at my parents' house an hour after I called him. He walked straight to me, pulled me into his arms without saying a word and held me while I finally broke down. No pretty tears. Real, ugly tears that came with choking and a feeling of breathlessness.

He rubbed my back and said all the right things and I let myself completely lean on him, because I needed something solid to rely on.

For a moment I forgot about Wesley.

For a moment he was just my husband and I was just a woman who had just lost her mother and needed something to hold on to.

That moment didn't last long enough for me.

The next few days were filled with constant calls from families, friends and relatives I barely knew, each of them offering their condolences. My father looked like a shadow of himself. He ate whenever people put food in front of him. He shook hands, accepted hugs and said thank you with a voice that no longer sounded like his own. Like he was just a shell of the man he once was.

I watched him and I worried.

Donald stayed close for the first two days. Then the business trips started again.

I told myself it was fine. The company he was handling wouldn’t stop just because he had lost something. That's what I told myself anyway.

On the fourth morning after my mother's death I woke up early and for some reason I couldn't go back to sleep. I drove to my parents house before the sun came up. My father was still asleep. The house was quiet. The walls felt empty, like they knew that the person that filled it with color was gone. Like they were grieving with me.

I went to my mother's bedroom.

I don't know what I was looking for exactly. Maybe just to feel close to her. Maybe just to sit somewhere that still smelled like her perfume and wait for some magical moment where she suddenly appears and tell me it's all a bad dream.

I sat on the edge of her bed for a while. Then I started going through things. My hands traced gently. Just straightening, just touching. Her jewelry box. The photographs on her dresser. The little notebook she wrote things so she wouldn’t forget them later on.

Then I noticed the drawer.

The bottom drawer had a small lock on it. I had never paid attention to it before. It had always just been there, just part of the furniture but not special enough for me to actually pay attention to.

Today I paid attention.

I tried looking for clues in the obvious places first. Inside her jewelry. Under the bed. Nothing. Then I looked at the notebook again. I flipped to the last page and there it was, written in between her Netflix password and a pin number.

A four digit code.

I found the small key tucked inside the spine of a book she always kept on her nightstand. My hands were already trembling as I crouched down and opened the drawer.

Inside was a thick envelope.

I took it to the kitchen table. I made myself a cup of tea but didn’t drink it. Then I opened the envelope

The document inside looked formal. It was printed on heavy paper, bound with a metal clip, and stamped at the bottom with two signatures and a notary seal. I had to read the heading twice before I could accept what I was reading.

It was a marriage contract.

A betrothal agreement between my parents and a man named Franklin Hart. I checked the date and it was dated eleven years ago when I was just seventeen.

I read it slowly. It stopped making sense and I read it again.

According to this document, I had been promised to the son of Mr. Franklin. The arrangement was formal. There were legal and financial terms that basically sold me to him for the benefit of both our families. Everything had been laid down without my consent like I wasn’t a human being but a piece of equipment.

And then six years later they had broken the contract.

They had given me to the Mendez family instead. To Donald.

My hands shook so badly that the paper started rustling.

Every illusion of control i thought i had over my own life and love story crumbled and rearranged itself in my head. The betrothal I had resented before slowly coming to accept. Everything that happened between Donald and i.

What part of it was real and what part was arranged? Or did they just move me from one contract to another like they were trying to find the highest bidder at an auction?

I sat at that kitchen table for a long time.

Then I noticed something else in the envelope.

There was a single folded note tucked behind the contract, smaller than the rest. I unfolded it carefully.

The handwriting was sharp and slanted, pressed onto the paper with intentionality. Like they were sending a message.

Your parents thought breaking our agreement would have no consequences. Your mother was the first to learn otherwise. Unfortunately, she couldn’t survive the lesson. Your father will be the next to learn. And you, Mrs. Mendez, you must be curious to know who exactly put a tragic end to the life of your dear mother. Before you bury her, find out who put her in that grave.

— F.H.

The tea cup slipped from my fingers and shattered on the kitchen floor.

My mother didn't have a heart attack.

Someone killed her.

SICK

Rosaline's POV

I told myself it was grief.

Every morning for two weeks I basically dragged myself out of bed feeling like someone life chewed and spat out. Food smelt like crap, I had absolutely no energy. I cried at random things like an old song on the radio, a familiar smell that reminded me of mom, or even the way dad acted differently after her death.

This was grief. These were the things grief did to a person.

So I told myself that's all it was.

Donald started coming home less and less.

Each time, he had a new explanation for it. Either it was a board meeting that took too much time or an emergency meet up with the staff. I started to get numb to it at some point. I’d just wake up, kiss him goodbye and watched as he drove out, not knowing when exactly he’d be back.

The note from F.H. was folded inside the pocket of my winter coat. I hadn’t told anyone about it. Not donald.

Not even Crystal.

Each time I wanted to, but then I decided this was something I didn’t want to bring her into in case it gets too dangerous. This was something that caused the death of my mother. Who knew who else they would target to get to me. This was something I had to take care of myself.

While I was dealing with that, my body was finding new and creative ways to disorient me.

It started with the nausea.

I was making coffee on a Tuesday morning when the smell of the coffee hit me hard and wrong. Deeply, violently wrong. I made it to the bathroom just in time to throw everything in my stomach up.

I assumed it was something that would pass if I just drank ginger tea.

It didn't pass.

The next morning it happened again. And the morning after that. Soon it became a routine to see me crouched by the basin in the bathroom waiting for the next wave to hit me.

The suspicion of something I hated myself for thinking about came to mind.

I shoved it out immediately. I was not ready to look at that thought. Not even close.

Crystal showed up on a Thursday without warning, the way she always did. She held two coffees in her hands and took one long look at me standing in the doorway and said "You look terrible."

"Good morning to you too," I said.

"I'm serious, Rosaline. When was the last time you ate something proper?" She pushed past me into the house and dropped the coffee on the kitchen table. Then her eyes narrowed as she looked at me more carefully. "How long have you been feeling like this?"

"It's grief," I said. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine" She crossed her arms. "Are you sleeping?"

"Mostly."

"Eating?"

"When I can."

"Are you…" She didn’t complete it. She seemed to making some calculations in her mind and I hated it when she did that because she was almost always right. "Rosaline. When was your last period?"

The question was like a bucket of cold water.

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

I couldn't remember.

***

Crystal drove me to the clinic herself.

I stared out the window and did the math in my head.

Unfortunately I was excellent with calculations. Unfortunately because no matter how I did, I was met with the same conclusion. And I didn’t want that conclusion.

We got there and a nurse took my details at the front desk. Another one led me to a small room with pale blue walls and a strong smell of alchohol and medicine that I would have been able to tolerate on a normal day.

The doctor was a woman, early fifties. She was calm and reassuring and somehow that helped me calm down a bit. She asked me some questions and took a blood test.

Crystal was in the waiting room. I had told her I was fine going in alone.

I wasn’t fine. Not one bit.

I sat in that pale blue room and stared at the wall trying very hard to be positive. Tried not to think about the date. I tried not to think about the symptoms and what they could possibly mean for me.

The doctor came back.

"Mrs. Mendez," she said. "Your results are back."

I gripped the edge of the examination table, anxious and a bit lightheaded from all the clashing scents I was suddenly so sensitive to.

"You're pregnant," she said. "Approximately six weeks along. Congratulations."

The words landed in my head like a steel ball.

Six weeks.

The thank you came out in a murmur. I was still in a daze. It was like I was out of my own body, watching myself move on auto-pilot. I heard myself ask a few questions in a calm and reasonable voice. I heard the doctor answer them. She even handed me a printed sheet with next steps and a referral and a due date circled.

I folded it neatly and put it in my bag.

Then I walked out of that room, past the waiting area where Crystal jumped up the moment she saw my face. She had this concerned look on her face and I didn’t know how to tell her.

Six weeks.

I stood on the pavement and tried to self diagnise one final time. I knew the test results weren’t wrong but I just didn’t want to accept them. I wanted something else. Anything other than the news I just got.

Six weeks ago was my wedding night.

In six weeks I had slept with Donald exactly once and that was the night he came back from Singapore.

Which meant the baby growing inside me right now had nothing to do with my husband.

Crystal, seeing me in a daze, appeared at my elbow. "Rosaline. Talk to me. What did they say?"

I turned to look at her.

"I'm pregnant," I said.

Her face froze in horror.

"And it's not Donald's.”