Chapter 1

The water was too still.

Too quiet.

My son, Leo, floated face down in the deep end of our pool.

His favorite blue swim trunks were a dark patch against the shimmering surface.

Seven years old.

My world ended.

I was "Seraphina Hayes," or so they told me.

For seven years, I lived in a haze, my face not my own, my memories stolen.

Ethan Montgomery, my husband, wanted a ghost. He got one.

But the ghost was Elara Vance, my real name, screaming inside.

Leo.

His name was a stone in my throat.

He had pointed at the television earlier, at the news of Ethan' s anniversary gala.

"Mommy, why is Daddy with another lady? She looks like you, but not you."

The real Seraphina Hayes, back from her faked death.

Ethan had been furious at Leo' s words.

"He needs to learn respect," Ethan had snarled, then dragged Leo towards the pool.

A punishment.

Now, Ethan was at that gala, a spectacle for the nation, celebrating with her.

The television in the pool house still flickered, showing their smiling faces.

The shock of Leo, lifeless in the water, hit me like a physical blow.

Darkness fractured.

Light, painful and sharp, flooded my mind.

My name.

Elara.

Not Seraphina. Never Seraphina.

I remembered Ethan' s face, twisted with hate, seven years ago.

"You're the reason she's gone!" he had screamed, blaming me for the first Seraphina' s disappearance, a disappearance orchestrated by his mother, Eleanor, to force our marriage.

A marriage I knew nothing about until it was done.

Then the public shame he engineered.

The doctors.

The pain.

The endless surgeries to make me Seraphina' s twin.

The drugs that wiped away Elara.

Leo' s small, still body was the key.

His death unlocked me.

The carefully constructed lie of "Seraphina Hayes" shattered into a million pieces.

I was Elara Vance, and my son was dead because of the man I was forced to marry.

The man who was now toasting his lost love, found again.

My love, my son, was lost forever.