PART 2: THE DEVIL’S LEDGER
2:17 AM.
I lay in bed, my heart hammering so hard I feared he’d hear it through the mattress. The camera inside the teddy bear was live. Julia was on the other end, recording everything.
The door groaned. Robert’s footsteps were heavier tonight, smelling of expensive scotch and old wood. He didn’t go for my wrist. He sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped his hand around my throat—not to choke me, but to force my eyes open.
“Stop pretending, Sophia,” he hissed. The elegant mask of the Sunday gentleman had slipped, revealing a face etched with greed. “I know you went to the hospital. I know you touched my safe.”
I stared back, the eleven-year-old girl inside me finally finding her voice. “Who are you?”
Robert laughed, a dry, hollow sound. “I am the man who kept you alive when the Trust wanted to incinerate you with the rest of the failures. Your mother was just a nurse who grew a conscience and stole you. She thought playing my ‘sister’ would protect you. But she forgot who pays for her life support.”
He leaned down, his breath hot against my ear, and whispered the name he had guarded for two decades: “Subject 0-A. Project Selene.”
The Turning Tide
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