THE END IS A WEIRD FEELING.
It just…happens. Or maybe it doesn’t happen and you’re stuck somewhere in the unknown.
That’s how it feels the moment I open my eyes. It’s too quiet, too white, too full of nothingness. I think I’m in an afterlife of sorts. Everything ended in Ivan’s torture chamber, and now I get to meet Mom and Dad.
But then the pain kicks in. It snaps from the back of my head to my temples. My eyes, which I thought I opened a second ago, are now half-open, drooping and…are they swollen?
I stick my tongue out to wet my dry lips and wince when it connects with tender, injured skin.
Then the smells register, strong and potent. Antiseptic and the cleanness of a hospital swallow my senses.
The sounds come into focus, too, as the blurriness slowly fades away. A familiar face stares down at me. She’s calling my name, tears welling in her eyes.
It’s…me.
No, it’s not me. It’s Reina.
Oh, God. My heart picks up speed and the machines go mad with the beeping.
She can’t be here. If she is, it could mean she’s in the afterlife with me. She’s—
“Doctor—call the doctor!”
A hand wraps around mine, warm and familiar, like Mom’s. It feels just like Mom’s.
The doctor shoves that light in front of my eyes and tells me to follow it. At first, I don’t comply because I don’t want to break eye contact with Reina. What if she disappears?
She nods at me, squeezing my hand encouragingly, so I follow the doctor’s instructions. He asks me to talk and say my name.
“Reina,” I whisper in a hoarse voice. “Reina Ellis.”
A few people may know the fact that I’m not, but we promised I’d be Reina Ellis and she’d be Rai Sokolov. Until she takes back her life, I’ll protect it. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it afloat.
Reina’s face fills with so many emotions. My own would be similar if I could move it.
The doctor and the nurses fuss around Reina and me follows their every move, listening to the doctor and occasionally squeezing my hand to support it. The motions and the questions are almost a déjà vu of the last time I woke up in a similar bed with my memories wiped clean.
Only this time, it hurts more.
And this time…I slowly move my head around, but there’s no trace of Asher. A funny type of emptiness grips the center of my chest.
The doctor prescribes me some meds for the pain, and the nurse injects them into my IV. Then they leave, the door hissing closed behind them.
It’s only Reina and me now.
Just like all those years ago.
She sits on the side of the bed, still holding my hand, careful not to jostle my side. From what the doctor said, I broke one rib and bruised two.
I’m scared to look at my face and witness all the damage Ivan has done.
“Is he dead?” I ask Reina.
She must realize exactly who I’m talking about since she nods tightly. “I stabbed him in the fucking eye.”
“Good.” My voice turns emotional. “Mom and Dad can rest in peace now.”
I expected Reina to share my emotional reaction, but her expression hardens like a warrior before a battle. “I wish I did it earlier, but I couldn’t hurt him. The leaders in Grandpa’s closest chamber considered him the rightful heir, being a man and all. Ivan played a long-term game and made Mom and me appear like villains, like we brainwashed Grandpa. I had to get their blessing first, and I managed to persuade some strong allies, but the others wouldn’t budge. When I heard about your kidnapping, though, I couldn’t just stay still.”
Allies and leaders…all this mafia talk comes out of Reina’s mouth like it’s second nature, like it’s the only way she knows how to live.
“Will you…” I swallow. “Will you be okay now?”
She smiles a little. “Okay is my middle name, brat. You’re the one who’s always getting hurt.”
“Well, I wasn’t trained to stab people’s eyes.”
Her grin widens. “Grandpa taught me.” Then her face falls. “I wish you could’ve met him. He was a hard man with a good core, but he just didn’t know how to make Mom feel safe. That’s why she ran away.”
I gulp the saliva gathered at the back of my throat. “I think she ran away because she didn’t want that life for us, Rei.”
“Well, she didn’t succeed. It’s already too late.” She strokes the back of my hand. “I have to go back to my world.”
“Your world?” I choke and wince when my mouth aches.
“It is.” She shrugs. “I won’t let those who secretly allied with the fucker Ivan sully Grandpa’s legacy. He trusted me with it, and it’s my duty as a Sokolov to see it to the end.”
“B-but we’re talking about the mafia, Rei. The fucking mafia—they’re deadly.”
“I’m deadly, too. Grandpa didn’t raise me to bow to those fucking pigs.” Her shoulders straighten and her eyes lose their spark, turning cold and lethal. It’s almost like an entirely different Reina.
She’s not my sweet sister or the girl who trembled with me in the dark as we hid from Ivan’s men. She now seems more like those men, if not more emotionless.
What have they done to my twin sister all these years? What have they turned her into?
“R-Reina, we promised to be together, remember?”
“And we will. We are.” Her expression softens a little. “We’ll just have to cross paths like Dad and I used to, you in your world and me in mine.”
“No!” I shout, and my voice cracks. “That’s not what we agreed on.”
“We just promised to meet again.” She raises an eyebrow. “We never agreed on anything else.”
“Don’t get smartass on me, Rei.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Then…” I start to lick my lips then stop when I recall they’re most likely busted and will hurt. “Then I’ll go back to my identity and you go back to yours.”
Truth is, being Rai Sokolov again scares the shit out of me. That little girl was a runaway, always hungry and empty. She was a shell of a person with no purpose in the world and no one to hold on to except for Mom, so when she was killed, I lost all sense of purpose.
Until I met Dad and Asher.
They gave me a reason to strive higher. That’s why after Dad’s death and Asher’s disappearance, I became emptier again and let the gloomy cloud take over.
I only lived on the belief that I shouldn’t screw up Reina’s life because one day, she’d come back for it.
Today is that day where each of us takes back her life.
She gives me the side-eye. “You wouldn’t survive a day in my world, Rai.”
“Hey!”
“I’m serious. I wouldn’t survive in your world either. It’s too…normal. I can’t do normal anymore.”
“But—”
“No buts. You’re Reina Ellis and I’m Rai Sokolov.”
“You want me…” I cough on the lump in my throat. “You want me to be Reina?”
“You’re already Reina. You just stop thinking about it as a role.”
My lips part. “How did you…oh my God, you felt that way, too?”
She nods sharply. “I always thought it was just a role and I would need to give it back, but the last time we met, I realized how much you loved being Reina, and I’ve been meaning to tell you we should stop playing roles.”
My mouth remains open as my brain struggles to find the right words to say. I didn’t expect this at all and it just hits me out of nowhere.
“How…how about Asher? You know, the engagement and—”
She reaches into her pocket and retrieves a ring, a very familiar diamond ring. “I’ve been keeping it for you. I meant to come to find you after you were discharged at the hospital, but Kyle stopped me from seeing you since Ivan’s men were watching.”
“Kyle?”
“My bodyguard and right-hand man. He helped save you.”
I’ll have to thank him for it later.
“Anyway.” She shoves the ring in my palm. “Here you go. I hate holding on to these precious things.”
“But don’t you want it?”
Her brows furrow. “Why the hell would I? I only wore it that day because you made me, saying it’d look great on me and shit. It doesn’t. It’s yours. Asher was never engaged to me, he was always engaged to you, Rai. I have no interest in him whatsoever.”
Why have I thought she would? I always had the belief Reina would demand to have him once she returned, that everything in my life belonged to her, not me.
But well, just because I’m so head over heels in love with Asher doesn’t mean my twin would be.
A sense of relief engulfs me. It’s like a weight has been lifted off my chest.
“Where…” I clear my throat. “Where is he?”
She’s silent for a second as if trying to weigh her words. “He’s not here.”
The emptiness from earlier deepens and becomes a weight that nearly crushes my already injured ribcage. I hoped he’d be here for me as soon as I woke up.
We didn’t even talk properly after we watched that video of Arianna and Jason.
“Then where is he?”
“Well, remember how I told you Ivan is dead?”
“Yeah, you stabbed him.”
“In the eye, yes, but I wasn’t the one who killed him. Asher put the bullet in the scum’s chest.”
I gasp then stop when pain shoots at the back of my neck.
As if being thrown into the depth of an ocean, my breathing disappears and I have to suck in air in order to feed my starved lungs.
“Is he…okay?”
“He’s at the station with his father.”
From what the doctor said earlier, I’ve been out for almost two days, so that should mean Asher has been away for the same length of time.
Oh, God. Does this mean he’ll be convicted of murder? I can’t have that fucker Ivan take another person away from me.
I try to sit up, but Reina makes me lie back down again.
“What are you doing?” she snaps.
“I have to go and help, I have to…do something. I can’t just sit here.”
“His father is with him. Alexander Carson is one of the best lawyers in the country, remember? He’ll get him out of this. Besides, I made a statement and told them it was self-defense. Just rest, Rai. I’m sure Asher will be out in no time.”
How can I rest when Asher’s fate is unknown?
