My EX's Mafia Twin

1. Maybe.

|PART I OF THE STORY: THE RESTRAINED PSYCHOPATH|

1. Maybe.

Katarina.

|Present|

28 years old.

“Katarina!”

“Katarina, over here!”

“Katarina, look at us!”

I should be used to camera flashes by now, but with a few drinks in my system and these enormous heels, I feel myself getting dizzy, almost losing my balance. My bodyguard pushes through the paparazzi and I lower my gaze, hiding my face while trying to move through the crowd.

I feel my hair being yanked, my dress being pulled, and my ankle twists along the way, but I stay quiet until I’m finally in the back of the limousine.

I collapse against the seat, closing my eyes to shut the world out.

“What the hell was that out there?” My agent bombards me, stealing what little peace I had left. “You were drinking through the entire award show, and now there are videos and memes of that disgusted face you made when Jefferson Demartini won Best Breakthrough Actor.”

I don’t answer; I keep my eyes closed, trying to find stability because everything is spinning.

“Your career is hanging by a thread,” he keeps going. “They invited you out of courtesy, because your last movie was a disaster. Did you really need to damage your image even more, Katarina?”

I sigh and, while he continues and continues talking about the downfall of my career, I take out my phone and open my messages. I scroll down, ignoring texts from my mother, my father, and dozens of people I don’t care about. I scroll further until I reach his name and, once again, see that my messages from the past months didn’t even go through.

My mouth twists into a grimace, and maybe I let out some kind of sound, because Albern snatches the phone from my hand and speaks with a fury I’m used to by now.

“Are you seriously thinking about Willa right now?” I stare at him, still silent. “Get it together, Katarina. Your life is going to s**t and all you care about is texting your little friend.”

“Relax,” I say calmly.

I take the phone back and turn to look out the window as we drive through the blinding lights of the city. Las Vegas—a city that never sleeps. So far from home, and yet lately nothing feels like home.

“I’m going to quit if you keep this up.”

I don’t even flinch.

I absentmindedly run my thumb along the edge of my phone, and he continues: “Your father is waiting for you at his house, he needs to talk to you.”

My body tenses at his words, but I stay quiet. Only when he throws a pile of papers onto my lap do I look at him and ask, “What’s this?”

“A script.”

“I finished filming last week.”

It was a bad movie, but that doesn’t erase the hard work it took to film it.

“In a month, you’ll start a new one,” he says without looking at me, focused on his phone screen. “Someone like you—who’s slipping more and more into oblivion—can’t afford to rest.”

“I don’t even know what it’s about, Albern.” I shake the pages in my hand. “You can’t throw me into a project I know nothing about.”

“Do you want me to remind you of your current position?” he asks, and for the first time in months I really look at him—really look—and I see the extra wrinkles on his face. “You’re sinking, Katarina. So be grateful I found you a new role. You have no idea how hard it was... no one wants to hire you.”

If I didn’t know this man since I was a child, if I didn’t know that beneath all those harsh words he genuinely wants my well‑being—at least professionally—I would’ve told him to f**k off.

So I stay quiet and, just as I’m about to glance at the script, I realize we’re heading straight to the helipad.

“Can’t I even stop by the hotel to change? Seriously, Albern?”

He ignores me, doing what he does best: moving those thumbs over his screen while fighting the current and trying to save a career that’s probably already sunk.

I flick on the limo’s light and start reading the script.

Not ten minutes later, I shake my head and hand it back to him.

“I’m not doing it,” I say.

“Katarina…”

“This is porn, Albern.”

“It’s an erotic film, it’s still cinema.”

“In most of the scenes I’ll be naked, and my lines are more moans than words. What the hell did you sign me up for?”

“The male lead is Jefferson Demartini.”

I look out the window again and say, flatly, “No.”

“Katarina…”

“I won’t do it.”

“He’s the actor of the moment, this is an opportunity you can’t waste.”

I just look at him, shake my head, and get out of the limo once it stops at the helipad.

He follows behind me, but thank God the helicopter noise keeps me from hearing him. That privilege ends once we’re inside and he speaks through the headset.

“There will be contracts, people on set, you know everything will be professional.”

“I know perfectly well how s*x scenes are filmed, I’ve done quite a few, in case you forgot. And exactly because of that, I’m very aware that no matter how professional it is, his hands and his mouth will be on me. And hell will freeze over before he touches me.”

“He was drunk.”

This time I don’t stare out the car window—I stare out the helicopter window into the vast nothingness.

What if I jump?

Would it really be that bad?

It’s preferable to having this ridiculous conversation.

“Come on, Katarina.”

“No.” I shake my head hard.

I’d rather let my career rot in oblivion than film intimate scenes with the asshole who tried to force himself on me after I rejected his offer to sleep with him. Jefferson Demartini is an arrogant i***t, new to fame. Just because he’s getting some attention, he thinks he’s some irresistible heartthrob, when the truth is his acting is mediocre and that pretty face schoolgirls drool over is the only thing that launched him into stardom. But in a year or two, a new face will appear and he’ll be forgotten.

The irony doesn’t escape me: by then, I’ll probably be forgotten too.

“You can’t waste this opportunity, Katarina. You haven’t had a good lead role in over three years, accept it,” he continues, and I still say nothing—I already gave him my answer. “You’re an excellent actress, we both know it; this will be a bad role, sure, but then a good one will come. Those are the sacrifices you make in this industry.”

And because I know his modus operandi, I know that when he realizes praise won’t work, he’ll bring out the heavy artillery.

And he does.

“Your career went to s**t when Reid Colleman disappeared, it seemed he was the one keeping you in the spotlight. You need a new romance. Jefferson could be your salvation.”

He says it like my success ever depended on Reid, when the truth is I earned everything on my own. When people started wrongly assuming I was dating Reid Colleman—the singer of the moment and only my best friend—Reid and I were already at the top on our own. My fame began before Reid, not after him. But fine, I stay silent and I don’t remind Albern how I poured blood and sweat into roles that earned good reviews and several major awards, because he’s partially right.

Reid Colleman disappeared, and I began to slowly fade.

But not because of him. Because of me.

I touch my neck, remembering the blood I spilled that last day, when Killian Colleman’s mask was ripped away to expose the psychopath he always was. But if he’s a psychopath, then I’m an i***t—because only an i***t would risk her own life to save his.

My thumb traces my throat where the knife cut me—by my own hand—while I remember Reid’s murderous stare fixed on Killian.

Reid was going to kill him… If I hadn’t stepped in, he would’ve killed him.

I sigh.

Katarina, Katarina, ice princess… stop thinking about him.

“I won’t fake a romance with Jefferson Demartini,” I tell Albern, anchoring myself to the present.

“It doesn’t have to be fake.”

I’m not surprised—of course that’s what he was going to say.

“I’d rather throw myself into a slow, agonizing death in a pool of acid than deal with scum like him.”

I end the conversation there, pick up my phone, and tighten my grip around it.

I don’t let go. I haven’t let go in more than three years.

Maybe, someday, one of them…

Maybe, just maybe.

But I’m lying to myself, because I know.

I’m already forgotten… I have been for more than three years.