The Fake Heiress And Her Obsessive Brother

The lady in the portrait has my eyes. That is what I think every time I pass her in the corridor – third door from the landing, east wing, right between the nineteenth-century landscape and the flickering brass sconce when the heating turns on. She has been hanging there all my life — dark hair, straight posture, a gaze that reveals nothing. Her name, as my father explained it, is Eleanor Voss. Great-grandmother of mine. The lady who created the Voss dynasty in New York City, where there was nothing to build yet. "You have her eyes," Damien once said to me when I was ten years old and stopped in front of her portrait just like always. It felt warm in my chest when he said it. Like proof. Like I belong somewhere. And now I'm standing in front of the painting – twenty-two years old, dressed for work, three minutes late— I allow myself to see something I have always rushed past before. The lady in the portrait does not have my eyes, not exactly like mine. Hers are darker, the angle a bit different. There is some sharpness to them that mine almost replicates but not really — like a photocopy of another photo. Just similar enough to fool someone not paying close attention. I have never paid that much attention in my life. I turn away from the painting and go downstairs. The Voss mansion breathes differently in the morning. Quieter. Each footstep echoes through the marble halls, clear and precise, as if the house was keeping a record of them. Ceilings are fourteen feet high in all the formal rooms, a detail that my father explains to every guest, and I stopped noticing when I was eight years old. There are twenty-three rooms in the house. I have seen all of them except one. The east corridor. Locked. Under renovation, my parents always say. For twenty-two years. I pour coffee into my cup in the kitchen and check my phone. Three emails from the marketing department of Voss Corporation. Calendar alert for 9 am board meeting. Text from my mother – she and my father are in Geneva until Thursday for some charitable event whose name I might forget by noon. Nothing unusual, nothing that could explain the feeling in my chest today. I do not have any name for it. It lives in me as long as I can remember – small and source-less, like a splinter deep under the skin. Some mornings the mansion seems right. Portraits, marble, the family name carved on every surface and also mine by birth, by blood, by the mere fact of having grown up in this house. Some mornings I feel like a stranger in a borrowed suit. Which I already have today "You are going to be late." Damien's voice from the door. I do not jump. I stopped jumping when he started appearing out of nowhere when I was twelve years old. He has his own way of moving through this house, through any place — like he was there before you came and just waited for you to catch up. I turn around. He is already dressed. Suit, grey tie, the composed expression that he wears like a second skin. He holds his coffee and looks at me with the same focus he uses only on his responsibilities. Which in this house is everything. "I am three minutes late," I say. "You were three minutes late." He looks at his watch. "Now you are five minutes late." He says. I grab my bag. He does not move from the door. There is just enough space to pass if I change the angle slightly. I decided to try my best, but he did not move his shoulder out of the way. His jacket sleeve touches my arm as I pass through. "Elara." I stop without looking at him. "A new intern is coming to the marketing floor today," he says. The same tone as usual — even, controlled, a voice that never needed volume to deliver its message. "Keep it professional." I look at him over my shoulder. "I am always professional," I say. Something changes in his expression. Not a smile, not something I have a name for. "I know," he says. "But I just love to remind you." The Voss Corporation Tower is forty floors of glass and intimidation. It is located in Midtown precisely because it is as if it grew there rather than being constructed. I have been coming here ever since I was old enough to attend the board meeting without fidgeting. I know the security codes for all the floors. And I also know which elevator crawls on Tuesdays. I know the receptionist on the twenty-eighth floor keeps the emergency chocolate in the second drawer, and I have definitely used that knowledge. I know this building the same way I know the mansion. Completely. In a specific way that makes knowing feel like belonging — and still does not quite close the gap between the two. The 9 am meeting lasts fifty-four minutes. I take notes I will never use and spend most of these fifty-four minutes watching the room. Victor Voss, my father, talks for exactly eleven minutes and says less than anyone else at the table. That is the power – a–thelitis to say very little but have your words and like already-made decisions. Damien says nothing at all. He sits at my father's right hand and watches the room just like me. We exchanged looks twice during the meeting. Both times I break eye contact first. And I am very good at this. Composed expression, correct responses at the right time. The ability to be precisely what this family wants from me in every single room. Some days this act is harder than others. The briefing ends. People move toward the door. I am gathering my notes when I hear a voice I do not recognize — warm, unhurried, entirely unbothered by the weight of the room it just sat in. "Slide four has incorrect revenue data for the last quarter. Maybe someone should fix it before it gets to the board?" I look up. He stands near the door – a slightly crooked jacket, a face that looks like it landed somewhere between apology and mild amusement – like a man who is right about everything and finds the situation amusing rather than urgent. Brown hair, warm eyes, the particular ease of someone who just does not get where he is. He looks at me when I look at him. Stares a beat too long. "Marcus Reid," he says. "Marketing Department. First day." I look down at my notes. My pen presses harder into the paper. Back at my desk, I open the briefing deck and scroll to slide four. Incorrect quarter. He was right. I close the file and open a new one. I spend thirty seconds reminding myself this means absolutely nothing. And then the desk phone rings. Damien's extension. I look at it once before picking it up. "My office," he says. Without any greeting. "When?" I ask. "No," he says. The line hangs up. I put the receiver slowly down. The feeling in my chest – the source-less wrongness that I carried with me my whole life – turns sharper. I pick up my bag, and I walk to the elevator. What I do not know yet, as the doors close behind me and the floor numbers go up, is that when I come back to this desk – Marcus Reid will be gone.