Bound by Contract, Ruined by Desire

THE DEATH OF ELENA VANCE

Chapter 4:

Elena Vance

The liquid tasted like bitter almonds and cold copper. I swallowed it in one gulp, watching Julian’s face blur as the world began to tilt. My knees hit the steel floor of the cargo ship, but I didn't feel the impact. I only felt his arms catching me. His touch was the last thing I knew before the darkness swallowed me whole.

"Sleep now, little bird," Julian whispered. His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the ocean. "When you wake up, you’ll be free."

I wanted to tell him I didn't want to be free if it meant he was gone. I wanted to tell him I finally remembered the playground, the way he shared his only jacket with me when the wind got too cold. But my tongue was made of lead. My heart gave one final, heavy thud and then went silent.

I woke up to a piercing, clinical cold.

The air was sharp and smelled of bleach. I couldn't move my fingers. My skin felt like parchment. I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids were glued shut by some kind of heavy cream. Panic flared in my chest, a hot spark in a frozen body. I wasn't dead. The three hours were up.

"08-05-86 is ready for transport," a muffled voice said. It sounded like it was coming through a thick wall.

"Wait," another voice replied. "The mother wants a final look. She says she hasn't seen her daughter this still since she was a toddler."

I heard the sound of a heavy metal door creaking open. Footsteps approached, slow and rhythmic. I focused every ounce of my will on staying still. I forced my breathing to remain shallow, almost non-existent. A hand, cold and thin, touched my cheek.

"She looks just like me," the woman whispered. "What a waste of such a beautiful face. If only she hadn't inherited her father’s stubbornness."

"She was a perfect key, Madame," the first voice said. "The codes are being uploaded as we speak. The Syndicate’s assets are moving into your private accounts."

"And Julian?" my mother asked.

"He went down with the ship, just as you ordered. The explosion was massive. No one could have survived that engine room blast."

A sob threatened to break through my throat. Julian was dead. He had traded his life for a three-hour window of safety that I was currently using to lie on a morgue slab. The man who loved me since he was a boy was gone, and the woman who birthed me was standing over my 'corpse' counting her profits.

"Good," my mother said. Her hand moved from my cheek to the mark behind my ear. She traced the barcode with a sharp fingernail. "Once the transfer is 100% complete, we dispose of the body. Incinerate it. I don't want any trace of the Vance bloodline left to haunt me."

"Yes, Madame."

The footsteps retreated. The heavy door clicked shut. I waited, counting the seconds in my head. One. Two. Three. I forced my eyes open. The light was blinding. I was in a small, white room filled with silver drawers. A morgue. I sat up, my muscles screaming in protest. I was wrapped in a thin white sheet, and my skin was covered in a greyish powder that made me look like a cadaver.

I slid off the metal table, my feet hitting the freezing floor. I needed to move. I needed to find a way out before they came back with the fire.

I looked around the room. On a small counter sat my silver locket and the black silk dress I had been wearing. They had stripped me like a piece of evidence. I grabbed the dress and pulled it on, my hands shaking so hard I could barely zip it.

I reached for the locket, but as my fingers touched the silver, the door handle turned.

I dove behind a rolling equipment cart just as a man in a white lab coat walked in. He was looking at a clipboard, humming a low tune. He walked straight toward the table where I had been lying. He stopped. The humming stopped.

"What the—"

I didn't give him time to scream. I grabbed a heavy metal tray from the cart and swung it with everything I had. It hit him in the side of the head with a sickening thud. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.

I stood over him, gasping for air. I wasn't the girl who went to gala dinners anymore. I was a fugitive.

I grabbed his keycard from his pocket and bolted for the door. The hallway was long and sterile. I moved like a shadow, ducking into doorways every time I heard a sound. I reached a set of double doors labeled Security Hub.

I knew I should keep running, but I couldn't leave without knowing. I scanned the card and slipped inside. The room was filled with monitors showing different parts of a massive estate. I saw my mother sitting in a lush garden, sipping tea. I saw my father being led into a car in handcuffs...not by police, but by men in black suits.

Then, I saw the screen in the corner. It was a thermal feed of the pier where the ship had exploded.

There was a heat signature.

A single, glowing orange shape was moving through the water, dragging itself onto the rocks a mile away from the blast site. It was faint, but it was there.

"Julian," I whispered, my heart leaping.

But as I watched the screen, another shape appeared behind the heat signature. A larger, colder shape. A man stepped into the frame, holding a silenced pistol. He pointed it at the figure on the rocks.

"No!" I cried out, touching the screen.

Suddenly, the monitor turned to static. A new window popped up on the center screen. It was a video call.

I froze. The person on the other end wasn't my mother. It wasn't Marcus Sterling.

It was Julian’s younger brother, John. The one he told me was away at school in London. The one who was supposed to be the "good" Vane. He was sitting in a dark room, his face half-hidden by shadows.

"Hello, Elena," John said. His voice was a perfect mirror of Julian’s, but without the warmth. "I see the poison wasn't taken. My brother was always a bit too cautious with the dosage when it came to you."

"John? What are you doing? Where is Julian?" I demanded.

"Julian is a romantic, Elena. He thought he could save you and destroy the Syndicate at the same time. He’s currently bleeding out on a beach because he refused to believe that I wanted the codes as much as Marcus did."

"You betrayed your own brother?"

John leaned forward. The light hit his eyes. They were obsidian, just like Julian’s, but they were filled with a terrifying void. "Brotherhood is a contract, Elena. And contracts can be voided. I’m the one who told Sterling about the barcode. I’m the one who suggested the DNA lie to see if you’d run."

"You’re a monster," I hissed.

"I’m a business executive," John corrected. "And right now, I have a deal for you. Julian is still alive. For now. If you come to the coordinates I’m sending you, I’ll let him live. If you don't, I’ll tell the man on the beach to finish the job."

"Why do you need me? You have the codes! Your mother said the transfer was complete!"

John smiled, and it was the most horrific thing I had ever seen. "The transfer is into an escrow account, Elena. It requires a final biometric scan. My mother thinks it’s her thumbprint. She’s wrong."

"The locket," I whispered.

"Not just the locket," John said. "It needs the pulse of the heart that matches the barcode. It needs you, Elena. Alive and breathing."

I looked at the locket in my hand. Then I looked at the screen where Julian was being held at gunpoint. I realized that my life was the only currency left in this world.

"I’ll come," I said, my voice steady. "But if you hurt him, I’ll kill myself before you get a single cent."

"I look forward to the reunion," John said. The screen went black.

I turned to leave the security hub, but the door wouldn't open. I swiped the keycard again and again. Nothing. A red light began to flash above the door.

A gas hiss filled the room. Sweet, cloying, and thick.

I slumped to the floor, my vision blurring for the second time that night. As I drifted off, a panel in the wall slid open.

A woman stepped out. She wasn't my mother. She was the sister Julian said I didn't have. She looked exactly like me, down to the amber eyes and the chestnut hair.

She knelt beside me and whispered in my ear.

"Thanks for the codes, Sis. I'll take it from here."

Is she my twin, a clone, or the real Elena Vance?