REBORN FOR REVENGE

MARA'S POV Today was my birthday, so why in the hell was I typing a report by eleven thirty, trying to meet my deadline before midnight? My phone rang again, and I sighed in frustration as I cut it. It was Ben, my husband. He had been calling me since nine PM. I wondered why he hadn't sent the police to my office yet to check if I was still alive. He wasn't the only person that had been hounding me with calls. My parents had been calling too. They, like my husband, had been trying to figure out when I was coming home. They probably threw a surprise party for me and since the celebrant wasn't attending, they had probably fallen into pandemonium. My phone rang again, just as I reached the last paragraph of the report. And I groaned as I picked up the call in frustration. “Ben, I have told you to stop calling, I will be home soon. I am just wrapping up a few things.” “Mum, it's me,” my daughter, Emma said, shocking me. “Oh… Emma, I am so sorry I'm late,” I apologized to her. I had hoped that she would be asleep by now. It was a school night. “You can apologize to me by showing up, seriously mum, it's a few minutes till your birthday will be over. At least try and show up before then,” Emma hounded me and I smiled. Just then, the door to my office swung open and my identical twin sister, Clara, walked in with a grim look on her face. Talk about a family intervention. “I will be home in ten minutes,” I promised her, ending the call quickly. “What are you doing here so late?” I asked Clara, my eyes back on my laptop as I typed. “What do you think? They sent me here to pick you up,” Clara complained as I typed the last sentence of my report, not bothering to reread it as I sent it in. “You know they planned a surprise party for you, thinking you would have been back since eight,” Clara said, confirming my thoughts while I closed my laptop shut and placed it in my handbag. “Ben invited a bunch of your colleagues and mom and dad were there. We kept calling you and when you didn’t show up, dad managed to blame me for that.” She said it like it was my fault. “Well, it wasn't like I was playing here,” I retorted defensively. “You of all people know that I was busy.” “Oh but I'm not?” She scoffed at me, looking offended as she stepped out of the office. I hadn't realized how that could have sounded to her. Clara wasn't working at the moment. After her latest fight with our parents, she had been staying at my house, basically relying on me for everything, since our father stopped paying for her credit cards. Dad didn’t approve of her free-spirited lifestyle, he had wanted her to work in the company like me. But Clara had other plans. “Clara, I'm sorry,” I called out, hoping it would soften her, but she stayed silent, her face solemn until we got downstairs to my car. “You took a cab?” I asked her, noticing that the parking lot was empty. “Yeah, dad caused a scene at the party, and I was too angry to drive,” she replied grudgingly, That explained her grumpy mood. “Look, I am sorry about what I said earlier,” I said, reaching for her hand. “And I am going to talk to dad, to ease up on you and give you back your cards,” I said to her, and she gave me a small smile. “You don’t have to do that,” she said quickly, “and about earlier, it is fine, I know you didn't mean it,” she replied, removing her hand from mine and placing her feet on my dashboard as I started the car. Clara and I were identical, with the same long brown hair and blue eyes, but we couldn't be anymore different. She was basically a wild spirit, doing whatever she wanted while I was married with a family. I envied her sometimes, wondering what it felt like not to have any responsibilities. “Let’s not take this route and get stuck in traffic,” she suggested, as we noticed the ongoing holdup ahead. “There is another route I take with my car sometimes.” “Where is that?” I asked and Clara led me down a different path entirely, and I was convinced no one else had discovered this road because there weren't even any streetlights. “Um Clara… are you sure you know this road?” I asked her, feeling a bit creeped out by the surrounding darkness. “Uh.. huh,” she agreed absentmindedly, taking out her phone from her pocket. “Clara? Can you pay attention, I literally don’t think we are safe here,” I said, glancing at her as she started watching a video. It was eleven fifty by now with the way things were going, there was no way I was making it home before twelve like I promised Emma. “Clara… I literally need your help here,” I called out again. She didn't reply, instead she increased the volume of the video she was watching until I could hear loud moans coming from her phone. “Clara what the f**k is wrong with you? Are you watching porn right now?” I asked her angrily, and she pointed the phone in my direction. I was about to yell at her again when I saw the people in the video. I could see Ben and I going at it in the video. I was on top of him, riding him as he moaned helplessly. But something wasn't right. Even though the woman in the video looked exactly like me, it wasn't me. It was Clara. I parked the car immediately and turned to face my sister, who was smiling smugly at me. “What the f**k was that?” “What does it look like, I f****d your husband and do you want to know the best part? He had no idea that it wasn’t you,” she said, with an evil smile on her face. What the f**k? I didn't even know what to say or where this was coming from. I had given Clara a home, after our father had turned his back on her, so why would she do this to me? Why in the hell would my twin sister do this to me? “What are you saying Clara?” I asked, my voice was barely audible, and my heart was breaking as I stared at her. The initial shock and anger I felt had muddled into denial. There was no way that the Clara that I grew up with would do that to me. This had to be some form of sick joke. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?” She asked with a teasing tone. “I want your life,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Before I could process what she meant by that, she pulled out a white cloth from her back pocket and pushed it to my nose until I lost consciousness.