Chapter 5 – The Portrait Room
250 Words
Lucien left without another word.
But the silence he left behind was louder than any argument we could have had.
I didn’t sleep that night. I lay awake staring at the ceiling, the letter clutched in my hand, my mother’s words echoing again and again.
Don’t trust Lucien.
Don’t trust anyone who says they love with conditions.
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By morning, I made up my mind.
If Lucien wouldn’t give me answers, I’d find them myself.
The Sinclair estate had a private study I wasn’t supposed to enter.
Of course, that’s exactly where I went.
It was too perfect—bookshelves taller than me, locked cabinets, files labeled in numbers, not names.
But then I saw a door. Smaller, hidden behind a velvet curtain.
I opened it.
Inside was a long room filled with oil paintings. Portraits.
Generations of Sinclairs.
And at the very end, covered in a white sheet… was a frame bigger than all the others.
I pulled the sheet down.
And my heart stopped.
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The woman in the painting had my face.
Not a resemblance. Not a distant similarity.
My. Exact. Face.
Same eyes. Same lips. Same birthmark near the jaw.
But the name on the brass plaque below the painting read:
Selene Aster Sinclair.
Not Rowan. Not someone else.
Sinclair.
And the year below it?
1988.
Which made her... too old to be me.
Unless—
She wasn’t me.
She was someone I was never told about.
Someone they buried in more ways than one.
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- Writer
