Chapter 12 - The Woman Who Wanted My Face
The fourth child was Margaret Clark's daughter.
Not Celeste's.
Her name was Lydia.
She had worked at Brooks & Bloom for three years.
Before Kayla.
I remembered her.
Quiet.
Efficient.
Forgettable.
Exactly what she'd intended.
Lydia had been the architect behind the surveillance.
She had taught Claire my routines.
She had preserved Celeste's network when Celeste became reckless.
Marcus believed he controlled everything.
He had been wrong.
Lydia wanted the wallet.
She didn't care about the trust.
Or my name.
Or revenge.
She wanted the money and the archive destroyed.
The locked room began filling with smoke.
Not fire.
Gas.
Adrian smashed the intercom.
Daniel found an old ventilation shaft.
Claire knew the building plans.
Together, we escaped.
That mattered to me later.
None of us could have survived alone.
Lydia fled.
Marcus resurfaced at the same time.
Two enemies.
One fortune.
And Vanessa between them.
Lydia contacted me directly.
"Give me the recovery phrase and I'll disappear."
"No."
"Your mother would have."
"My mother hid it from you."
Silence.
That hit something.
"You think Evelyn was good?"
"I think she tried."
"She destroyed my mother."
"Your mother destroyed people."
"So did the Morettis."
"Then prosecute them too."
Adrian looked at me.
I shrugged.
Family wasn't immunity.
That apparently surprised everyone.
Lydia laughed.
"I almost like you."
"I'll survive the disappointment."
She hung up.
Ramirez traced her to a hotel near O'Hare.
The room contained disguises.
Passports.
And a silicone facial prosthetic modeled after me.
Seeing my own face lying empty on a table did something unpleasant to my stomach.
Lydia hadn't planned to kill me.
She planned to replace me.
Claire stared at the mask.
"She doesn't need me anymore."
For the first time, I saw Claire not as the woman who stole my identity, but as a person raised to believe her only value was becoming someone else.
"Then become yourself."
She looked at me.
Nobody had ever told her that.
We found another item.
A contract.
Lydia planned to sell the entire identity network to an international criminal group.
The exchange would happen in forty-eight hours.
The location was coded.
I recognized the numbers.
They weren't coordinates.
They were flower inventory codes.
My inventory codes.
The meeting location was Brooks & Bloom.
My shop.
At midnight tomorrow.
We prepared.
Police wired the building.
Adrian's security covered the block.
I refused to leave.
"It's my shop."
"It's a trap," Adrian said.
"Still my shop."
At 11:58 p.m., the bell above the front door rang.
Nobody entered.
At midnight, the flower cooler switched off.
May you like
Then the hidden door behind it opened slowly.
A woman stepped through wearing my face.
