Damian Cole did not contact me again for six days.

In my first life, six days after his proposal, our families had already announced the engagement.

This time, the Cole family mansion remained silent.

Claire did not.

She became unusually attentive.

She brought coffee to my room.

Asked whether I wanted to go shopping.

Even offered to help organize files in my study.

I refused every time.

Because I remembered exactly how she worked.

Claire never stole everything at once.

She borrowed small pieces of your life until one day you discovered she’d assembled another version of you.

On the seventh morning, my father summoned us downstairs.

Damian was waiting.

But he wasn’t alone.

A lawyer sat beside him.

Claire stopped halfway down the staircase.

Damian noticed.

That tiny reaction told me everything.

“Isabel.”

He stood.

“I checked what you suggested.”

My mother frowned.

“Checked what?”

Damian placed several documents on the table.

“The account I’ve been communicating with for three years.”

Claire’s fingers tightened around the railing.

“The registration email was created using Isabel’s name,” Damian continued, “but recovery records connect it to another phone number.”

My father leaned forward.

“Whose?”

Damian looked directly at Claire.

Hers.

My mother immediately stood.

“That proves nothing. They’re sisters. Claire could have helped Isabel create it.”

I almost laughed.

Even with evidence in front of her, my mother was already inventing excuses.

Damian continued.

“The account repeatedly logged in from locations Isabel wasn’t present.”

He pushed another document forward.

“Last October, I was messaging ‘Isabel’ until two in the morning.”

He looked at me.

“You were in Zurich.”

“Yes.”

“The account was active from this house.”

Silence.

My father’s face changed.

Claire finally spoke.

“I can explain.”

Damian turned toward her.

“Please do.”

Her eyes filled instantly.

“I was helping my sister.”

“Helping me?”

Everyone looked at me.

Claire swallowed.

“Isabel was shy. She liked you, but she didn’t know how to express herself. Sometimes she asked me to answer messages.”

That lie had saved her in my first life.

Not this time.

I opened my phone.

“Interesting.”

Claire froze.

“Because three years ago, when this relationship supposedly began, I kept a daily work journal.”

I placed copies on the table.

“Every meeting. Every trip. Every project.”

Then I looked at Damian.

“Ask your online girlfriend what happened in Paris.”

His expression tightened.

“She told me she spent her twenty-third birthday alone near the Seine because her family forgot.”

I nodded.

“That happened.”

Claire exhaled almost imperceptibly.

Then I smiled.

“To Claire.”

Her face went white.

“My twenty-third birthday was in Boston. My parents held a dinner for me.”

Damian slowly turned toward Claire.

She shook her head.

“No. That’s not—”

“The Paris story belongs to Claire,” I said. “But the photographs she sent you were mine.”

That was the brilliance of her deception.

She had not invented one woman.

She had combined two.

My appearance.

My education.

My accomplishments.

Her loneliness.

Her fears.

Her memories.

She had constructed someone Damian could fall in love with while ensuring the face he loved belonged to me.

My father stared at Claire.

“Why?”

She began crying.

“I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”

Damian’s voice became cold.

“Three years is quite far.”

“I only wanted to talk to you!”

“Using her identity?”

“You wouldn’t have answered me!”

The room became completely silent.

Claire seemed to realize too late what she’d admitted.

Damian stepped closer.

“So you used Isabel’s photographs because you believed I wouldn’t be interested in you.”

Claire covered her face.

“I loved you.”

Damian didn’t answer.

And strangely, watching him discover the truth gave me no satisfaction.

Because I remembered another Damian.

The man who had once stood beside my hospital bed and believed Claire without questioning anything.

The man who had punished me for crimes I never committed.

This time I wanted something different.

Not revenge.

Distance.

“I think we’re finished.”

I turned away.

Damian caught my wrist.

“Wait.”

I looked down at his hand.

He immediately released me.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For coming here intending to marry you without knowing you.”

“That would be a good place to start.”

His face tightened.

“I thought—”

“That photographs were enough?”

“No.”

“That three years of messages entitled you to a woman?”

“No.”

“Then what exactly did you think?”

Damian had no answer.

I walked upstairs.

Behind me, Claire shouted:

“Isabel!”

I stopped.

Her voice trembled.

“You planned this.”

I turned.

“For three years you used my identity.”

“No! I mean this meeting. You knew he’d investigate.”

“Yes.”

Her expression changed.

For the first time, the innocent mask disappeared completely.

“You wanted him to expose me.”

“No.”

I looked at our parents.

“I wanted all of you to see what you would choose once the truth was sitting in front of you.”

My mother’s face stiffened.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

I remembered my first life.

Every accusation.

Every punishment.

Every time Claire cried and my parents immediately decided I must be guilty.

“You’ll understand soon.”

That night, someone entered my study.

I heard the door at 2:13 a.m.

I waited thirty seconds before switching on the light.

Claire stood beside my desk.

My laptop was open.

She froze.

“What are you doing?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“So you came to use my computer?”

She smiled weakly.

“I wanted to print something.”

“At two in the morning?”

Her expression hardened.

Then she noticed the tiny camera on the bookshelf.

For the first time, genuine panic crossed her face.

“You recorded me?”

“I record this room now.”

“Why?”

“Because things have a habit of disappearing around you.”

She stepped toward me.

“You think you’re clever because Damian discovered the account?”

“No.”

“You think you’ve won?”

I said nothing.

Claire laughed softly.

“You don’t understand him at all.”

“Perhaps.”

“He loved me.”

“He loved a person wearing my face.”

Her eyes sharpened.

“But the words were mine.”

That stopped me.

Because it was partly true.

And Claire saw it.

She approached.

“When he couldn’t sleep, I stayed awake talking to him.”

Another step.

“When his father had surgery, I was the one who comforted him.”

Another.

“When he wanted to abandon Cole Industries, I convinced him not to.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“You think because I used your photographs none of it was real?”

“No.”

My answer surprised her.

“I think your feelings were real.”

Claire stared at me.

“And that makes what you did worse.”

Her face collapsed.

For a moment, she looked genuinely wounded.

Then she whispered:

“You always had everything.”

I almost laughed.

“Everything?”

“Beauty. Awards. Father’s approval. The Bennett name.”

“You have the Bennett name.”

“Borrowed.”

There it was.

The wound beneath everything.

Claire had entered our family at twelve.

And apparently, she’d spent every year afterward believing she was only temporarily welcome.

But understanding someone’s pain did not excuse what they did with it.

“I never asked you to become me.”

“No.”

She looked at my laptop.

“But you never understood what it felt like watching everyone choose you first.”

She walked past me.

At the doorway, she stopped.

“Be careful, Isabel.”

I frowned.

“Damian may hate me now.”

She looked over her shoulder.

“But eventually he’ll realize something.”

“What?”

“That the woman he loved for three years had your face…”

Her smile was almost sad.

“…and my soul.”

The next morning, Damian requested to meet me privately.

I refused.

He came anyway.

I found him outside my office building.

“You’re becoming annoying, Mr. Cole.”

“I found something.”

He handed me a folder.

Inside were screenshots from the fake account.

Hundreds of conversations.

But several messages were highlighted.

I read the first.

“If anything happens to me, promise you’ll never believe Isabel.”

My stomach tightened.

Another.

“She hates me because our parents love me more.”

Another.

“Sometimes I’m afraid she’ll hurt me.”

I slowly looked up.

Damian’s expression was grim.

“These messages started almost two years ago.”

My blood turned cold.

Long before our engagement.

Long before Claire’s death in my first life.

She had been preparing Damian to distrust me before we’d even met.

“This wasn’t just identity theft,” Damian said.

“She was building a story.”

A story in which Claire was the victim.

And I was the villain.

Exactly the story everyone believed after she died.

Then Damian handed me one final screenshot.

This message had been sent from Claire’s account three months before his proposal.

“If one day I disappear, don’t investigate my death. Just protect yourself from Isabel.”

I stared at it.

My hands began shaking.

Because suddenly my first life looked completely different.

Claire’s death had never been an impulsive tragedy.

She had prepared for it.

Maybe for years.

“There’s more,” Damian said.

“What?”

“The message metadata.”

He placed another report in front of me.

“That final message wasn’t sent from Claire’s phone.”

I looked up.

“Then whose?”

Damian hesitated.

“Someone else had access to the account.”

My heartbeat accelerated.

“Who?”

“We traced the device.”

He slid a photograph across the table.

I recognized the man immediately.

And for several seconds, I couldn’t breathe.

Because I had seen him in my first life.

He had been at Claire’s funeral.

He had testified that he’d seen me arguing with her days before her death.

His statement had helped turn my family against me.

But he wasn’t Claire’s friend.

He wasn’t even supposed to know her.

He was my father’s personal assistant.

Damian leaned closer.

“Isabel, Claire didn’t create this entire lie alone.”

I stared at the photograph.

And suddenly I remembered something from the night before my death.

Something I’d dismissed because I was exhausted and grieving.

My assistant had sent me two photographs.

I had only looked carefully at the first—the picture of Damian trying on wedding clothes with another woman.

But in the background of the second photograph had been a familiar man.

My father’s assistant.

Watching Damian.

Watching everything.

My phone rang.

Father.

I answered.

His voice was shaking.

“Isabel, come home immediately.”

“What happened?”

Silence.

Then he said:

“Claire is missing.”

I stood so quickly my chair fell backward.

Damian’s face changed.

“When?”

“This morning.”

My father breathed heavily.

“But that’s not the worst part.”

“What could possibly be worse?”

“The police found a letter in her bedroom.”

I already knew what he was going to say.

But this time, unlike my first life, Claire hadn’t waited until after my marriage.

My father whispered:

“She wrote that if anything happens to her…”

His voice broke.

“…you did it.”

Damian and I stared at each other.

Then another call appeared on my screen.

Unknown number.

A message arrived.

One photograph.

Claire standing on the rooftop of the same building where she had died in my first life.

Below it were six words:

“Let’s see if you survive twice.”

And suddenly I understood.

My rebirth hadn’t changed Claire’s plan.

It had only forced the person behind her to move sooner.