Sara Hart's apartment building sat on West 73rd Street like a monument to new money trying to look old. Victoria crouched in the shadows across the street, watching the blonde woman's silhouette move past the windows of the tenth-floor corner unit. She'd been following Sara for three hours, documenting her routine, her habits, her weaknesses.
What she'd found was more disturbing than she'd ever imagined.
Victoria adjusted her camera lens and focused on Sara's living room window. Through the gauze curtains, she could see furniture that looked oddly familiar—a cream-colored sofa with gold trim, abstract paintings in silver frames, a glass coffee table with books arranged just so. Everything positioned exactly like Aria's old apartment before she'd moved in with Lucas.
"Sick bitch," Victoria muttered, snapping photos. Sara wasn't just wearing Aria's life like a costume. She was recreating it, piece by piece, room by room.
The apartment building's doorman was taking his dinner break, probably smoking behind the service entrance like he did every night at nine-thirty. Victoria had been watching long enough to learn his schedule. She crossed the street quickly, pulling her black cap low over her face, and slipped into the lobby.
The elevator climbed to the tenth floor in silence. Victoria's heartbeat matched the mechanical rhythm—steady, determined, lethal. She'd broken into Lucas's house looking for evidence. Tonight, she was looking for something else entirely.
She was looking for herself.
Sara's apartment door was painted forest green with brass numbers that gleamed under the hallway lights. Victoria pulled out her lock picks and went to work, muscle memory from three years of preparation guiding her fingers. The lock clicked open in under a minute.
The smell hit her first. Aria's perfume, but wrong somehow. Too sweet, too heavy, like someone had tried to recreate a memory and overdone it. Victoria stepped into the apartment and felt her world tilt sideways.
It was her living room. Not similar to it, not inspired by it—it was exactly her old apartment, recreated down to the last detail. The same cream sofa she'd bought at ABC Carpet, the same abstract paintings from that gallery in SoHo, even the same books on the coffee table arranged in the same careful stacks.
Victoria's hands shook as she moved deeper into the apartment. The kitchen was wrong—Sara's taste, modern and cold—but the living room and bedroom were perfect reproductions of spaces that had been destroyed in a fire three years ago. Spaces that should exist only in photographs and memories.
"How the hell did you—" Victoria stopped mid-sentence when she saw them.
Photo albums. Dozens of them, spread across Sara's dining table like a serial killer's trophy collection. Victoria approached slowly, afraid of what she'd find but unable to look away.
The first album was labeled "College Days" in Sara's careful handwriting. Page after page of photos from Columbia—Victoria and Sara at parties, studying in the library, grabbing coffee between classes. But something was wrong with the pictures. They'd been altered, Photoshopped with surgical precision. Sara's face had been edited to look more like Aria's, her hair darkened, her eyes changed from blue to green.
"Jesus," Victoria breathed, flipping through pages of doctored memories. Sara had been rewriting history, making herself into Aria even in photographs that were twenty years old.
The second album was worse. "Aria's Style Guide"—hundreds of photos of Aria throughout her marriage, clipped from social media, newspaper articles, charity gala coverage. But these weren't random pictures. They were a study guide. Sara had annotated them with notes about hair, makeup, clothes, even posture. "Head tilt—15 degrees left." "Smile—soft, never full teeth." "Walk—small steps, graceful."
Victoria felt sick. This wasn't simple jealousy or competition. This was obsession on a clinical level. Sara had been studying Aria like a role she was preparing to play.
And then Victoria found the third album, and her blood turned to ice.
"Future Plans" was filled with photos of Lucas and Emma, some taken with telephoto lenses from across the street, others clearly stolen from social media or private sources. But scattered between them were pictures that made Victoria's stomach lurch—photos of herself, recent ones, taken without her knowledge. Victoria entering her hotel, Victoria at coffee shops, Victoria sitting in Central Park.
Sara knew about Victoria Crow. Had been watching her, following her, documenting her movements just like Victoria had been doing to Sara.
"Well, well, well."
Victoria spun around to find Sara standing in the apartment doorway, her blonde hair catching the light like a halo. She'd traded her usual designer clothes for something that made Victoria's heart stop—a red cocktail dress that Aria had worn to Lucas's birthday party four years ago. The exact same dress, down to the last detail.
"I was wondering when you'd show up," Sara continued, closing the door behind her with deliberate calm. "Though I have to say, breaking and entering is a little dramatic, even for someone playing my game."
"Your game?" Victoria kept her voice steady despite the adrenaline flooding her system. "What game is that, Sara?"
"The game where we both pretend you're not Aria Stone." Sara smiled, the expression cold and triumphant. "Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you? Even with the new face, even with the different hair, I know you. I've been studying you for years."
Victoria's mind raced. Her cover was blown, but Sara was alone and probably unarmed. She could run, disappear, start over somewhere else. Or she could do what she'd come here to do and finish this once and for all.
"You're insane," Victoria said, taking a step toward the door.
"Am I?" Sara moved to block her path, her smile widening. "I'm not the one who faked her own death and had plastic surgery to look like someone else. That's actually insane. I'm just someone who knew how to recognize an opportunity when I saw one."
"What opportunity?"
"Your death, of course. The real one, I mean." Sara walked to the dining table and ran her fingers over the photo albums like they were precious artifacts. "Richard Stone paid me very well to make sure you had that car accident. But even he didn't expect the bonus of getting to raise Emma as my own daughter."
The casual admission hit Victoria like a physical blow. Sara had just confessed to murder, to conspiracy, to destroying an entire family for money. And she was smiling about it.
"You killed me for money," Victoria said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"I killed you because you had everything I'd ever wanted and you didn't even appreciate it." Sara's voice turned sharp, bitter. "The perfect husband, the perfect house, the perfect life. You took it all for granted. You complained about Lucas working too much, about feeling trapped in the marriage, about wanting more independence. You had paradise and you were bored by it."
"So you decided to take it from me."
"I decided to take better care of it than you ever did." Sara pulled out her phone and started scrolling through photos. "Lucas is so much happier now. Emma adores me. I've given them the stability and love that you never could."
Victoria's hands clenched into fists. "Emma doesn't adore you. She's terrified of you."
"Children adapt. She'll learn to love me properly once you're really dead." Sara looked up from her phone, her blue eyes cold as winter. "Which, unfortunately for you, needs to happen soon. You're making Lucas suspicious, asking too many questions, stirring up too many memories. Richard's getting nervous."
"Richard doesn't know I'm alive."
"Richard doesn't know yet," Sara corrected. "But he'll figure it out eventually. He's not stupid. And when he does, he'll want you eliminated properly this time. No fake crashes, no dramatic disappearances. Just a body that stays buried."
Victoria felt the walls closing in around her. Sara knew everything—about the plastic surgery, about her plan, about Richard's involvement. Worse, she was talking about Victoria's death like it was a scheduling problem to be solved.
"You won't get away with this," Victoria said, hating how weak the words sounded.
"Won't I?" Sara walked to her bedroom and gestured for Victoria to follow. "Come see what I've been working on."
Against her better judgment, Victoria followed Sara into the bedroom. What she found there made her stomach turn inside out.
The room was a shrine to Aria Stone. Not Sara's interpretation of Aria, but the real thing—clothes from Aria's closet that should have been destroyed, jewelry that should have been buried with her, personal items that Sara had no right to possess. A wedding dress hung in the corner, carefully preserved and displayed like it was still waiting for its bride.
But the most disturbing thing was the vanity table covered with makeup, wigs, and prosthetics. Sara had been practicing becoming Aria, experimenting with different ways to transform herself into a dead woman.
"I've gotten very good at it," Sara said, sitting at the vanity and picking up a brush. "Watch."
Victoria watched in horror as Sara began applying makeup with the skill of a professional artist. Foundation that darkened her skin slightly, contouring that changed the shape of her face, eye makeup that altered the shape and color of her features. Within minutes, Sara looked less like herself and more like someone else entirely.
More like Aria.
"The wig is the finishing touch," Sara said, pulling on a brunette hairpiece that matched Aria's natural color and texture. "What do you think? Could I pass for you in a dark room?"
Victoria stared at Sara's reflection in the mirror. The resemblance was uncanny, disturbing, almost perfect. With the right clothes and lighting, Sara could easily impersonate Aria well enough to fool someone who wanted to believe.
Someone like Lucas.
"Why?" Victoria asked, her voice hoarse with emotion. "Why go to all this trouble? You already have him. You have Emma. You have the life you wanted. Why do you need to become me?"
Sara turned away from the mirror to face Victoria directly, her transformed face wearing an expression of pure madness. "Because having your life isn't enough. I want to BE you. I want to erase you completely and take your place in every possible way. I want Lucas to forget you ever existed."
"That's impossible."
"Is it?" Sara stood and moved closer, close enough that Victoria could smell the heavy perfume and see the careful makeup lines around her eyes. "Lucas is already starting to forget. Three years of my love, my care, my attention. He barely mentions you anymore. And soon, when he sees me wearing your face, he'll finally understand that I'm the only Aria he needs."
The words hit Victoria like ice water. Sara wasn't just planning to impersonate her occasionally. She was planning to replace her entirely, to become Aria Stone in every way that mattered.
"You're sick," Victoria said.
"I'm in love." Sara's voice was soft, dreamy, completely detached from reality. "And love makes people do extraordinary things."
Sara turned back to the mirror and smiled at her reflection, running her fingers through the brunette wig like she was greeting an old friend.
"Soon," she whispered to her reflection. "Very soon, I'll be able to become you completely. And then nobody will remember there was ever any difference between us."
Victoria backed toward the door, her heart hammering against her ribs. She'd come here looking for evidence of Sara's obsession. Instead, she'd found something much worse—a woman who'd crossed the line from jealousy into complete psychological break. Sara wasn't just Aria's enemy. She was completely, dangerously insane.
And she was planning something that would destroy everyone Victoria loved.
End of Chapter 7