Rosemary and garlic wafted through our small apartment, the stark opposite of the damp, decaying smell that normally lingered. I adjusted the sputtering gas stove flame, rocked the pan back and forth. It was an inexpensive cut of meat, the best I could buy on my small café wage, but I had marinated it for hours so it would taste like a recollection of something rich and superb.
Tonight had to be perfect. It was our third anniversary.
Three years ago when I, Aria Sterling, disappeared from existence. Three years ago when I became Anna Vance, a penniless orphan with a manufactured history and an effective limp. I touched a hand to my thigh, the muscles automatically bracing to simulate the injury that had become my life. It was a lingering, persistent pain, a physical reminder of the deception I lived in.
For love. For him.
I looked at the wall clock. 8:00 PM. Ethan was already an hour late. My heart, which had been skipping beats with excitement, now pounded with a known nervousness. He was likely caught up in some meeting, impressing his boss. Everything he did was for us, for our future. I chanted the words like a mantra.
My phone vibrated on the cracked countertop. A text from Ethan: Running late. Client dinner. Don't wait up.
The immaculately set two-seater table taunted me. The solitary candle I had hoarded for a month trembled, its flame dancing upon the two plates I had laboriously adorned. Disappointment was a sour flavor on my tongue, but I gulped it down. This was my life. A life of sacrifice, to establish that he would love me for myself, and not for the Sterling billions.
I shot back a speedy response: Okay. I love you.
Silence.
Sighing, I started to clear the table, my fancy dinner relegated to a plastic container in our pathetic, half-full fridge. When I picked up his plate, my phone beeped again. It was not a text message, but a new voicemail notification. Ethan must have pocket-dialed me.
A half-smile crept onto my face. I pressed play, hoping to catch the sound of his office in the background.
But the voice I heard wasn't the one he had used with me. It was slick, cold, and dripping with contempt.
"Leave her alone," Ethan's low tone crawled through the speaker. "She's just home waiting like a good little bitch. Seriously, Clara, I don't know how I've endured it this long."
Clara. The name of his new 'assistant.' My own breath caught.
A sultry laugh from a woman sounded faintly. "Three years is a long time to be stuck with a charity case, darling."
"Don't remind me," Ethan sneered, and his following words destroyed my whole world. "She's nothing but a burden. A useless, crippled waste. But the bargain I made with myself is nearly up. When I get this promotion, I'll be rid of her once and for all."
The phone fell from my frozen fingers, thudding on the floor. The universe spun, the smell of rosemary suddenly sickening. The three years of self-denial, of real, deep love, soured in my blood.
There was a sudden snap of the front-door lock.
My head whipped up as Ethan entered, a forced smile twisted onto his face and only one, wretched little rose in his hand. "Sorry I'm late, my love. Happy anniversary."
He advanced a step towards me, his eyes full of insincere warmth. He halted abruptly when he caught sight of my face. His eyes fluttered from my tear-stained cheeks down to the phone on the floor, the screen still lit.
But it wasn't my phone that put cold blood into his veins.
Lying on the counter, beside the anniversary feast I had prepared so lovingly, was another phone. An expensive, black satellite phone, a model that cost more than our entire apartment complex. A phone he had never seen.
And as we stood there in a stale, suffocating silence, its screen flickered to life, flashing a single name: KAELEN.