The screen name—KAELEN—glowed with a supernatural light, a signal from a life I had interred three years before. The insistent ringing of the phone was the sole noise in the apartment, a death knell for the tenuous existence I had created with Ethan.
Ethan's pale face twisted in confusion. "What is that? Whose phone is this?" he stuttered, staring from the satellite phone to my face, looking for the familiar, obedient Anna he recognized.
He would never find her. She had died, murdered by his words only seconds ago.
A deep, freezing calm enveloped me. The agony in my gut did not lessen; it turned into something cold and hard within the cage of my chest. For the first time in 1,095 days, the haze of my self-inflicted weakness cleared.
My stride was smooth as I reached down and wrapped my fingers around the cold, pricey metal of the telephone. I straightened, incrementally, shedding the subservient slouch I had mastered. My chin came up, and my eyes, wiped clean of tears, locked on his. They were not the eyes of Anna, loving wife. They were the eyes of Aria Sterling.
Ethan cringed, stepping back involuntarily. "Anna, what is it?"
I didn't even notice him. My thumb swept across the screen, answering the call. I held the phone to my ear, all of my attention on the sound of the other end.
"Aria." Deep, calm, and with a power that could make armies march, that was the voice of Kaelen Blackwood. He didn't seem surprised to hear from me. He sounded like he'd been expecting it.
"Kaelen," I said, my own voice surprising me. It was clear and firm, a tone that I hadn't employed in three years, free of the fake meekness Ethan had grown accustomed to.
Ethan's eyes grew wide with astonishment. He'd never heard me speak like that before. He'd never even heard the name Kaelen.
"Is the test finished?" Kaelen inquired bluntly. There was no sympathy in his tone, only a still, seething preparedness.
"The test was a failure," I said, my eyes fixed on my husband's appalled face. "I'm coming home."
"Understood. Already on its way. Look outside your window in five minutes." The connection ended.
I hung up the phone and set it firmly on the counter. What followed was a silence more oppressive than before, heavy with unspoken questions and a growing, horrific realization on Ethan's part.
"Who was that? What test?" he barked, his voice part fear, part rage. "And why did you… why did you sound like that?"
I didn't reply. Instead, I moved towards him. One hard, solid step. Then another. My stride was perfect. Effortless. Balanced.
The limp was gone.
Ethan's jaw fell open. His eyes flicked down to my legs and up to my face, his mind reeling at the impossibility. "Your. your leg," he breathed, his finger trembling as he pointed. "You're not. you're not limping."
"No," I replied, my voice as icy as a winter morning. "I'm not.
"But… the accident… your parents…" He was trying to hang onto the fabrications I had so meticulously spun, the pitiful tale of a poor orphan who was hurt in the car accident that had, supposedly, killed her family.
"There was no accident, Ethan," I told him, coming to a halt right in front of him. I stared into the face of the man I had given my life to, the man who had referred to me as a burden, and I experienced nothing but an enormous cold emptiness. "There is no Anna Vance."
Before he could make sense of my words, a heavy rumble started to shake through the creaky floorboards of our flat. It intensified continuously, the unmistakable growl of several high-powered engines getting closer.
I wheeled around him and strode over to the dirty window that looked out onto the road. I leaned down, a half-smile settling on my lips for the first time that evening.
Tailored up on the curb below, their freshly painted black gleaming in the faint streetlights, was a convoy of six identical, intimidating Rolls-Royces. Their headlights pierced the darkness, turning our run-down building into the focus of a spectacle.
"Whatever in God's name is that?" Ethan panted behind me, his voice shaking.
I didn't turn around. I just stood there and watched as the lead car door opened and a man in a flawlessly tailored suit emerged, wearing a black cashmere coat. He glanced up, his eyes locking onto mine through the window as if he knew precisely where I'd be.
"That," I said under my breath, my tone dripping with venomous calm, "is my grandfather's butler. And he's holding my coat."