The hum of the engine filled the silence as the car sped down the coastal highway. The federal agent in the passenger seat hadn't spoken since they left the city, and Isabella couldn't bring herself to ask any more questions. Every answer he'd already given had cut her deeper than the last.
The man you've been with isn't Marco DeLuca.
The words still echoed in her head, heavy and impossible.
Outside, the sea flashed between cliffs and mist, the same stretch of coastline where everything had started—and where she'd thought it had ended.
"Where are we going?" she finally asked.
The agent glanced at her. "Safehouse. Matteo insisted you see him first."
"He's alive." It still felt unreal to say it out loud.
"He's in custody," the agent corrected. "But alive, yes. He surrendered at dawn."
Surrendered. That didn't sound like the Matteo she'd seen on the cliffs. That Matteo had looked ready to die.
She wrapped her arms around herself, staring out at the horizon. The sky was the color of cold metal, and the waves below churned like something restless and waiting.
"Why me?" she whispered. "Why does he want to see me?"
The agent hesitated. "Because he says you're in danger. And that you're the only one who can tell the difference between the real Marco and the one pretending to be him."
Her throat tightened. "You said there was proof—DNA?"
"Yes." The agent's jaw worked as if the words themselves hurt to say. "The body we identified as Marco's twin—the one in the photo—was a perfect genetic copy, down to his blood type, retinal patterns, everything. But there was one flaw."
"What flaw?"
"He didn't have the scar."
Isabella blinked. "Scar?"
The agent nodded. "Marco DeLuca had a scar under his left collarbone. Childhood injury. Knife wound—his father's doing. The man you've been with doesn't have it."
Her stomach dropped. She'd seen that skin. Touched it.
And there had been no scar.
The safehouse was buried deep in the coastal hills—a forgotten villa half-swallowed by vines and fog. Two guards stood at the entrance, silent and armed.
Inside, the air smelled of disinfectant and salt. Matteo sat at a steel table, his wrists cuffed, his face pale but alive. His eyes—those storm-gray eyes that had once terrified her—lifted the moment she stepped in.
"Close the door," he said.
The agent did. Then he left them alone.
For a moment, Isabella couldn't move. She had imagined this reunion a thousand ways—none of them like this. Matteo looked thinner, older, but there was a strange calm in him now, as if he'd finally stopped running.
"You made it," he said quietly.
"I saw you die," she whispered.
He smiled faintly. "You saw what you were meant to."
Her pulse raced. "You faked it."
"I had to. He would've killed you next."
"Who?"
Matteo's eyes hardened. "The man wearing my brother's face."
He told her everything.
The Syndicate—an organization older than both of them—had perfected the art of replacement. Not clones, not exactly. Echoes. Grown from DNA, shaped by neurolink implants that copied a person's memories, speech, even emotional triggers.
"Marco discovered it years ago," Matteo said. "He thought he could stop them from using it. But they caught him. The man you met after—the one who called himself Marco—was their prototype. The perfect infiltrator."
Isabella's chest ached. "You're saying… he's a machine?"
"Not a machine," Matteo said softly. "Something worse. Flesh pretending to remember."
She felt dizzy. "But I saw him bleed. I saw him cry."
"Of course you did," Matteo said. "He has every memory Marco ever lived—including loving you."
The air seemed to thin around her. "Then why kill you? Why destroy everything?"
Matteo leaned forward, chains clinking softly. "Because he doesn't know what he is. They programmed him to believe he is Marco. But when I tried to show him the truth, he broke."
"Broke?"
"He started remembering two lives—his own and Marco's. The guilt, the love, the rage—they tore him apart. That's why he came after me. And you."
She shook her head. "He protected me."
"He's obsessed with you," Matteo said. "Because you're the last piece of Marco's memory they couldn't erase."
Her voice trembled. "So what happens now?"
Matteo looked at her, his eyes full of something that wasn't hate anymore—just sorrow. "Now you decide which version of him survives."
Later, when the agents left them alone, Isabella stood by the window, staring out at the gray sea. The villa groaned softly in the wind. Matteo had given her a drive—a small, black data stick.
"Everything about Project Echo is on here," he'd said.
"Every lie they built, every face they stole. But once you open it, there's no going back."
She turned the device over in her hand, the metal warm from his touch.
That's when her phone buzzed again.
She hesitated before answering.
Unknown Number:
"Isabella."
The voice on the other end was familiar. Soft. Low. Marco's voice.
"Where are you?" she breathed.
"I'm coming to you," he said. "You shouldn't be there. They'll twist everything Matteo tells you."
Her grip tightened on the phone. "You said Matteo was dead."
"I thought he was. I swear."
"Who are you?"
Silence.
Then he said quietly, "You know who I am."
"No," she said. "I don't."
"Isabella," he whispered, "look at the scar on your wrist."
She froze. Slowly, she turned her hand over. A thin line ran across her inner wrist—faint, nearly invisible.
"I gave you that," he said. "When you fell off the rocks at Port Vero. Remember? You were sixteen."
Her breath caught. "That—"
"No one else knows about that day," he said. "No one but us."
Her heart was pounding. If he was a copy, how could he remember something she'd never told anyone?
"I don't understand," she said. "Matteo said you're—"
"Matteo's lying," he interrupted. "He's the one who made me. He's trying to erase me to keep the Syndicate from finding out what he did."
"What are you talking about?"
"He wasn't the victim, Isabella," Marco said, his voice breaking. "He was the architect. The project was his. He created me."
The line went dead.
The door burst open. Two agents rushed in, weapons drawn.
"Ms. Moreau—move away from the window!"
Before she could react, the glass shattered inward—gunfire tearing through the room. Isabella dropped to the floor as shards rained down. Matteo lunged from the corner, dragging her behind a pillar.
"Snipers!" one of the agents shouted.
Matteo grabbed her by the shoulders, his voice fierce and desperate. "Listen to me—whatever he told you, you can't believe it!"
"He said you made him," she cried.
Matteo's expression twisted. "That's not true. They're manipulating you."
"Then why does he remember things only I know?"
Matteo hesitated—and that hesitation told her everything.
"Matteo," she whispered, horror dawning, "you did make him."
His jaw clenched. "It wasn't supposed to go this far. He was a prototype—to protect you. But they took him before I could shut it down."
Outside, the gunfire stopped. The sudden quiet was worse than the noise.
Matteo's eyes flicked toward the shattered window, then back to her. "They're here for you."
"Who?"
Before he could answer, a shadow moved in the smoke. A figure stepped through the broken glass, tall and calm, his eyes glinting under the low light.
He looked exactly like Marco.
But his expression was colder. More precise.
He raised his gun, pointing it not at Isabella—but at Matteo.
"Step away from her," he said.
Isabella's world fractured in that single moment—two brothers, one alive, one remade, both carrying the same face, the same voice, the same impossible love.
And she realized, too late, that the real question wasn't who Marco was.
It was which one of them had ever truly loved her.