CHAPTER 4: THAT NAME ISN'T YOURS ANYMORE
"That's my name," Isla whispers, clutching the blanket. Her fingers are white-knuckled, gripping the fabric like it is the only thing keeping her from falling into a darkness she cannot see but can feel. "Isla."
She says it again, softer this time, like a secret she is sharing with the woman beside her. The name tastes different now. Heavier. Like something she is holding onto for the last time without knowing why.
The woman beside her studies her face. Her eyes are sharp, careful, moving over every feature like she is reading something written in a language only she understands. She does not blink. She does not look away. She has been doing this for a long time, and she has learned that the truth, when it comes, must be delivered with both hands.
"That name…" she begins slowly, her voice low and even, "isn't yours anymore."
The words hang in the air between them, suspended, waiting. Isla's chest tightens. Her heart, already beating too fast, stumbles over itself. Her lips part, but no sound comes out at first. The name—her name—is slipping through her fingers, and she does not understand why.
"What do you mean?" she manages finally. Her voice cracks on the words. Her eyes are wide, searching the woman's face for something, anything, that will make this make sense.
The woman exhales slowly. She reaches out and takes Isla's hand, her fingers warm and rough against the girl's cold skin. She holds it the way you hold something fragile. Something that might break if you squeeze too hard.
"You survived," the woman says softly. Her voice is gentle now, but there is no comfort in it. Only truth. "But Isla Prescott is dead. The world buried her this morning. They held a press conference. They put her picture on every news channel. They are planning her funeral as we sit here."
Isla's breath catches. Her chest rises and falls too fast. Her fingers tighten around the woman's hand, desperate for something solid.
"I don't understand," she whispers. Her voice is small, trembling. "I'm right here. I'm alive."
"Yes," the woman says. Her thumb moves slowly over Isla's knuckles, a small, steady rhythm. "But the people who wanted you dead don't know that. And if they find out…" She pauses, her eyes holding Isla's. "If anyone finds you alive, they will come for you. Not to ask questions. Not to see if you're okay. To finish what they started."
Isla's fingers tremble. The trembling starts in her hands and moves up her arms, into her chest, into her throat. Her whole body shakes with it. The room feels smaller. The walls feel closer. The air feels thinner.
"Who…" she whispers. Her voice breaks. Tears fill her eyes, hot and sudden. "Who would want me dead?"
The woman does not answer.
She looks at Isla for a long moment, her face unreadable. There is something in her eyes that looks almost like pain. Or maybe recognition. Like she has seen this before. Like she has been this before. A girl who woke up and found out the world wanted her gone.
The silence stretches between them, heavy and full of things neither of them can say.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, in a house Isla used to call home, the morning light falls on faces that should be grieving.
The Prescott mansion is quiet, but not with grief. The quiet is something else. Something colder. The staff has been sent away. The phones have been silenced. The curtains are drawn, but not for mourning. For privacy. For planning.
Sophia Prescott stands in the living room, her back straight, her dress black, her hair pinned. She looks at the television mounted on the wall, where a news anchor is speaking in soft, solemn tones. A photograph of Isla fills the screen. The same photograph they always used. The one from the charity gala two years ago, where Isla stood in the corner with a glass of champagne she never drank, looking like she was waiting for permission to exist.
"Tragic accident," the anchor says. "The heiress was just twenty-three years old."
Sophia's eyes are cold. She watches the screen with the same expression she wears during board meetings. Controlled. Calculating. She reaches for the remote and lowers the volume until the anchor's voice becomes a distant murmur.
Across the room, Alexia lounges on the couch, her legs tucked under her, her phone in her hands. Her thumb scrolls slowly through the headlines. Each one is the same. Dead heiress. Tragic accident. Bride-to-be killed. She reads them like she is reading reviews of a movie she already knows the ending to.
"Funny," she murmurs, her voice light, almost amused. "No one noticed her when she was alive."
Sophia's head turns slowly. Her eyes land on her daughter, sharp and warning.
"Alexia."
"What?" Alexia looks up, her expression innocent, her eyes anything but. "I'm just saying. All these headlines, all these people talking about how sad it is. Where were they before? When she was hiding in her room every night, eating alone, crying into her pillow?" She smiles faintly. "No one cared about Isla Prescott until she was dead."
Sophia walks toward her, her heels clicking against the marble floor. She stops in front of the couch and looks down at her daughter, her face calm, her voice low.
"Grief is a performance," she says quietly. "And you are on stage. Every word you say, every expression you make, every tear you do or do not shed—people are watching. People are counting. And people will remember."
Alexia's smile fades. She straightens slightly, her phone lowering to her lap.
"I know how to act," she says.
"Then act," Sophia replies. "You are the grieving stepsister. You lost someone you loved. You are devastated. You are heartbroken. You can barely get out of bed."
Alexia's jaw tightens. For a second, something flashes in her eyes. Something that looks almost like resentment. But then she nods. Her face softens. Her shoulders drop. Her eyes grow heavy-lidded, distant.
"Okay," she says quietly. "I understand."
Sophia watches her for a moment longer, then nods once, satisfied. She turns back toward the television, her eyes finding Isla's photograph again.
"Do not overact," she adds without looking back. "Subtlety is more believable."
Upstairs, in a room that has not been touched since the night before, Braxton Parker sits alone on the edge of a bed that was supposed to be his wedding bed.
His hands are clenched in his lap. His knuckles are white. His phone sits on the mattress beside him, the screen dark, but he can still see the numbers. Thirty-two missed calls. All from last night. All from her.
He should have answered.
He closes his eyes, and the image comes to him again. Isla standing in the doorway. Her face white. Her eyes wet. Her voice breaking when she screamed at him to get out. He has played the moment over and over in his head, trying to find a version where he does not look like the man he has become. But there is no other version. There is only the truth.
He was in bed with Alexia. And Isla saw.
His hands curl into fists. His nails dig into his palms. His chest rises and falls with breaths that are too short, too quick, too painful.
A soft sound comes from the doorway. He looks up.
Alexia stands there, leaning against the frame, her arms crossed. Her face is soft, concerned. Her eyes are wide and sad. She looks like she has been crying, though there are no tears on her cheeks.
"People are already talking," she says softly. Her voice is gentle, understanding. "They're saying the wedding was cursed. That something must have been wrong. That maybe she…" She hesitates, letting the pause stretch. "Maybe she did it on purpose."
Braxton's head snaps up. His eyes are red-rimmed, wild. "What did you say?"
Alexia's expression does not change. She stays in the doorway, her arms still crossed, her posture relaxed.
"The crash," she says quietly. "Some people are saying it might not have been an accident. That maybe she was so upset about finding us together that she…" She trails off, letting him fill in the blanks.
Braxton stands up so fast the bed shifts beneath him. His hands shake at his sides. His face is pale, then red, then pale again.
"She did not do that to herself," he says. His voice is rough, cracking. "She would never—"
"Braxton." Alexia moves toward him, her hands reaching for his. "I'm not saying it's true. I'm just telling you what people are saying. You need to be prepared. You need to know what they're going to ask you."
He pulls his hands away from her. He steps back, his eyes wild, his chest heaving.
"You don't get to come in here," he says, his voice rising. "You don't get to stand there and talk about her like you cared about her. You didn't. You never did."
Alexia's face does not change. She looks at him with those wide, sad eyes, and something flickers behind them. Something quick and sharp. But her voice stays soft.
"I cared about her," she says. "She was my sister."
"She was—" Braxton's voice breaks. He presses his hand to his face, his fingers digging into his temples. "Just get out. Please. I need to be alone."
Alexia hesitates. She looks at him for a moment longer, her expression unreadable. Then she nods slowly and turns toward the door.
"I'm sorry," she says softly, without looking back. "I'm sorry for all of it."
She walks out, her footsteps quiet on the carpet. In the hallway, she pauses. Her hand rests on the doorframe. Her lips curve into a small smile, there and gone. Then she walks away, her heels clicking against the floor, her shoulders straight, her eyes fixed on something far ahead.
Far from the mansion, far from the cameras and the headlines and the whispered lies, Sam Prescott leans against the railing of his balcony. The morning sun is warm on his face, but he does not feel it. His phone is pressed to his ear, his voice low, his eyes fixed on the reporters gathered at the gate below.
"It's done," he says into the phone. His voice is casual, almost bored. "She's gone. The world believes it. The family believes it. There's nothing left to worry about."
He pauses, listening. His jaw tightens slightly. His fingers tap against the railing.
"I'm telling you, it's clean. The crash, the hospital, everything. No one is looking for her because no one knows she was supposed to be found." He smirks, but it does not reach his eyes. "They think it was an accident. A tragedy. A bride-to-be who couldn't handle the pressure."
He pauses again. His eyes narrow.
"Loose ends?" he repeats. He looks down at the reporters below, at their cameras, at their microphones, at the way they keep glancing up at the mansion like they expect something to happen. "There are no loose ends. She's dead. And even if she wasn't…" He lets the words hang in the air. "She doesn't remember anything. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know who we are. She's no one."
He ends the call and slips the phone into his pocket. He leans against the railing, his eyes cold, his face still.
"Just like she always was," he mutters.
Back in the quiet room, on the other side of the world, Isla shivers.
The room is warm, but she is cold. The cold is inside her, in her bones, in her chest, in the spaces where her memories should be. She pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders, but it does not help.
"My name…" she whispers. Her voice is thin, fragile. "It's all I have."
The woman looks at her for a long moment. Her face is calm, but her eyes are not. There is something in them that looks almost like grief. Like she knows what she is about to take from this girl, and she wishes she did not have to.
"Then you must lose it," she says softly.
Isla's breath catches. Her fingers tighten around the woman's hand. She wants to argue. She wants to fight. She wants to hold onto the name with both hands and never let go. But she is so tired. So tired and so scared and so empty.
"From now on," the woman continues, her voice steady, her eyes never leaving Isla's face, "you are no one. You have no name. No past. No family. You are a woman who was found on the side of the road, and a kind person took her in. That is all anyone needs to know."
Isla shakes her head weakly. Tears slip down her cheeks, hot against her cold skin.
"How do I survive," she whispers, "if I don't know who I am?"
The woman's hand tightens around hers. "You survive by becoming someone new."
The words hang in the air between them. Isla opens her mouth to respond—
And stops.
A sound.
Outside the door.
Footsteps.
Her heart slams against her ribs. Her whole body goes rigid. Her eyes snap toward the entrance, wide and terrified. The woman's head turns sharply, her expression changing in an instant. The softness is gone. The grief is gone. In its place is something hard. Something ready.
The footsteps stop.
A shadow passes under the door.
Isla cannot breathe. Her hands shake. Her vision blurs at the edges. Her mind is screaming at her to run, but there is nowhere to go. No strength to move. No memory to tell her why she is so afraid.
The doorknob turns.
Slowly.
The door creaks open.
A man steps inside.
He is tall. Broad. His face is hard, carved by years of something Isla cannot name. His eyes are dark, unreadable, scanning the room in a single sweep. He wears a dark jacket, simple pants, shoes that make no sound on the floor. He looks like nothing. Like anyone. Like no one.
His eyes land on her.
And something in her chest tightens.
Her heart pounds so hard she thinks it might crack her ribs. Her hands grip the blanket so tightly her knuckles are white. Her breath comes in short, shallow gasps.
She does not know this man. She has never seen his face. But her body knows. Her body remembers something her mind cannot reach. A flash of light. A loud sound. A voice, calm and empty.
Sorry about this.
Her breath catches.
The man looks at her for a long moment. His face does not change. His eyes do not blink. He stands in the doorway like he has all the time in the world, like he is waiting for something, like he already knows how this ends.
Behind him, the woman is still. Her hand is not on the gun. Not yet. She is waiting too.
The man's lips part.
"Found you," he says.
His voice is low. Calm. Empty.
And the words echo in Isla's chest like a stone dropped into still water.
She does not know him. She does not remember him.
But something deep inside her stirs.
A thread of memory. Or maybe fate.
Something that is about to pull her back into a world she barely remembers.
A world that wanted her gone.
And is about to find out she is still here.