Chapter 1 - The Mirror Image in the Rain
The heavy iron security doors of the sub-level interrogation salon groaned on their hydraulic hinges as I stepped into the subterranean chamber.
The air down here was cold, smelling of damp Sierra granite, gun oil, and unyielding authority.
Matteo stood with his arms crossed against the concrete wall, two armed tactical sentries flanking the reinforced steel observation table.
Sitting on the edge of the metal chair, illuminated by the harsh overhead halogen bulb, was the woman from the gate.
Her matted wool coat was drenched with icy mountain rain, puddles forming around the soles of her scuffed leather work boots.
Her head was bowed, dark soaked strands of chestnut hair clinging to her shivering neck.
“Look at me,” I commanded, my baritone voice echoing off the concrete walls with lethal, unbending gravity.
She slowly lifted her chin.
My heart slammed against my ribs with the violent force of an armor-piercing round.
The breath evacuated from my lungs, freezing in my throat.
Sitting before me was the exact face of Vivienne Vance.
The same delicate porcelain jawline, the high aristocratic cheekbones, the faint silver arch over her left brow.
And when her eyelids fluttered open, two striking, unmistakable violet eyes locked directly onto mine.
Those eyes had haunted every waking second of my existence since the day I buried my wife beneath the autumn pines three years ago.
My hand dropped instinctively to the grip of the custom sidearm beneath my tailored blazer, my knuckles turning white.
“Who engineered this grotesque mask?” I whispered, my voice trembling with a terrifying, homicidal stillness.
“Who sent you to wear my dead wife’s face while my children are dying upstairs?”
She did not flinch beneath my murderous glare, her chest rising and falling in shallow, exhausted rhythms.
“Nobody sent me, Roman,” she spoke in a soft, melodic voice that sent phantom shivers down my spine.
“My name is Clara Hayes.”
“Vivienne was my identical twin sister, separated from me in Zurich twenty-six years ago when the Sterling syndicate tore our family apart.”
She reached with agonizing slowness into the inner pocket of her wet wool coat, pulling out a sealed waterproof titanium case.
She placed the cylinder onto the steel table between us, pushing it forward with trembling, frostbitten fingertips.
“Inside that capsule is my certified genomic sequence, my Swiss birth registry, and the biological HLA profile of our mother.”
“I did not hike five miles through an alpine blizzard to extort money from the king of the Western underworld.”
“I came because Vivienne made me swear on our mother’s grave that if her children ever faced the family curse, I would be their shield.”
She looked straight into my eyes, her violet gaze burning with an unshakeable, maternal fire that paralyzed my soul.
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“Your six-year-old twins have nine days left to live, Roman.”
“And my bone marrow is the only key on this earth that will keep their hearts beating.”
