MasukFRIEDA’S POV
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my husband proved to me he had just started playing his cruel game, and he wasn’t stopping anytime soon.
The smirk on both their faces struck me like an arrow—like a planned out script for a new movie titled “Terrorizing Frieda Enriquez.”
I haven’t seen my sister in ten years.
TEN WHOLE YEARS since I managed to escape her haunting, creeping shadow and become my own person.
“Everyone, I introduce you to Serena. She will be living with us now, and making sure the house stays in order while I get better. So I want everyone to welcome and treat her well,” he said. His voice, bold and commanding.
“Oh, Mikeyyy!” She rushed forward and pecked him on the cheek. I remained frozen, as if in trance, half-expecting to wake from the nightmare that was in front of me.
“Thanks for inviting me. Oh, dear, you poor thing! I hopped in the jet and came in as soon as you called. I’m so sorry. Everything is going to be fine.”
“Nice to meet you all. I’m so much fun. Oooo…I’m excited!” She cackled.
The way she rushed, threw herself at him and rubbed his shoulders and the way he welcomed her, smiling, knowing fully well who she was made me sick to my stomach.
So all this while my husband was this close to my sister and I didn’t know?
He was close to something so sour and poisonous, that I had cut off years ago. Who knows what nonsense she’s filled his head with to instigate more toxic behavior from him.
Although the room seems to like her energy at first, it shifts to an awkward vibe. The devil can’t hide behind a mask for long.
“Wow! The house is gorgeous! It took a while for me to get here cause my driver got lost at the damn entrance!
“You should’ve told me you had a whole city here. Gosh! I would’ve come in with a chopper or something.” She rolled her eyes playfully and chuckled.
“My bad. I forgot how much of a drama queen you are. Don’t worry, next time I’ll deliver a custom-made chopper with your name on it, and a red carpet reading, ‘Welcome Queen Serena’.” He responded. I raised an eyebrow.
Who is this? Cause it’s definitely not the strict husband I married that always takes everything seriously and has no sense of humor.
“HAHAAHA! MIKEYYY!” She cackled—forced, irritating and intentional.
Everything about her is fake and has an ulterior motive. I just don’t know what it is yet.
“Should teach a course to the boys on how to treat a woman so bad she can’t stay away.” Her smirk deepened as she bit her lip, her eyes locked on him in a way meant to humiliate me.
He twirled her around from his chair. He gave her a sexy gaze, dangerous, hungry and wanting. He kept entertaining her nonsense, not just in front of me but in front of everyone.
The energy in the room got really weird. He wanted everyone to see us as the perfect couple, but here he was, openly flirting with my sister who got surgery to look like me.
The irony. Geez.
His plan to terrorize me started working cause I began boiling with rage.
The way he admired her you would think they’ve been married for a long time. And what pissed me off more, was not even the fact that he had a mistress, it’s the fact that it was my evil sister and they weren’t even trying to hide it.
Like I meant nothing. Had no feelings of my own. Just a pawn in their sick little game.
“Get out of here, you sick, insane, harlot!” I snapped before I could stop myself.
As I stood up for myself, I felt good. Like very fucking good. The atmosphere in the room turned cold and silent.
I glared at the witch herself, my eyes burning with rage, my heartbeat pumping fast. She finally caught up to my presence, scanning me with the sly focus of a fox with a nasty grimace. Her eyes struck me cold: a mix of disdain, anger and envy.
Michael sat there, fierce. He loved that he could flip my switch. He looked like a dangerous puppet master that just finished the starters and was hungry for the main course.
Even though I felt great in the moment, I couldn’t help but feel my anxiety rise. My hands started shaking and got sweaty.
“Everyone, leave us. I would like to have a chat with my wife and Serena.” The puppet master broke his silence, commanding his army.
“Frey, darling, I haven’t even been here for a sec and you’re already having an outburst. Girl, take a chill pill. I’m here for vacation. I didn’t come here to fight you, sweetheart, not when you look unwell.” The witch spoke, her mouth rushed like a tap, void of any empathy.
I gave her a vicious glare, my eyeballs darting over her like a predator sizing up its prey, then turned to my captor: “What are you doing? Why is she here? She can’t be here. This is completely absurd!”
Tension in the room grew fast and I exploded: “I hate you! You treacherous, bitch! Get out of my life!”
I took off my shoe and threw it at her, but she dodged. “Frieda! How dare you?!” She burst into flames and came at me like a wild lion.
Michael was blown away. His eyes shot open, not just in shock, but amusement at the chaos unfolding.
His parents should have named him manipulation.
“You identity thieving psycho! Leave me alone! Why can’t you let me be?! You will never ever be me! Get out of my matrimonial home!” I continued firing.
“You lowlife, good for nothing brat. Don’t let any of these deceive you!” Her hands swept across the room, emphasizing every lavish detail.
“You are a nobody! And the only reason you have any value at all is because of Michael over here!” She sneered.
“So don’t you dare disrespect the finger that feeds you, you ungrateful moron!” She slapped me across the face. The sharp sting flared against my cheek, and before I could think, I pulled her hair. She shoved me hard, and I fell to the floor.
“You are not on my level, Frieda! You will never come close to my league!”
“Mikeyy do something, she’s insane!” She spun around and planted herself behind him, pulling out her phone to record me.
“Touch me again and you’re going to the rehabilitation center. Clearly, you’ve lost it. Mikeyy, are you really going to let her assault me in your house?”
“That’s enough, Frieda! This is our matrimonial home, yes. But I am the one in charge. You will obey me and submit to my authority. Your sister will be living here, and you will not attack her again. This is final.” Michael broke his silence, his words a declaration that my peace had been shattered.
I broke down on the floor in tears. My mind raced a thousand miles a second. The room tilted. Everything blurred.
The last thing I saw was that bitter smirk planted on the witch's lips, beside her new partner in crime, seated like a king, comfortable as they feasted on my destruction.
That was it. My eyes shut.
ALVIN'S POV"Nobody ever tells me anything."The message sat on my screen, the location pin blinking, the one sentence beneath it sitting there with the patience of something that had been waiting a long time for me to read it.Normally I would have put the phone down. Gone to Viktor or to Tom. Run it through the same cautious process the Trial House had installed in all of us, the instinct to verify before moving.I was tired of being cautious. I was tired of being the last person in every room to understand what everyone else already knew.I put my jacket on and left.The location was twenty minutes on foot, a small park two streets from a canal, the kind of place that emptied completely after dark. I walked it in fifteen, moving fast, checking behind me twice.The bench was empty.I stood there for a moment, I looked around. Nobody.Then I saw it. A tablet, propped against the back of the bench, screen dark, power light blinking. I picked it up. The screen activated the moment my h
GARRETT'S POV"She's going to be alright."Viktor said it from the front seat of the vehicle, watching Clara through the rearview mirror where she sat beside Sarah, her head turned toward the window, the facility disappearing behind us.Nobody disagreed. Nobody had the energy to agree either.I sat in the back corner, watching Michael.Not openly. I had spent enough time inside the Trial House learning to track threats without advertising the tracking. Michael drove the lead vehicle ahead of ours, visible through the windscreen, his shoulders straight, his eyes occasionally finding the rearview mirror.Not looking at the road.Looking at me.Three times in twenty minutes. Each one brief enough that anyone else would have missed it. I didn't miss it.Elizabeth's warning came back with the force of something that had been waiting for the right moment to fully arrive. Michael knows about that night. Don't meet him alone.I looked at my hands.The operation should have felt like a win. Cl
SARAH'S POV"Don't move."Garrett had his weapon up before I finished the sentence. Clara's gun came up simultaneously, pointed directly at him, her stance practiced, unhesitating, the posture of someone who had been trained to respond to threats before her brain finished processing them."Garrett, lower it," I told him. Firm. No room for argument."She's pointing a weapon at me," he replied through his teeth."I know. Lower it anyway."His jaw worked. His arm came down two degrees. Not fully but enough to signal that he was choosing restraint rather than being forced into it.Clara kept hers up.I stepped in front of Garrett, putting myself between both weapons, the most insane position in the room, also the only one that made any sense."Clara." I looked at her directly. "We are not here to hurt you. I promise you that.""Leave," she replied. Cold, flat, the word that carried no interest in negotiation."I lost a sister," I told her. "Her name was Serena. She died because of what wa
SARAH'S POV"Play it again."The convoy had stopped two hundred meters from the facility perimeter. Everyone crowded around my phone screen in the back of the vehicle, the video replaying in the cramped space, Clara's face filling the screen for the third time.Tom leaned in. "The background. Look at the wall behind her." He pointed at a faded marking visible at the frame's edge. "That was recorded inside the facility. Recently." He looked at me. "Within the last three hours.""She's not frightened," Alvin noted from the far seat. "That's not what frightened looks like."He was right. I had been frightened. I knew what it looked like from the inside out. Clara's face in that video carried none of it. Her eyes were steady, her posture composed, the words delivered with the calm of someone reciting something they had decided rather than something they had been forced to say.Michael pointed at the screen. "She was reading."I looked at him. "What?""Her eyes. The movement." He rewound i
ALVIN'S POV"Delete it if you want. I already saw it."Garrett's hand was still on my phone screen, the image gone in the second it took him to swipe and confirm, the action so fast it confirmed everything I needed to know. You didn't delete a photograph that quickly if it didn't matter.He handed the phone back without looking at me."Forget you saw it," he replied. Flat, controlled, the voice he used when he was managing something large."That's not how this works," I replied. "You don't get to delete evidence and tell me to move on." I stepped closer. "What happened that night?"Garrett turned away. Then he picked up the jacket he'd set on the chair, moved toward the door."Garrett."He stopped but didn't turn around. His shoulders carried the weight of something that had been sitting on them long enough to become structural."There are things you don't understand," he replied. He turned enough to look at me sideways. "Michael is involved in this. That's all you need to know right n
ALVIN'S POV"Let it go, Alvin."Vera stood at the kitchen counter, arms crossed, watching me the way she watched everything in this safe house, with the patience of someone who had survived two Trial House cycles and had consequently run out of tolerance for things that didn't matter."I'm fine," I replied."You've been watching them for ten minutes."Through the common room doorway, Sarah was leaning over Tom's map beside Garrett, their shoulders close, the argument from last night apparently set aside in favour of the operation. Garrett pointed at something on the route. Sarah nodded. Their voices were too low to hear clearly.The sight moved through me in a way I didn't have clean language for. Not pure jealousy. Something more complicated. The feeling of watching a door close on something you weren't certain you wanted but hadn't been ready to stop wanting."He's not what everyone thinks he is," I replied.Vera looked at me. "What does that mean?"I opened my mouth. Then I closed







