Chapter 4 Who Do You Really Love?

Chapter 4: Who Do You Really Love?

They don't take me home. The car winds through unfamiliar streets, beyond the glittering skyline into industrial darkness. No one speaks. The driver's eyes never meet mine in the rearview mirror. The guard beside me sits statue-still, hand resting casually near his concealed weapon.

"Where are we going?" I finally ask, voice steady despite the fear clawing up my throat.

"Somewhere safe, Mrs. Stevens," the driver answers mechanically.

Safe for whom?

We arrive at a sleek building on the waterfront—glass and steel reflecting nothing. No signage, no visible security, yet cameras track our approach from every angle. The underground parking garage opens without prompting, swallowing us into its concrete maw.

Ward waits by the elevator, jacket discarded, shirt sleeves rolled up, bandaged hand held stiffly at his side. His public mask has vanished, leaving something feral in its place.

"Leave us," he orders the security team. They vanish like smoke.

The elevator rises in silence. Twenty floors, thirty, forty—numbers blurring as we ascend toward whatever punishment he's devised for my public rebellion.

"Claire never understood what I was trying to build," he finally says, staring at the illuminated floor numbers. "For us. For you."

"There is no 'us,' Ward." I keep my distance, back pressed against the cool metal wall. "There never was."

The elevator stops at the penthouse level. Doors slide open to reveal a space unlike anything I've seen before—a vast room where every surface, floor to ceiling, is mirrored. My reflections multiply infinitely, an army of identical women staring back at me with identical expressions of horror.

"Do you like it?" Ward asks, stepping into the distorted infinity. "I built it after Claire died. A place to think. To remember."

I remain in the elevator. "This is insane."

"No." His voice echoes strangely in the mirrored chamber. "This is clarity."

He presses a button on the wall, and the elevator doors close behind me, trapping me in his hall of mirrors. My pulse thunders in my ears as I take reluctant steps forward, each movement replicated endlessly around me.

"What do you see, Whitney?" Ward circles me, his reflections creating a dizzying orbit. "Look closely."

I see myself, multiplied a thousand times. But something's wrong—the angles of the mirrors create subtle distortions. In some reflections, my expression seems different, my posture altered.

"I see your obsession," I answer. "Your sickness."

He laughs, the sound bouncing eerily off every surface. "Look again. Some of these mirrors show you as you are. Others show you as you could be. As Claire was."

My stomach twists. "What did you do to her?"

"I loved her." Ward stops behind me, his breath warm on my neck. "Just as I love you. Two halves of the same soul."

"We were separate people," I snap, turning to face him. "With separate lives. Separate choices."

"Were you?" His eyes gleam with dangerous intensity. "Or were you just playing different roles? The ambitious one and the artistic one. The fighter and the peacemaker. Two sides of the same coin."

I back away, but there's nowhere to go in this infinite regression of selves. "You're trying to confuse me."

"I'm trying to free you." Ward gestures expansively at our multiplied reflections. "From the limitations of a single identity."

Something in his words triggers a flash of memory—Claire in a hospital gown, eyes wild with fear: "He wants to remake us. Both of us."

I shake my head to clear the vision. "What happened to Claire? The truth."

Ward's expression darkens. "She chose to leave."

"You said that before. What does it mean?"

He turns away, facing his own infinite reflections. "She couldn't handle the pressure. The treatments. The transition."

"Transition to what?"

"To becoming you." Ward's voice drops to a whisper. "She had such potential. Your strength, your brilliance, but softer edges. I thought I could... enhance what was already there."

Horror dawns slowly, like ice water trickling down my spine. "You were experimenting on her."

"Helping her," he corrects sharply. "Claire was lost. Directionless. I gave her purpose."

"By trying to turn her into me?" The words taste like bile. "Because you couldn't have me directly?"

Ward's laugh is hollow. "I've always had you, Whitney. Long before you knew my name."

He approaches a particular mirror and presses his palm against it. The glass slides away, revealing a control panel. With a few keystrokes, the lighting shifts, and the mirrors transform—no longer reflecting us but displaying photographs. Hundreds of them. Me at college graduation. Me arguing a case in court. Me jogging in the park.

Years of surveillance. Years of obsession.

"You stalked me," I breathe.

"I studied you," he counters. "Your brilliance. Your determination. Everything Claire lacked."

Rage boils through me. "Claire was brilliant in her own way. Different from me, but never less."

"Yet she failed where you succeeded." Ward's voice turns cold. "She couldn't become you, despite everything I gave her. The drugs. The conditioning. The surgeries."

"Surgeries?" My voice cracks.

Ward steps closer, eyes fixed on mine. "Small adjustments. To perfect the resemblance."

I think of Claire's diary entry: He doesn't see me when he looks at me.

The truth hits like a physical blow. "You were going to replace me with her. A version of me that loved you."

"And when that failed," he continues as if I hadn't spoken, "I had no choice but to pursue the original."

My legs threaten to give way. I lean against a mirror for support, feeling trapped in an endless nightmare. "The accident. My accident. You staged it."

"I created an opportunity." He shrugs. "Your memory loss was... an unexpected benefit."

Something changes in me then—a final thread of restraint snapping. I lunge forward, ripping open the buttons of my blouse to expose my left shoulder.

"Look at this!" I demand, pointing to the small birthmark near my collarbone. "Claire didn't have this. It's a simple physical difference any man who truly loved her would know."

Ward freezes, his eyes locked on the mark.

"You claim to have loved her, but you didn't even know her body," I continue, voice rising. "How could you possibly say you loved her when you couldn't tell us apart in the most basic ways?"

His face contorts. "Of course I knew—"

"Liar!" I shout. "Claire's message said it herself—you couldn't tell us apart in ways that mattered. You weren't in love with either of us. You're in love with some twisted fantasy that doesn't exist!"

Ward's control finally shatters. He grabs me by the shoulders, slamming me against the nearest mirror. "You don't understand what I've built. What I've sacrificed."

"I understand perfectly." I meet his gaze without flinching. "You're a man who can't love a real woman—only the idea of one."

His hands tighten, then abruptly release me. He steps back, composure returning like a mask sliding into place.

"Now," he says with eerie calm, "you'll have time to think. To understand the gift I'm offering you."

He gestures around the mirrored room. "Look at all these versions of yourself. Choose one. Choose who you want to be."

"I already know who I am."

"Do you?" His smile is terrible. "With chunks of your memory still missing? With Claire's voice still whispering in your dreams? Are you so certain where she ends and you begin?"

Before I can respond, he retreats toward the elevator. "You have three days in this room. Food and water will be provided. When I return, you'll have made your choice—embrace our future together, or remain trapped in a past you can barely remember."

The elevator doors open. Ward pauses, turning back one last time. "I loved you both, in different ways. But only one of you can survive this."

After he's gone, I sink to the floor, surrounded by infinite reflections of my despair. Hours pass as I search for weaknesses in the mirror room—hidden doors, ventilation shafts, anything that might offer escape. There's nothing.

On the second day, when the silent attendant delivers my meal, I notice something crucial—the tray is metal, heavy enough to serve as a weapon. I wait until night, when the building falls quiet, before making my move.

With all my strength, I swing the tray against the nearest mirror. It doesn't shatter completely—these aren't ordinary mirrors—but cracks spider across its surface. I hit it again. And again. Shards of glass rain down, slicing my arms, my face.

I don't stop.

When Ward returns on the third day, he finds me sitting calmly in the center of destruction. Broken glass surrounds me like a moat of diamonds. Blood streaks my arms, my dress.

His face registers shock, then fury. "What have you done?"

I smile, holding up a particularly large shard of mirror. "I chose."

He approaches cautiously. "And what choice have you made?"

With deliberate slowness, I drag the glass across his cheek as he leans in, opening a thin line of crimson that matches my own wounds. "I choose to let you feel what it's like not to know," I whisper. "Not to recognize yourself in the mirror anymore."

Ward stumbles back, hand pressed to his bleeding face. For a moment, genuine fear crosses his features—not of me, but of losing control of his narrative.

The moment shatters when his phone rings. He answers automatically, eyes never leaving mine.

"Stevens," he barks. Then his expression changes, something like panic flickering across his face. "When? No, that's—" He stops, listening intently. "I'll be there in twenty minutes. Prepare everything."

He ends the call, staring at me with new calculation. "It seems our time here is cut short."

"What now?" I ask, still clutching my glass weapon. "Another cage? Another attempt to break me?"

Ward straightens his tie, the businessman replacing the monster. "That was my research team. The memory procedure is ready earlier than expected."

Cold dread washes over me. "Memory procedure?"

"A solution to our... impasse." His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Memory is such a fragile thing, Whitney. So easily manipulated. Removed. Replaced."

"You're planning to erase my memories?" The glass shard trembles in my hand.

"Not erase," he corrects. "Select. Like editing a film, cutting the scenes that don't serve the narrative."

I back away, glass crunching beneath my feet. "I won't let you."

"You won't have a choice." Ward gestures, and two security guards enter from the elevator. "The procedure is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Dr. Mercer called to confirm—everything is prepared for your memory erasure surgery."

As the guards approach, I make my final stand, slashing wildly with my improvised weapon. But I'm outnumbered and exhausted. They subdue me easily, a needle slipping into my neck as darkness claims me.

My last conscious thought is of Claire's warning: He can't tell us apart, not in ways that matter.

And now he won't have to.