Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1

Julia’s POV.

The doctor on duty counted the bills with the office door shut, wetting his thumb on the tip of his tongue, and when he was done he slid the envelope into the pocket of his coat with the calm of a man who had just found out his oath had a price, and that the price wasn’t even very high.

“At twelve we take the patient out through the service ramp,” he said, without looking me in the face. “The husband comes every day at two. If there’s someone in that bed at that hour, I’ll tell him you’re responding, and whatever happens after that is no longer my business.”

“For what I just paid you, doctor, everything that happens on this floor is your business,” I answered, and stood up before he could think about renegotiating.

The fourth-floor hallway was long and white, lit by that light that makes even the visitors look sick, and with every step toward room four twelve my legs got a little heavier.

Three days earlier, Consuelo had called me early, her voice so broken that I had to sit down on the edge of the bed.

“Julia, you have a twin sister,” she said, straight out. “Her name is Juliana. She’s in a clinic in Madrid, in a coma. The police say she fell down the stairs, but I know somebody tried to kill her.”

I laughed. That was the first thing I did, laugh, because at that hour and without coffee those things sound like an afternoon soap opera, and because the woman who raised me had spent my whole life swearing to me that I was an orphan and that there was nobody left in the world with my blood. But Consuelo started crying on the other end of the line, and Consuelo doesn’t cry, not even at funerals.

“I’ll explain everything later, I swear,” she sobbed. “But go, my girl, go before they finish what they started.”

I left the company running without me, packed a suitcase without paying attention to what went into it, and spent the entire flight with my phone in my hand, hunting for any trace of Juliana Rodríguez Martínez until I found the pictures of her wedding in a society magazine.

The bride had my face. I zoomed in with two fingers until the photo pixelated, looking for the difference that would give me my breath back, and I didn’t find it: the same mouth, the same red hair pinned up in a bun, the same way of lifting her chin, except she lifted it like someone bracing for a slap. Beside her, one hand firm on her waist, a man in a tailored suit looked at the camera without smiling. Alejandro Villegas Sánchez, said the caption.

I convinced myself it was a filter, a coincidence, some cruel internet joke, and I went on believing it until I pushed open the door of four twelve.

The first thing I saw was the hair. A red mass spread across the white pillow, the same copper shade I had believed my whole life was only mine.

Then I saw her face, and my knees went out from under me.

I grabbed the bed rail so I wouldn’t go down. It was my face, but with the body wasted away under the sheet, a bandage around the head, a yellowing bruise running down the temple, and shadows under the eyes so deep they looked deliberate. It was my face after somebody had driven over it.

“Son of a bitch,” slipped out of me in a whisper. “It’s true.”

I covered my mouth with my hand. My throat closed up like a fist and my eyes started to burn, and me, who used to brag about never shedding a tear in the dirtiest negotiations, I had to clench my teeth until my jaw hurt.

I dragged the chair over, sat down next to her and took her hand. It was cold and it weighed less than a hand should weigh, and when I turned it to lace my fingers through hers I saw the scars: thin white lines crossing her knuckles, old ones, the kind you don’t get from one single fall.

I looked at my other hand, resting on the sheet. Perfect nails, smooth skin, not a single mark. While I was learning to sign contracts and pick out wines I couldn’t pronounce, somebody had been breaking my sister’s hands.

That’s where I broke.

I laid my forehead down on her fingers and cried without making a sound, my shoulders shaking and my nose running onto the sheet, like a little girl, the way I hadn’t cried since I could remember. Who decided which one of us got saved? Why did they take me out and leave her? How could Consuelo look me in the eyes on every birthday knowing that somewhere out there was another cake with nobody to celebrate it?

“Hi,” I said to her at last, my voice in pieces, and I laughed through the tears because I had no idea how a person introduces herself to the sister she didn’t know she had. “I’m Julia. I’m your… I’m your sister. I got here late, I know. I got here way too late.”

The monitor went on marking her heartbeat with a slow, stubborn beep, and I held on to that sound like it was the only true thing in the whole room.

The clock on the wall said eleven fifty. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, stood up and breathed until my lips stopped trembling, because crying wasn’t going to get her out of there.

“I’m going to find out who did this to you,” I whispered into her ear. “And I swear they’re going to pay for it.”

At twelve sharp the two orderlies I had hired came in, and a private ambulance was already waiting downstairs to take her to a nursing home outside the city, paid far enough in advance that nobody would be asking questions. They disconnected her carefully, moved her onto the gurney, and I didn’t let go of her hand until the door. When one of them gently pried my fingers away, I understood that it was the first time I had ever touched her and I was already letting her go.

The nurse who stayed with me didn’t say anything while I locked myself in the bathroom. I took off my makeup, cut my nails down to the quick with the clippers from my purse and painted shadows under my eyes with gray eyeshadow. I made the bruise on my temple by blending yellow and violet with my finger, with the steady hand of a woman who has covered up dark circles before a board meeting, but never an attempted murder.

I put on the hospital gown, braided my hair loosely and lay down.

“This is going to hurt,” the nurse warned me, with the IV needle in her hand.

“I’ve been hurting for three days, don’t worry about it.”

She pushed the needle into the back of my left hand and I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted blood. Then she wrapped the bandage around my head, hooked the monitor leads to my chest and pulled the sheet up to my waist. I hid my hands underneath it, because mine had no story to tell.

Then she left, and I was alone with the beeping of the monitor and the bed still warm from my sister.

Two minutes before two I heard firm footsteps in the hallway.

The monitor gave me away before anyone else could: the beeping shot up, and I had to close my eyes, let my mouth go slack and breathe slowly, counting, until it came back down to a rhythm that could pass for a half-dead woman’s.

The door opened with a click.

I watched him through my lashes. He was taller than he’d looked in the photo and he filled the doorway with his shoulders, in a black overcoat open over a dark gray suit that fell on him like it had been sewn on. His black hair was combed back, though one strand had come loose over his forehead, and a day’s stubble darkened a jaw so sharp it made you want to run a finger along it just to check it was real. The mouth was firm, full-lipped, made for giving orders or for much worse things. And his eyes, black, went over the room with an owner’s slowness until they landed on me.

Consuelo had forgotten to mention that detail. On my list of suspects it was an injustice that the top one looked like he’d stepped out of a cologne ad.

And the damn monitor, which was loyal to nobody, beeped faster again.

Alejandro looked at the screen. Then he looked at me.

“Your pulse just spiked,” he said, in a low, deep voice that didn’t give away relief or surprise.

“Alejandro?” I got out in a thread of a voice, swallowing so it would come out rough.

He crossed the room in two strides and sat down on the edge of the mattress, close enough that his hip brushed mine through the sheet.

“You’re awake. The doctor called me a while ago to say you were responding, even though last week he swore it would take months.”

“I don’t remember anything,” I murmured, gripping the fabric between my fingers. “It’s all blurry.”

He reached under the sheet without asking permission and pulled out my hand. My blood went cold. He held it between his long, warm fingers, and his thumb moved slowly over my smooth knuckles, back and forth, and stopped there a second longer than it needed to.

He didn’t say anything. Not a muscle moved in his face.

“You had a bad fall down the stairs at the house, the day after the wedding,” he said at last, without letting go. “The police closed the case as a household accident, but you and I both know there are no accidents in that house.”

My heart slammed against my ribs and I made myself hold his eyes without blinking, not knowing whether he was warning me or threatening me.

“I don’t remember the house,” I whispered. “I don’t remember anything before the fall.”

Alejandro raised his other hand and brushed my cheek with the backs of his fingers, moving up toward my temple, and I held my breath praying he wouldn’t touch the bruise and come away with paint on his skin. He stopped half an inch short.

“Better that way,” he said, dropping his voice. “There are nights it’s better not to remember.”

He laid my hand back on the sheet, stood up and buttoned his coat with a calm that turned my stomach over, looking down at me the way you inspect a piece of furniture that’s come back from the shop.

“I already signed your discharge. The car’s waiting downstairs.”

“That fast?” slipped out of me.

“That fast.”

He walked to the door and, with his hand on the handle, turned halfway around. The hallway light cut his face in two.

“I know you didn’t want to live there, Juliana, but we have to go back,” he said, in a tone so soft it sounded worse than a shout. “I hope this time you know how to take care of yourself while I’m not around.”