"I know, Father, but we can't rule that out yet."
Dwayne Blackwood stood with the phone pressed to his ear, his voice a blade of ice. He stared out the large glass wall of his office, watching the busy city blur under a curtain of rain and encroaching dusk.
"She's my wife," he snapped, his patience gone, cutting off the placating tone on the other end. "And I will be deciding everything. Or... do you want me to reconsider our arrangement?"
The voice on the other line immediately surrendered. Dwayne ended the call without another word.
His gaze fell to his desk, to the heavy, silver-framed wedding photo. "What happened to you, Ysabel?" he murmured.
He stood up, walking to the window, and the memory came, unbidden. Elementary school. The bright, unfiltered sun of their childhood. A small, vibrant version of his wife, laughing as she was surrounded by classmates, her hands cupped.
"Batman! Come here!" she had called out, waving him over. "See? I caught another butterfly!"
The younger him, small and hunched over a thick book, averted his look.
"He's just a nerd, let him be, Ysabel," another kid had taunted.
"Batman is just busy studying," Ysabel had muttered back, defensive on his behalf. "He's busy studying how to save the world."
The memory soured, shifting, the colors bleeding away. The warehouse. The smell of rust and damp. Ysabel was crying. He was tied to a chair, his own breathing frantic, watching the other boy being bitten by a man…
…Huff..huff… Not this memory again
The raw, primal terror of that moment slammed into him. His knees buckled, and he dropped to the floor of his office, the trauma dragging him down. Tears burned his eyes.
No. I can't allow you to die, Ysabel. Not now that I have you. Dwayne Mind fights
Then…
The door burst open. "Sir? Mr. Dwayne, are you okay?"
His young secretary, Ms. Evans, her bright orange hair swaying, rushed in, stopping short at the sight of him kneeling by the window.
"Yes!" he barked, turning his head away. "Stay there. Don't come near me."
The woman froze midway. "Sir...?"
"What is it, Ms. Evans?" he growled, forcing himself to his feet.
"Inspector Santos's report is already here, sir."
"Just put it there," he ordered. Before she could speak again, he added, "You can leave now. Close the door. I don't want to be disturbed."
"Yes, sir," Ms. Evans replied, her voice shaky. She placed the file on his desk and fled, the door clicking shut with a heavy finality.
Dwayne wiped his eyes and forehead, brushing away the weakness. He stalked to the desk and snatched the report. He read it once. Then twice.
Explosion. Total vehicle loss. One body, burned beyond recognition. Everything matched what his father had told him.
Until he saw the appendix. Victim details (preliminary): Height, approx. 165cm.
He froze. "No. Ysabel is 175cm."
His eyes snagged on the line, the words blurring for a second. "Black dress?" The words felt thick and wrong on his tongue.
Wrong.
That single word hammered against the inside of his skull. It was completely, utterly wrong. His own people—his guards, the maids who saw her leave—their reports had been clear. She was wearing… white? Something's not Right. It was all lies as he read other reports, the witness statements… all of it. His blood ran cold. "This is not Ysabel." He said it aloud this time, the words cutting through the absolute silence of the room. It wasn't a guess. It was a statement.
A sick, chilling realization coiled in his gut. If this was a lie, then… Why did Father say she was dead? His gaze flickered to the back page. A signature line, innocently waiting for his verification. They wanted him to sign off on this. To confirm this... this farce. To agree that this stranger was her. He grabbed the entire file, the flimsy cardboard groaning in his grip, and hurled it with all his strength against the far wall. It exploded in a shower of paper, a blizzard of lies.
He wouldn't accept it. He couldn't as he grabbed his cellphone, scrolling through his contacts to a name not listed under law enforcement. "Inspector Hayes." He hit the call button.
"Weird you'd call," a gruff man's voice answered.
"Hayes," Dwayne said. "The investigation I told you to start. How was it?"
"No lead yet. It's—"
"Stop that. For now, stop," Dwayne commanded. "You know the news?"
"Your wife...?"
"Yes. She's not dead. That's your new focus. I want you to find her."
Hayes whistled. "That's... kinda lucrative, isn't it?Reports say she's dead?"
"Dont care what the report says, I'll give you one week," Dwayne said, his voice dropping to a lethal calm. "Use whatever resources you like. I want to know where she is. Time is limited, Hayes. You have to be fast." He let the unspoken threat hang in the air. "Or your life is next."
"Understood," Hayes replied, all business now.
Dwayne stared at the wreckage of the report scattered across his floor. A bitter, hollow laugh almost escaped him. "This," he breathed, the word ragged. "This is why I kept you close. Why I changed your name... gave you everything so you would never yearn for the outside."
He saw all the possibilities: the walls he'd built, the perfect, gilded cage he'd constructed. All of it, shattered. "This wouldn't have happened." His voice dropped to a pained whisper, his fists clenching at his sides. "It wouldn't have happened if you had just listened to me."
He dragged in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to force down the rising tide of pain and fury.
"Who?" he whispered to the empty room. "Who would want you dead now?"
His hand fumbled for his phone, pulling the cold slab of glass from his pocket. His thumb swiped, and the screen lit up.
It wasn't their wedding photo.
It was an old picture, faded at the edges. A young girl, barely more than a child, with startlingly bright eyes and a gap-toothed grin, her small hands cupped gently around a captured butterfly.
His thumb traced the outline of her face, the gentle contact flashing him back to a promise made in sunlight, now being renewed in shadow.
He saw her clearly, so much younger, sitting before him with bright, trusting eyes. He'd been younger, too, filled with a different kind of fire.
"I'm going to change this world, Ysabel," he'd vowed, his voice brimming with earnest conviction. He'd brushed a thumb across her cheek then, too, wanting to capture the innocence of her smile. "I will make sure this world is safe and happy for everyone."
Now, that memory—that naive, broad promise to save everyone—collided with the present. The idealism was gone, burned away by loss and time, replaced by the sharp agony of his failure.
His voice was a low growl, directed at his own past foolishness. "I was so busy trying to make that promise true... I lost sight of who it was really for." He shut his eyes, the vow hardening into a cold, lethal certainty. "Please be safe, Ysabel. Because next time I find you... I will finally create a world where you can truly be happy."
******
The fluorescent lights of the interrogation room gave my black clothes a sickly gray tint. Detective Sanchez sat across from me, reading the file as if it were scripture.
"August 17, 2018," she read, her voice flat. "Ysabela Blackwood, wife of Billionaire Philanthropist Dwayne Blackwood. Assassinated. Explosion originating from the vehicle."
She paused, clicking her pen, before she could speak more "Stop," I said, my voice echoing in the sterile room. "Are we gonna read the report or listen?."
Detective Sanchez stopped clicking her pen. She placed the clipboard carefully on the metal table and rose to her feet. She was tall, with a frame that looked more suited to a runway than a police uniform, but her eyes were sharp. She paced once, her prim brown hair swaying as she tried to size me up.
"You planned this?," she stated, "and then you reappeared as Ysabel Volkov"
Silence… and gaze that says one more wrong question? It would cost her
She leaned her palms on the table, suddenly intense. "Then who is Ysabel Volkov?"
I didn't answer her. Instead, I nodded toward the dark mirror taking up half the wall. "First, I need to know who's on the other side of that glass."
A flicker of annoyance. "Why should that matter to you?"
"Because," I replied, letting my voice drop to match the chill in the room, "I need to know who else will be dead if this goes out."
She stared at me, and I saw her register the weight of my words. The threat wasn't from me; it was a warning for her.
"You're tough," she muttered, almost to herself. "No wonder you caught his attention."
With a sigh, she snatched a small remote from her belt and aimed it at the mirror. With a sharp click, the lights on the other side flickered on, revealing exactly what she'd promised: an empty observation room. The mirror was just a window now.
"No one," Sanchez said, her voice laced with exhaustion. "No one wants this case except me. The higher-ups won't touch it. Nobody wants to get near this thing because it smells like death. But I'm still a police officer. My job is to protect the citizens." She met my eyes, and her own were desperate. "If knowing the truth gets me killed, then so be it. I need to know."
I held her gaze, and for the first time, I saw past the uniform. I saw the pain in her eyes. It was a familiar pain. It was the same look I'd seen in my own reflection right after I started asking the question—Why?—and realized I couldn't stop until I found the truth, no matter the cost.
She was one of me.
My lips parted, the air suddenly heavy.
"They call me the Queen."
"The Red Haired Witch"
"The Goddess of War"
"But in reality when they strip down Ysabela Blackwood you will see me Ysabel Volkov," wife of Ivan Asimov Volkov. The head of the largest, most powerful organization ….