Chapter 4

Five years ago, on our wedding night.

We were tipsy, laughing, tumbling onto the bed.

I clumsily smashed my face into the corner of the nightstand, fracturing the bridge of my nose.

I bawled my eyes out from the pain.

It tore him apart. He held me and rocked me in his arms the entire night.

When the fracture healed, it hadn't set perfectly, leaving behind a tiny, hardened callus.

Every time he kissed me after that, he would tenderly press his lips to that exact spot, whispering that it was his "permanent brand" on me.

Right now.

His fingers rested squarely on that brand.

The exact same texture.

The exact same position.

The color drained from Cole's face in an instant.

His breathing turned ragged.

"No... impossible..."

He yanked his hand back as if scorched by an open flame.

The sculpting knife slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the floor.

"A coincidence. It's just a coincidence."

"Millions of people break their noses..."

"Mia is in the States. She's living in some luxury mansion in San Francisco. There is no way in hell she's buried in concrete."

He muttered like a madman, his hands trembling violently as he bent to retrieve the blade.

Yet his hands shook so hard he couldn't keep a grip on it.

He refused to believe it.

Or rather, he didn't dare to.

He drew in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to force his racing pulse to steady.

"Keep sculpting. Once the rest of the face is on, it won't look like her."

He picked up the clay again, attempting to reshape the nose into a stranger's.

Yet his fingers seemed possessed by an instinct of their own.

Following the natural contours of the bone, tracing the exact curvature of that tiny callus.

Millimeter by millimeter, he reconstructed the raw, unvarnished truth.

That slightly upturned tip.

The faint bump along the bridge.

That fragile, delicate curve born from an old injury.

The second the nose was completed, Cole broke completely.

It was Mia's nose.

A nose he would recognize even if she were reduced to ash.

Even with ninety-nine percent of his doubts shattered, Cole fought with his dying breath to deny it.

"The eyes. As long as the eyes don't match, it isn't her."

He pulled two acrylic prosthetic eyes from a drawer.

Warm hazel.

The exact shade of my irises.

With hands that shook uncontrollably, he pressed the eyes into the hollow sockets.

Then, he began building the eyelids.

I had delicate hooded lids.

The outer corners tilted downward slightly, giving me an innocent, gentle look.

Cole used to tease me, saying God gave me those eyes just so I could fool him into doing whatever I wanted.

The clay smoothed down around the orbits.

Upper lids. Lower lids. The delicate inner canthus.

With the final stroke of his blade, a familiar, pale, lifeless face stared back from the turntable.

Identical to the photograph in his drawer.