The manila folder Nathan left for me sits on my nightstand, unopened. It's been three hours since our conversation on the terrace, three hours of pacing and overthinking what he meant by "more than blood." The rain has stopped, leaving the estate grounds glistening under tentative sunlight, but I remain indoors, trapped by my own indecision.
A soft knock at my door provides welcome interruption.
"Come in," I call, expecting Marta with lunch or perhaps one of the other staff I'm still learning to recognize.
Instead, the door opens to reveal a woman I haven't met but instantly recognize. Catherine Gavrila has our father's steel-gray eyes and our mother's perfect posture, but there's something uniquely intimidating in the combination. Her dark hair is pulled into a sleek chignon, and her cream-colored suit probably costs more than what I used to make in three months.
"So the prodigal princess awakens," she says, leaning against the doorframe rather than entering. Her gaze sweeps over me, assessing. "Nathan canceled his Tokyo meeting to play nursemaid. The board is displeased."
I straighten instinctively. "I didn't ask him to."
"You never have to ask." A smile touches her lips without reaching her eyes. "That's always been your greatest power, little sister."
There's something in her tone—not quite resentment, but adjacent to it. I'm reminded of predators circling each other, establishing territory.
"I thought you were in New York," I say, struggling to match her cool demeanor.
"The Crawford team proved more... compliant than expected." She finally enters the room, her heels silent on the plush carpet. "When I heard about your 'episode,' I decided to return early."
I doubt very much that concern for my health motivated her return. "That was unnecessary. I'm fine now."
Catherine reaches my vanity table, trailing manicured fingers across the crystal bottles of perfume arranged there. "Are you? Nathan seems to think otherwise."
My pulse quickens. "What did he say?"
"Nothing specific. But he's been unusually distracted." She turns to face me directly. "He's always been protective of you, but this feels different."
I remain silent, unwilling to reveal my confusion or the strange tension between Nathan and me. Catherine watches me for a long moment, then sighs.
"The gala is in three days. Half the business world will be there, including potential investors for the new pharmaceutical division." Her tone shifts to something more businesslike. "Father expects you to play your part."
"My part?"
Something like pity flashes in her eyes. "The charming, artistic Gavrila daughter. Accomplished but unthreatening. Delightful conversation with the wives while the men talk business."
The role they've assigned me sounds suffocating. "And if I don't want to play that part?"
"Then you'll disappoint Father, upset Mother, and create work for Nathan, who will inevitably smooth things over as he always does." She picks up a silver hairbrush, examining it rather than me. "You've always had the luxury of authenticity, Adelina. The rest of us make compromises."
There's history between us that I can't access—years of dynamics and power struggles I'm only beginning to understand. "I didn't realize you resented me so much."
Catherine sets down the brush with precise care. "I don't resent you. I envy you. There's a difference." She moves toward the door, then pauses. "Nathan canceled his flight to Singapore next week. He's never altered his schedule for anyone—not even when Father had his heart scare last year."
She leaves the implication hanging between us, an unasked question that burns in the air even after she's gone.
The Gavrila estate library spans two floors, with rolling ladders and reading nooks nestled between towering shelves. I've spent the afternoon here, searching for any information about the family history that might explain my situation or Nathan's cryptic remarks.
As dusk approaches, I find myself in a section of leather-bound albums, family photographs documenting generations of Gavrilas. I pull one from the shelf—dates suggesting it covers the period shortly after my birth—and settle into a window seat overlooking the now-darkening gardens.
The images tell a story my memory cannot: a solemn-faced Nathan, perhaps twelve years old, holding a baby that must be me. In photo after photo, he appears at my side—pushing my stroller, helping me take first steps, watching over me at birthday parties where I'm surrounded by children I don't recognize. What strikes me most is his expression—protective, yes, but with something else I can't quite name.
"You were a colicky baby."
I startle at Nathan's voice, nearly dropping the album. He stands in the doorway, jacket discarded, tie loosened, the fading light casting shadows across his face.
"You'd only stop crying when I held you," he continues, approaching slowly. "The nannies used to wake me in the middle of the night when they couldn't console you."
"That seems like a lot to ask of a child," I say, making room for him on the window seat.
He sits beside me, close enough that our knees almost touch. "I didn't mind. You were..." He pauses, searching for words. "You were a light in this house."
My throat tightens at the raw emotion in his voice. He takes the album from my hands, turning to a specific page.
"Here—your third birthday. You'd been having night terrors for weeks, but you insisted on a party. Halfway through, you had a meltdown, screaming that none of these people knew the real you." His finger traces the edge of a photo showing a tearful child—me—clinging to him while adults hover awkwardly in the background. "I took you to the treehouse Father had built. We stayed there until you fell asleep."
The tenderness in his recollection makes something shift inside me—a longing for connection to these memories that aren't truly mine.
"What happened to her?" I ask softly. "To that little girl?"
Nathan's gaze sharpens. "What do you mean?"
I've said too much, revealed the disconnect between my consciousness and this body's original occupant. "I just... I don't remember much from childhood."
He studies me with that penetrating look that makes me feel transparent. "The fever may have affected your memory. Or perhaps you've blocked things out."
"What things?"
Instead of answering, he closes the album and stands. "Come with me."
He doesn't wait for my response, simply walks toward the library's rear doors that lead to a less frequently used part of the house. After a moment's hesitation, I follow.
We move through corridors I haven't yet explored, past artwork worth millions and antiques from eras long past. Nathan walks with the confidence of someone who knows exactly where he's going, occasionally glancing back to ensure I'm still following.
Finally, he stops before an unremarkable door at the end of a hallway.
"This was your playroom as a child," he says, producing a key from his pocket. "After your episodes became more frequent, Father had it locked. Said the stimulation was bad for you."
The door swings open to reveal a room frozen in time. Dust covers everything—a child-sized table and chairs, bookshelves, a dollhouse replica of our own mansion. The walls are covered with drawings—hundreds of them—pinned up in chaotic overlapping patterns.
Nathan flips a switch, and soft lighting illuminates the space. "You refused to let anyone remove your artwork. Said it was your 'other life.'"
I move to the nearest wall, heart pounding. The drawings, clearly made by a child's hand, depict scenes from a life I recognize—my previous life. A small apartment with a red door. A fluffy orange cat. A coffee shop where I once worked. Streets and skylines from the city where I died.
"You called her Lina," Nathan says quietly, coming to stand beside me. "Your 'other self.' Mother and Father thought it was an imaginary friend, but you insisted she was real—that somehow you were her and she was you."
My fingers tremble as I touch one of the drawings—a simple rendering of the exact street corner where I died.
"The specialists said it was a psychological response to trauma," he continues. "After Mother died giving birth to you, the household was... difficult. They theorized you created an alternate reality where you had a different life, different parents."
"But you didn't believe that," I say, knowing it somehow.
"I believed you believed it." His voice drops lower. "I've never seen anyone so certain of anything as you were about Lina."
The room spins slightly as decades of impossibility crash into present reality. Had Adelina somehow known about me all along? Had our souls been connected from birth, preparing for this impossible transition?
"When the medications started," Nathan says, "you changed. Became quieter, more compliant. The Adelina who drew these pictures faded away, replaced by the perfect Gavrila daughter our parents wanted."
I turn to him, finding him closer than expected. "And which Adelina did you prefer?"
The question hangs between us, loaded with implications neither of us fully understand.
"I have always..." He pauses, choosing his words carefully. "I have always seen you more clearly than anyone else. Known you more completely."
His hand rises, hesitates, then gently cups my cheek. The touch sends electricity through me, inappropriate and undeniable.
"When you were delirious with fever," he whispers, "you opened your eyes, looked right at me, and said 'I found you again.' As if you'd been searching across lifetimes."
My breath catches. Had some part of Adelina's consciousness remained? Had she recognized Nathan even as my soul took residence in her body?
"And then you called me by a name I'd never heard," he continues, his thumb brushing my cheekbone in a gesture too intimate for siblings. "You called me Ethan."
The name strikes me like lightning. Ethan—my fiancé in my previous life, killed two years before my own death in a similar traffic accident. The resemblance between him and Nathan suddenly crystallizes—not in their features, which are different, but in certain expressions, gestures, the timbre of their voices.
"That's impossible," I whisper, though nothing about my situation adheres to possibility.
"Is it?" Nathan's eyes search mine, looking for something—or someone. "Is that why you look at me differently now? Because you see someone else when you look at me?"
I should step back, create distance, deny everything. Instead, I find myself leaning into his touch, drawn by a gravity I don't understand—a connection that spans beyond this life into another.
"I don't know what I see," I admit, my voice barely audible. "I don't know who I am anymore."
His forehead touches mine, our breath mingling in the dust-filled air of a room containing the evidence of an impossible truth. "Maybe you're both," he says. "Maybe that's why I've always felt—"
The harsh ring of his phone shatters the moment. Nathan pulls back as if burned, turning away to answer.
"Gavrila," he says, his voice immediately shifting to its business cadence. "Yes. No, tell them we won't accept those terms." He glances back at me, eyes still turbulent with unspoken words. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
He ends the call with visible reluctance. "I have to go. Crisis at the office."
I nod, grateful for the interruption yet disappointed by it. "Nathan, about what just happened—"
"We'll talk tomorrow," he promises, already moving toward the door. "After the dress fitting. There's more you need to see."
At the threshold, he pauses, conflict evident in his expression. "Adelina—or whoever you are now—be careful around Catherine. She's noticed the change in you... and in me."
"What change in you?"
Something complicated passes across his features—desire, confusion, guilt—before he masters it. "Lock this room when you leave. The key works from both sides."
Then he's gone, footsteps fading down the corridor, leaving me alone with a room full of drawings that confirm I'm not crazy—that somehow, impossibly, Adelina Gavrila and I have been connected across our separate lives, our souls entangled in ways that defy explanation.
And Nathan—who looks at me like I'm both a stranger and the person he knows best in the world—seems to be the center of that entanglement.
As I turn back to the childish drawings on the wall, one in particular catches my eye: a crude sketch of two stick figures holding hands. One is labeled "Lina" and the other "Ethan," hearts drawn around them. And behind them, like shadows, two more figures: "Adelina" and "Nathan."
Even as children, it seems, our souls recognized each other—across lives, across circumstances, across the boundaries of what should and shouldn't be.
The realization settles over me with both comfort and terror. Whatever is happening between Nathan and me now began long before either of us understood it. And Catherine's watchful eyes are not the only danger we face.
The greater threat lies in the way my heart races when he's near—and in the knowledge that in this life, such feelings cannot, must not, be pursued.