She wasn't the same. She was never meant to be.
Roman sat across the lavish breakfast table, a wine-red robe hanging loose around his powerful frame, untouched coffee in hand. He watched her — Serene — pouring orange juice for Lelo, a soft smile curving her lips. She moved with the grace of a woman who belonged here. Who believed she belonged. That was the masterpiece he had designed.
But something in her eyes still flickered wrong.
Her smiles were warm but never quite full. Her hands were obedient, yet not reverent. She kissed him on the cheek when he returned from work, she ran warm baths for him, she slept beside him with no fear — and yet... he saw it. That flash. A glint of unease in her pupils. That tremble in her lashes when he kissed her neck too long. That pause before she reached for his hand.
The ghost of the real Serene still lived beneath her skin.
Roman clenched his jaw.
It wasn't enough.
He had given her a new mind, a new life, a new past. A perfectly fabricated history of their love: childhood meetings, long-distance letters, surprise proposals. A wedding by the lake with fake smiles frozen in photos. A family she now believed she'd chosen.
And she thanked him for it.
She thanked him for the lies.
She called him her "miracle." Said he saved her. Her voice melted when she said it, her eyes even sparkled — but Roman knew better. He knew the art of true devotion. Real love didn't twitch when touched. Real love didn't hesitate when kissed.
She still twitched.
The pills weren't enough. The memory programming wasn't enough. The obedience was shallow. Surface-level. Skin deep. And skin was never enough for Roman Ashborne.
He leaned back, swirling his untouched coffee.
"She still dreams," he said aloud, knowing Lelo — hidden behind the hallway wall — was listening. "She doesn't remember them, but she dreams."
He saw it in the way she woke sometimes with a start, hand clutching her stomach, eyes glazed in something close to terror. She never asked him questions, but her silence screamed of locked doors in her mind.
Roman picked up the phone beside him and dialed the doctor. "Increase the dose," he said without greeting. "Today. Double. Tell her it's for memory stabilization."
"Mr. Ashborne, doubling the—"
"I didn't ask for your opinion," he cut in coldly. "I asked for obedience. Just like she does."
He hung up and stared through the glass wall into the backyard, where Lelo and Serene played under the early sun. Lelo ran circles around her mother, laughing with a brightness he once found disturbing — until he realized she was simply mirroring his obsession.
Lelo didn't want Serene's love. She wanted Serene's soul.
Just like he did.
Serene bent down to kiss her daughter's forehead, brushing Lelo's golden curls aside. For a moment, it was picturesque — a perfect family scene: sun, laughter, affection.
But Roman's gaze remained cold.
He remembered the way Serene once flinched from him, the way she had screamed in that cage, the way her eyes had burned with hatred as he carried her from that university. That Serene was buried now — beneath pills, fake memories, and soft linen sheets.
But buried didn't mean gone.
He'd seen corpses rise before. In his world, nothing stayed dead.
That night, Roman prepared her tea himself. He added the new dose, stirred gently, and brought it to her with a kiss.
"To us," he whispered.
She smiled, innocent and grateful. "To us."
She drank it all.
And for the first time in weeks, Roman allowed himself to smile too — the dark kind, the predator's grin. The sculptor admiring his clay before the final carve.
Because this version of Serene wasn't finished.
Not yet.
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