117

117
The one-bedroom apartment smelled faintly of lemon-scented cleaner and fast food. The walls were bare, the furniture minimal: a couch with mismatched cushions, a folding dining table in the corner, and a single lamp casting a pool of golden light over the cluttered coffee table. Outside, Manhattan continued to hum past the rain-streaked window, unaware of the secret war unfolding inside.

Carolina sat cross-legged on the couch, her phone plugged into a power bank, eyes locked on the glowing screen. Katherine leaned over her shoulder, her body tense, her fingers gripping the edge of the cushion as though grounding herself. Julius, their sharply dressed lawyer, stood by the table with a legal pad in hand, his reading glasses perched low on his nose.

“Okay,” Carolina muttered, scrolling. “It came in batches. The hacker broke into Beth’s private cloud. These aren’t just screenshots; these are full message threads, GPS logs, emails, audio notes.”

Katherine inhaled sharply. “Play one.”

Carolina tapped, and Beth’s voice came through the speaker, low and venomous:

“He’s still asking questions. If he keeps pushing, I’ll sedate him again. You tell the lab to keep him under. I don’t care what stage their research is in. I pay them to shut up and make it work.”

Katherine’s heart dropped into her stomach.

“That’s… Kingsley,” she whispered. “She was talking about Kingsley.”

She tapped again and pulled up an email chain between Beth and Dr. Elise Hartford, subject line: Memory Segmentation Timeline - Revised. The thread included medical jargon, sedation routines, and a disturbing final sentence:

“The patient remains physically stable. The memory extraction schedule is locked for six months post-initial sedation. We will notify you before Phase One.”

Katherine blinked slowly. Her voice was a whisper. “Memory extraction for what? Why would someone… want to remove his memory?”

Julius tapped his pen anxiously. “Maybe he saw something. Maybe Kingsley found out Beth was committing some kind of crime, and she wanted to protect herself. Wipe him clean before he could expose her.”

Carolina didn’t respond. Her fingers moved again, clicking through another file. Then she stopped and leaned back.

“No,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t about protecting herself.”

She turned the screen to face them. On it was a high-resolution photo of Katherine, the exact one she had posted on her birthday last year—smiling, her aqua-blue eyes shining, standing in front of her café.

Below the image was a single chilling line of text:

“This is her picture. Make sure he does not remember anything about her. My time and investments must be worth it.”

Katherine’s knees buckled. She didn’t sit; she collapsed, her hand gripping the edge of the table to steady herself.

“She wanted to erase me,” she said, her voice thick, disbelieving. “That’s what this is about.”

Her eyes darted to Julius and then to Carolina. “She didn’t just want him back. She didn’t want him to remember I ever existed.”

The room fell into stunned silence. Even Julius, seasoned and logical, was momentarily frozen.

“She didn’t just take him,” Katherine whispered. “She tried to delete me.”

Julius snapped out of it first. He began scribbling again, his writing erratic but fast.

“We can work with this. Between the email metadata, timestamps, and GPS logs embedded in these files, we can start constructing a timeline and build a criminal case.”

He glanced at Carolina. “But we’ll need a location. We have to know where he’s being held.”

Carolina was already on it. “The hacker already got that part. He backtracked the origin of Dr. Elise Hartford’s emails. They all ping from one secure address: a biotech institute on Staten Island.”

Julius looked up, eyes narrowing. “That’s the lab.”

Carolina nodded. “And there’s more.”

She clicked into another folder labeled Jordan Ellis - Phase Two.

Katherine squinted. “Jordan who?”

Inside were headshots. Dozens of them. Progress photos taken in clinical lighting, capturing angles of a man’s face from every side—before and after surgery. There was a medical receipt attached to one image.

Patient: Jordan Ellis
Procedure: Facial Reconstructive Adjustment - Mandible Reduction & Chin Sculpting
Facility: Phoenix Aesthetic Surgical Group

Carolina exhaled sharply. “She found someone who already looked a little like Kingsley. And then… she had his face modified.”

Julius leaned forward, stunned. “She created a copy?”

“She built him,” Carolina muttered. “From surgery to muscle gain. There are gym schedules and training logs. Even speech practice files—scripts teaching him how to speak like Kingsley.”

Katherine stared at the screen, mouth parted.

“I knew something was wrong,” she whispered. “I knew in my gut… that wasn’t my Kingsley.”

Katherine sat down hard on the floor, her legs giving out beneath her.

“She wanted to marry him again,” she whispered. “She held that vow renewal with a fake.”

“It was small, only close family,” Carolina confirmed. “To minimize risk. She didn’t want people looking too closely at his behavior yet.”

“Only a few family members,” Carolina said again. “Very limited. Just enough to avoid suspicion. She didn’t want anyone noticing the personality gaps or asking questions.”

Katherine’s gaze sharpened. “She fooled his parents.”

“She fooled everyone,” Carolina confirmed grimly.

The room fell silent again, but now the silence buzzed with urgency. Outside, a taxi honked far down Spring Street. Inside, the heater let out a soft pop as it kicked back to life.

Then Katherine stood. Her voice was low and burning.

“We can’t wait anymore,” she said. “If that email was sent recently, then the clock has already started. That lab could begin the procedure at any time.”

Julius lifted his head. “We’ll go through legal channels. I’ll file for a court order, get the DA involved, and—”

“No.” Katherine’s voice was firm. “We don’t wait. We can’t.”

Julius blinked. “But Katherine—”

“Beth has too much power,” she snapped. “She’ll twist the system, bribe judges, delay responses. She’ll bury this if we let her. I know her. We do this ourselves.”

Carolina’s fingers stilled on the keyboard. “You mean… break into a lab?”

“We find it,” Katherine said, her voice clear and full of purpose. “We go there. We get Kingsley out before it’s too late.”

Julius stared at her.

Then he slowly closed his notebook.

“Alright,” he said. “Then we’ll need a plan.”

Carolina winced slightly and looked down at her leg. “I wish I could go with you, but I can’t leave the borough. Not with this.” She tapped the ankle bracelet locked around her. “I’m still on bail. They’re tracking me.”

Katherine turned to her. “Carolina—”

“But I’ll help however I can,” Carolina cut in firmly. “I’ll reach out to the hacker again, see if he can disable the lab’s internal surveillance system. We’ll give you a blackout window—enough time to get in and get him out.”

Julius nodded. “If we’re doing this off the books, we’ll need backup. Someone smart, quiet, and capable.”

“I know someone,” Carolina said, already pulling out her phone. “Devon.”

Katherine’s eyebrows shot up. “Devon? Your Devon?”

“Yes. I can ask him for backup. He would get people who are reliable and trustworthy. He won’t let anything happen to you.”

Julius looked impressed. “We’ll need all the help we can get.”

Carolina nodded, eyes fierce. “I’ll reach out to the hacker again. See if he can disable their internal surveillance long enough for us to get in and out.”

Julius added, “And I’ll draft a contingency legal shield. In case we get caught, we can argue rescue and wrongful imprisonment.”

Katherine turned away from the window, fire burning behind her eyes. “We save him. Not just from that lab. But from being rewritten.”

They all agreed.

They all understood the stakes now.

Not just Kingsley’s freedom…

But his entire memory of love… of her… was on the line.