Page 179 of Porcelain Lies

She wasn’t just some woman — I stolemy own sister’s fiancé.

“God,” I rasp, my mouth falling open, as though I can toss the truth away if I deny it hard enough. “Are you sure? If you’re wrong—”

“I’m pretty sure, Stell. I’m sending you a photo from before her surgeries,” Hannah says. “Check your email.”

Desperation takes hold. Abandoning my previous caution about being caught, I push myself off the tub and stumble to my desk. My legs feel hollow, like they might give out at any second. My fingers tap the keyboard furiously, navigating to my limited email access. The photo loads slowly, pixels resolving into a familiar face — younger, softer, but undeniablyher. The same eyes that glared at me with such venom.

Because I ruined her life.

Iruined her life.

“Oh, fuck.” The words slip out as the room tilts and warps, my thoughts shattering and reforming with sharp, jarring clarity. The pieces slot into place with a sickening click. Myimaginary conversations with Boyana, the magnetic pull I’d felt toward her so inexplicably… Was some part of me trying to remember?

Did some part of me already know?

I stretch toward her now, out of instinct, reaching for the solace of her voice, but all I get is silence. An oppressive, gnawing void.

“Oh my God.” The words stick in my throat, jagged and raw. My stomach lurches, twisting into a tighter knot.

“Strange coincidence,” Hannah’s voice crackles over the line like a live wire, “…is that Sofia used to be engaged to none other than your baby daddy, Aleksei Tarasov.”

I grip the desk, hard enough to feel the blood rush to my knuckles. “I know,” I groan, the admission dragged out of me like a confession. My head drops forward, heavy as an anchor.

“I’m guessing you’ve met her?” Hannah ventures, her tone measured, like she’s navigating around sharp edges.

“You could say that,” I mutter, the memory crawling up, unbidden. Sofia’s eyes, cold and cutting, scald me even now. Her distaste had been immediate, tangible — an invisible dagger aimed at my throat. If looks could kill… “Fuck,” I hiss, dragging trembling fingers through my hair. “This is… how?”

“Stella,” Hannah says, her words suddenly weighted with hesitation, “I’m afraid there’s more.”

There’s a beat. Two. The silence stretches thin and taut, suffocating.

“What do you mean there’s more?” My voice cracks, dreading what I can already feel coming.

When Hannah finally speaks, her voice is soft, deliberate. “Your mom… she was right.” She exhales, but it doesn’t sound like relief — it sounds like resignation. “Your father’s death wasn’t an accident. I’m so sorry, babe.”

My head snaps up with a jolt, ice spreading down my neck, freezing me in place.

“What do you mean?” My tongue is thick, nearly tripping over the words. Somewhere in my mind, I’ve already started unraveling. “What are you talking about?”

She doesn’t soften the blow — what would be the point? The truth drops, cold as iron and twice as hard.

“It was staged. A professional hit,” she says tightly, the words stark and final. “Your father was running from men who’d been sent… for him.”

Blood roars in my ears, louder than her voice.

“A hit?” I echo, and my voice barely sounds like my own. Pitchy, foreign, choking on disbelief. “But that doesn’t make sense, Han. Why? Who would anyone want to hurt my dad? He… he was no one.” My words tumble over one another, a desperate scramble to make sense of it, to will it into being anything but true. My mind reels, yanked between memories and impossible implications. The wreckage of my dad’s car. My mother’s quiet, endless despair, the blank vacancy of her eyes that had once brimmed with life. Her lifeless form in her bedroom…

Everything I thought I knew suddenly makes no sense.

“Stella…” There’s a tremor in Hannah’s voice when she says my name, the hesitation lined with the kind of pity thatmakes my stomach turn. “I need you to be strong for this one. The hit… it was ordered by Aleksei Tarasov.”

The phone slips from my fingers, clattering to the desk with a sharp noise I barely register over the deafening rush of blood in my ears. Then silence. Somewhere, far away, the shower beats against tile, muffled and relentless.

And then it hits me.

Images barrel into me, unrelenting. My father — his body twisted and mangled in the accident. My mother, folding into herself, crushed under the weight of our loss. Her pale body splayed under cold sheets.

No.

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