The Billionaire and his Blood-Bride

Chapter Four: The Girl in the Mirror

Lana didn’t sleep.

She sat curled on the velvet settee in her massive room, her knees drawn tight to her chest, the fire casting long, restless shadows across the walls. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the mirror.

Not since she saw the girl.

Not since she saw herself.

But younger. Smaller. Almost translucent, like a figure from a dream pressed against the glass. And then—gone.

She had checked the mirror again. Twice. Tapped the edges. Turned the lights on and off. Stared into her own reflection until her eyes burned.

Nothing. Just herself now.

But it wasn’t a hallucination. She knew what she saw. It wasn’t a trick of the light or a sliver of imagination running wild. That girl had looked exactly like her. Not just in appearance, but in the way her head tilted, the way her lips trembled like they were holding in a scream.

She’d looked scared.

Terrified.

As if she were the ghost. Or Lana was.

A sharp knock at the door jolted her.

She stood quickly, but her feet felt numb. Heavy. She opened the door halfway—and there he was.

Grey.

Still wearing the same dark shirt, sleeves rolled at the wrist, a file clutched under one arm. He looked like he hadn’t slept in years.

“You said you saw something,” he said. Not a question. Not alarmed. Just—calm. Controlled.

Lana hesitated. “There was a girl. In the mirror.”

“Describe her.”

“Young. Same face as mine. Same eyes. She looked like…” She trailed off, swallowing hard. “Like me. But not me.”

Grey’s expression didn’t change. Not visibly. But his grip on the folder in his arm tightened.

“I’m not crazy,” she said defensively.

“I never said you were.”

“Then what’s happening?” Her voice rose. “Why am I seeing things? Who is she?”

Grey walked in without waiting for permission and shut the door behind him. He crossed the room and laid the folder on the table beside the bed. “How old did she look?”

“Six. Maybe seven.”

He nodded slowly.

“What does that mean?” she asked. “Why does any of this feel like… like a memory I’ve never had?”

He opened the file. A single photo sat at the top. Lana leaned forward—and her breath caught in her throat.

It was her.

At least, it looked like her.

A small girl with wide grey eyes, standing beside a boy who looked eerily like a young Grey. They were dressed in matching outfits, holding hands in front of a white columned house with ivy growing up the walls.

“Where did you get this?” she whispered.

“It was in the records the family keeps. You and I were—” he hesitated, “—we were photographed together as children.”

“That’s not possible.”

“No,” Grey said evenly. “It’s just buried.”

She stared at the photo. A memory scratched at the back of her mind. A song. A soft voice. A laugh that wasn’t hers.

“I don’t remember this.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

Lana looked up sharply. “What does that mean?”

“They’ve done this before,” Grey said, his voice lower now. “Erased people. Changed names. Split families. For control. For inheritance. For reasons that probably made sense to monsters in suits a long time ago.”

“So you think…” she faltered. “You think we’re related?”

He didn’t answer. But his silence was louder than anything else in the room.

“We’re supposed to be getting married,” she said. “Don’t you see how twisted that is?”

Grey stared at the photo, jaw rigid.

“I didn’t know when the letter came,” he finally said. “Not for sure. But when I saw you… I started remembering things I didn’t know I’d forgotten.”

Lana stepped back, the fire behind her casting her shadow tall across the wall. “This can’t be real.”

He looked at her then—really looked. “Do you remember a name?”

“What?”

“A name. A place. A song. Anything.”

“I don’t—”

She stopped.

Her lips parted.

A sound echoed in her head like an old lullaby, one she hadn’t thought about in years. It was quiet, rhythmic, the kind of melody a nursemaid might hum. One line drifted into her mind like fog.

Alana Rose and Grey at play…

Hide and seek and run away…

She gasped.

Her knees buckled slightly, and Grey stepped forward on instinct, catching her elbow.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice gentler now.

“I know that rhyme,” she whispered. “I used to hear it. In my dreams. I thought it was nothing. Just… nonsense.”

His hand dropped slowly from her arm. “It’s not.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and the silence between them wasn’t empty anymore.

It was full of broken memories. Ghosts. Names they weren’t meant to say aloud.

Finally, Lana took a shaky breath and looked away. “If this is true… then why would they force us to marry?”

“I don’t know yet,” Grey said. “But I’m going to find out.”

He moved back toward the file, flipping to the final page. Her birth certificate. Redacted. Same as his.

Lana stared at it. “They’ve erased everything.”

“Not everything.” He tapped the bottom corner of the paper where faded ink scrawled something handwritten.

She leaned closer.

Only together will they remember.

Her heart thudded. “What does that mean?”

Grey didn’t answer right away. He simply stared at the paper like it held a map neither of them had the key to.

Suddenly, the fire behind her flickered—no, flared, high and sharp, like a gust of wind had passed through the chimney.

But the windows were shut.

Grey looked up, alert. Lana turned, her pulse quickening.

In the mirror across the room, something shifted again. A shadow. Small. Faint.

And this time, there were two children.

Standing side by side.

Both with grey eyes.

Both staring back.

Lana spun around.

The room was empty.

She turned back to the mirror—but they were gone.

Grey was already moving toward it, his expression darkening.

“They’re not just memories anymore,” he muttered.

Lana gripped the edge of the bed.

“What are they?”

Grey turned toward her, his eyes unreadable.

“Warnings.”