CHAPTER FIVE:THE END OF AURORA

The key turning in the safe house lock sounded like a coffin closing. Aurora’s coffin.

Marcus pushed open the door to what looked like a crime scene. Wallpaper peeling like old scabs. A carpet that smelled like other people’s sadness. One tiny window staring at a brick wall.

“Sorry,” Marcus said. “It’s not much."

I stepped inside, each movement sending fire through my chest. The old me would’ve cried. The new me smiled.

“It’s perfect.”

Those six weeks in the hospital felt like a lifetime. Learning to walk again when every step reminded me of the night Adrian shot me. Physical therapy sessions where I'd grip the parallel bars and force my legs to move, even when my body screamed no. The nurses were nice enough, but they didn't understand. They saw a woman recovering from a random attack. They had no idea I was learning how to become someone else entirely.

The worst part wasn't even the physical pain. It was waking up every morning and forgetting, just for a second, that my old life was over. I'd reach for my phone to text Adrian good morning, or wonder what we'd have for dinner that night. Then reality would crash back in. The bandages around my chest, the machines beeping, the memory of his face when he pulled that trigger.

The nightmares were even worse, not of the shooting, but of the good memories. Adrian laughing at my dumb jokes, swearing I was his whole world. The times he'd cancel everything, every meeting, just because I had a headache.

I'd wake up from those dreams crying, and it took everything I had not to call him. Not to believe that maybe it was all some horrible mistake.

But it wasn't a mistake. He meant to kill me. And I had to remember that.

"Your name is Rory Black," I'd whisper to myself in the bathroom mirror every morning. "Aurora Winters is dead."

It took practice, but eventually the words started feeling true.

Marcus visited almost every day during those hospital weeks. He'd bring coffee that tasted like it came from a gas station and newspapers I didn't want to read. But he was there, and that mattered. When the doctors said I was finally strong enough to leave, he picked me up in a car and drove me to this little apartment outside the city.

Three months after I got out of the hospital, Marcus walked in with an envelope that changed everything. Inside was a death certificate with my name on it. Aurora Marie Winters. Dead at twenty-eight from surgical complications.

“Half the city came to your funeral,” he said softly. “Adrian gave the speech. He cried. Real tears. Everyone believes him.”

Something cold lodged itself deep in my stomach. He wasn’t just hiding what he did, he was feeding off it. Playing the grieving lover while the whole world pitied him.

That’s when Aurora truly died. And Rory Black opened her eyes.

“Good,” I said. Nothing else. Just that one word, flat and final.

Building a new life took work. Marcus brought me everything Rory Black would need: college transcripts, tax records, even a six-year-old late payment on a student loan. The perfect, boring history.

I memorized it all like scripture. Every lie had to feel truer than the truth. Rory grew up in Chicago, not New York. She studied at Northwestern, not Columbia. She never ate at the little Italian place on 8th Street where Adrian first told me he loved me.

I practiced in the mirror. Rory Black. Marketing consultant. No trace of Aurora Winters. No tie to Adrian Thorne.

The hardest part was the small things. Aurora drank her coffee black. Rory added cream and sugar. Aurora chewed her nails when she was nervous. Rory kept her hands still. Every habit had to be rewritten.

Leo came early, so tiny he looked breakable. Machines beeped around him, wires taped to his fragile skin. The first time I held him, my breath caught. He had Adrian’s eyes, green, steady, but when Leo looked at me, there was no anger, no cruelty. Only trust.

“Hey there, baby,” I whispered. “It’s just you and me now. We’ll be fine.”

The NICU became my second home. I sat beside his incubator, reading him scraps from magazines Marcus brought, telling him stories about the life waiting once he was strong enough to leave. A life where his father couldn’t touch him.

Sometimes other mothers tried to chat, asking about Leo’s dad, if he was around. I got good at shutting it down fast. The last thing I needed was some kindhearted stranger tracking Adrian down.

When I finally carried Leo home, everything shifted. My world shrank to feeding schedules, diaper changes, and sleepless nights. The safe house filled with secondhand baby clothes, bottles, and a crib Marcus found cheap.

I was exhausted. But it was the kind of exhaustion that made sense. Not the hollow, empty kind I knew in the hospital.

Marcus would find me pacing the living room at two in the morning, bouncing Leo in my arms.

“You need to sleep,” he’d say.

“He needs me more than I need sleep.”

And I meant it. Leo was everything. My only job was to keep him safe, to make sure Adrian never got close enough to hurt him.

Time blurred into milestones. Leo’s first smile at six weeks. His laugh at three months. Rolling over at four. Each little victory felt like proof, proof that out of all this pain, I’d built something good.

But I couldn’t relax. Every day I practiced being Rory Black. Changed my handwriting. Walked with a different style.

Aurora had been soft. Rory was sharp.

I cut my hair short, dyed it dark. Changed my makeup, my clothes. When I looked in the mirror, I barely recognized myself. That was the point.

On Leo’s first birthday, Marcus showed up with a box. No toys, no cake. Just a black suit and a file folder.

“It’s time,” Marcus said. “Thorne Industries wants you tomorrow. Interview. Assistant to Adrian.”

My hands shook. I couldn’t believe it. Two years of planning. Two years of pretending. And now… it was real.

Inside the folder was a company ID. My face. My eyes. My smile. But not my name.

Reina Vale.

Marcus watched me like he knew what I was thinking. “That’s who you’ll be tomorrow. Not Rory. Not the past. Reina. If he looks too close, he won’t find you.”

Another name. Another mask to wear. Another person I had to become.

That night, with Leo asleep in the next room, I stood in front of the cracked bathroom mirror. I touched my own face like I was trying to remember who I was. Rory Black, gone. Reina Vale, stepping in tomorrow.

I pulled out the ring Adrian once slipped on my finger with all his lies. It sparkled in the light, but the promises behind it were empty.

I put the ring on a chain and hung it around my neck, right over my scar. The metal felt cold and heavy. I needed to feel it. I needed to remember.

I checked on Leo one last time. He slept with his little fist resting against his cheek. Peaceful. Safe. Every risk I was about to take was for him.

I kissed his forehead. “Tomorrow, it all begins,” I whispered.

But when I lay down, staring at the ceiling, sleep didn’t come. Two years of planning had led me here. Two years of becoming someone else.

I thought I’d be ready. Maybe even excited.

Instead, one thought kept ringing in my head, over and over: What if I see Adrian tomorrow, and everything, every plan, every bit of anger, falls apart the moment our eyes meet? What if the girl I buried clawed her way back, and instead of hating him, I loved him all over again?

That was the real test waiting for me. Not whether I could fool Adrian Thorne.

But whether I could fool myself.