[Cordelia]Atlas called my Dad. Of all the people I expected to see on my wedding day, he was not on the list. Stephen Greyson, the man who helped raise me but was never really my father. This man and his wife, Meghan, let me believe for 25 years that I was their daughter and that because I couldn't live up to their expectations of being just like my "sister" Angelica, never good enough. "Why are you here, Mr. Greyson," I cross my arms glaring at both Atlas and the man I once called father, equally upset with both of them. "You aren't welcome." He holds out his hands, in one of them is a velvet box not unlike the one that Magnus sent me. "Cordelia," his tone is sad. "Please, give me a chance to explain." Atlas leans in. "It's your call. If you want me to make him leave I will."I didn't think it was possible to love Atlas more than I already did. I was wrong. "I'll speak to him," I concede.Mr. Greyson's tight posture eased."But that doesn't mean you get to stay," I express with
[Cordelia]If this crazy world has taught me anything, I have learned that you should never throw love away. So few of us find family even when we are born into one. Stephen Greyson didn't need to come to Napa from LA to give me a necklace. He came because he cares. He could have said everything he just did over the telephone or via video conferencing, but he didn't. Vulnerable and brave, he came to me "Wait," I call after him and he stops, his back turned. "Can you help me put these on?" His expression is carefully blank as he asks, "Are you sure?"With a tiny smile, I nod and he lets himself relax. Coming over to me, he moves aside the veil and clasps the beautiful necklace around my neck while I adjust the earrings. Giving my shoulders a gentle squeeze he places a kiss on the back of my head like he always did when I was a little girl. My heart feels heavy as I watch him walk away again. "Hey, Dad?" He turns, "Yes Cordy?""Did mom come too?"He is very silent, his eyes shifting
[Cordelia]I close my eyes. This can't be real. It must just be the stress of the evening getting underneath my skin. Angelica was buried. Her body was brought out from beneath the rubble. I saw her body. She was dead when they pulled her out. Atlas was also dead and I saw his body too..."Are you okay," Dad asks and I blink my eyes open, smiling, pretending that I'm not secretly chilled to my core. "I'm fine," I lie as I scan the room briefly. After the stunt Atlas pulled, I understood that anything is possible and that things are often not what they seem on the surface. Angelica might be dead, or not. The one thing I know for certain is that she isn't really a ghost. Ghosts aren't real. Either she's here, my mind is playing tricks on me, or Magnus is trying to scare me. Either way, hallucination or party crasher, I know I'm not being haunted. But I can deal with this later. Right now, there is a nervous, handsome man waiting for me at the end of this very long aisle. He's waited
[The Messenger]When I got the message that I needed to drop off an important package at this vineyard I groaned. It seems that I always get chosen for very difficult, very long assignments, and no other courier wanted to come out the Silverado Trail on the bike while the sun was still high. It gets hot in this valley this time of year.But our client was insistent that it be delivered before the wedding started. I almost refused myself, except that my boss insisted it be me. "If your dad is going to drop off last-minute packages, you're going to deliver them." He huffed. "I don't care if he's willing to pay double, let's see how he likes risking his daughter getting sunstroke." I could have saved him the trouble by just letting him know my father stopped caring about me years ago when he sent me out to boarding school in California, but he didn't care, so I didn't bother. "Here you go, Ms. Fisher." Derek shoved the box in my hand. "The wedding is at sunset. You have 45 minutes."
[Clark]If I hadn't seen the truth with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it. Shortly after Atlas and Cordelia retired for the night, the party started to wind down, and all the remaining guests seemed to hover around the bottomless wine bar. That's where I found Cordelia's dad, Stephen, talking to a beautiful young blonde girl. At first, I thought nothing of it. But then I saw her face and I stopped in my tracks. Thinking maybe my mind was playing tricks on me, I left in search of my fiance to see if I was indeed losing my mind. "I need you to take a look at someone and tell me what you see," I pull her away from the clothing rack where she had been putting dresses back on hangers. Confused but also curious, she goes along with this, letting me take her to the edge of the bar. "Who do you see speaking with Stephen Greyson right now?" I point to where he is sitting at the bar. She squints and then opens her eyes extra wide. "You've got to be kidding me! She's dead! I know this
[Cordelia]For someone who only a moment before seemed so eager to disrobe me, it feels like time has stopped as Atlas slowly unbuttons my dress. "It has a zipper too," I remind him and he chuckles at the rising frustration in my voice. "So eager," he kisses the newly revealed skin on my back. "Patience, Lover, I want to savor you." "I thought, you wanted to devour me," I tease.A mischievous spark flashes in his eyes, "If I must," his hands are rustling underneath along the edges of my skirt, pulling it upwards, bunching it between us until his hands are touching my thighs. As he rubs up and down along their outer edges, he leads me until my back is flat against a wall."What are you doing," I giggle as he gives me a quick peck before diving under the voluptuous layers of my skirt even though I have a pretty good idea what his intentions are as soon as he begins kissing a trail along the inside of my leg. Using his teeth, he unbuttons my garters and rolls each silk stocking down,
[Atlas]As I watch her sleep, the sun shining on her dewy skin, I know that I am the luckiest man on Earth. She and I are an improbable pair and every moment I'm with her feels like a denial of the universe's plans for my life. If I had made the mistake of marrying her sister, Angelica, I would have never known the paradise which is loving Cordelia Steele. Placing a gentle hand on her waist, I let it fall to her small belly. I hope we created another child last night, not to replace the one we lost, Jasper will be coming home, but because I want our next child to be created in love, not as a mistake. I want to remember this night forever. I never want to forget how it feels to be near her, knowing that there is no other place either one of us would rather be. "You know it will be weeks yet before we know if your plan succeeded," Cordelia smiles as her eyes flutter open. "I know our next little one is already in there," I reply as I bend down and kiss her belly button. I'm tempted
[Cordelia]The daylight streaming through the windows touches the edges of the young woman's face. She looks a lot like my dead sister, but there is something in the set of her eyes and the way she holds herself that isn't Angelica at all.But in the dim fading light of sunset, I can see why I was confused."That's not Angelica," I step forward and the closer I am to her, the more stark the differences become. Her hair is darker, her eyes are bluer, her face thinner, and her body more toned. "You were at the wedding last night.""Yeah," she swallows a sip of orange juice and holds out a hand to shake. "That was a beautiful ceremony, by the way, I was totally fangirling over your Tilly and Clark here," she points towards Tilly.I raise an eyebrow. "I don't know who you are, or I didn't when I kinda dropped in on the wedding. I was just sent here to deliver a package, I'm a bike messenger."She's babbling so I take her hand and watch as my touch seems to stabilize her. She's a bit more
[Cordelia] Today is our 20th second anniversary. We've lost count of the first one, forgetting it entirely as a moment of sadness. Instead, we honor the day when we took our vows and meant them, 7 years later in Napa. Usually, we leave Los Angeles and take the week for just the two of us. Even after two decades, we haven't lost our hunger for one another and I look forward to our time away where we can just be two people together and in love. But this year, my husband is feeling a bit nostalgic. This is why I'm in the lobby of the Steele Hotel and Resort, recreating a memory I wish I could forget. When he sent me the cryptic text this afternoon, I confess I was more than a little bit confused. Why, of all places, would he want me to meet him there? At least this time I'm not wearing a hoodie with a dress tucked into a pair of loose sweats. And while my face is covered with large sunglasses, it's more to protect my identity and not draw too much attention. I am far too recogniza
[Clark] "Come on. Dad!" My daughters pull me along by my arms. I've never been able to deny them anything they wanted but tonight they are asking too much. "It's only a blind date!" "Girls," I admonish, "What have I said, I'm not ready to let someone new into my heart. Your mother was more than enough for me." Cassie stares up at me with her starlight eyes, as deep and black as her mother's, and doesn't relent. "You promised you'd let us have anything we want for our birthday. Grandma helped us pick her out. You have to try, Dad. For us!" "Grandma Suzanna or Grandma Jenny?" I grump, "Who do I need to send a thank you note." "Both!" the girls giggle. "You owe us, Dad," Cassie counters. Her red curls bounce as she stomps her foot. "Do you know how weird it is to look on a DATING AP for potential girlfriends for our father? It's so gross. You should be grateful" "Yeah," Maddie chimes in, swinging her hair over her shoulder as she twists her lips just like Tilly used to, her hand
[Jude]If the universe were fair, I wouldn't have lived to see today. If karma took her toll, I wouldn't be friends with Clark and Atlas Steele, our children growing up side by side. Once the shadow of Magnus was lifted from our shoulders, and Angelica and I were finally able to go about our lives the way we always should have been able to do, It became easier to make good with my life. Angelica and I were married shortly after Mathilda's funeral. It was a small ceremony on the family medical boat, just before the two of us set sail with our daughters, Melanie and Veronica. When the DNA showed that they were indeed my children, and NOT Magnus', that his experiment had never stuck, it was easy to adopt them. In their mind, Angelica is their mother. When they are old enough, we'll tell them the truth about Aunt Sydney, but for now, we are sparing them the burden of her insanity.And we give them love, all the love of a couple who has always wanted children of their own.Angelica, it tu
[Cordelia]15 hours later I place my feet back in LA for the first time in 6 months. We have been gone for so long that I had forgotten how loud it is, or how oppressively hot it can be in summer. Clark met us at the runway alone, the girls with their grandparents. "I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to drive you home. We could have sent a driver but," he explains, "I wanted to be the one to welcome you home." He does his best to smile, but as his melancholy grin drifts to how I hold on to my husband's hand, I can see how much this is costing him. "I'm glad it was you," I reach forward to give him a hug. "Thank you." Atlas, who has been receiving a slew of messages from Theo as soon as we landed, asks to be dropped off at the new Steele Industries building. "Looks like they need me," he apologizes, kissing my hand. "I'll make it up to you tonight," he whispers in my ear and I shiver in anticipation. "I'm going to hold you to that," I whisper discretely in his ear, trying to be mi
[Cordelia]The rest of that day went by in a blur. I insisted we rush back to the compound even though everyone had received the news that Tilly was gone. I couldn't believe it. My mind couldn't process the possibility of a world without Mathilda Madison. She wasn't just my best friend, she was my sister. So I couldn't let her go. Clark was distraught. He and Tilly took a while to find one another, and when they did finally make the right connection, they fell for one another hard. It was beautiful watching my two best friends fall in love--they were perfect for one another. But not all stories end with a happily ever after. That was a hard lesson for me to learn as well. I wanted nothing more than to watch Tilly raise her daughters. When we made it back an hour later, her body had already been collected. I had wanted to see her, to give it a chance to see if I could have brought her back: just one touch, one spark. I was convinced that I could have been the one to save her. The
[Sydney]Why can't they just let me die? It would be so easy, I'm already cut and bleeding. Why bother with the IVs and the monitors? It doesn't matter anymore. Did it ever matter?My entire existence has been a fraud. If my hands were free I'd count the ways on my fingertips all the ways I've been lied to and used.A madman altered my DNA and injected me into the wrong mother. I was raised believing I was special only to discover I was the offspring of my enemy. The man of my dreams was married to the daughter my mother was supposed to have, and I was just a cheap copy of the woman he once loved, my genetic twin, Angelica. Was this life ever really mine to begin with? Even now they aren't honoring my desire to die. "She needs more blood," the doctor announces over my head, her clear voice cutting through the din of the operating room chatter. "Her blood pressure has dropped to dangerous levels. We can't use the anesthesia. She'll need to be awake for the procedure."Procedure?"I d
[Clark]The dissection of Magnus' brain was one of the most intensely fascinating and uniquely horrifying things I have ever experienced. Using my computer to guide the charge, we attached wires to his brain, fed through a divide that my mother had retrieved from her vault. "This will disrupt his signal. It will keep him from making a full memory transfer. Hopefully whomever he's jumped into will have a fighting chance." Everything my mother has said since I volunteered for this task has sounded like something from a science fiction movie. The duplicates we had seen in Delilah's footage of her father's secret lab were all designed to hold Magnus's memories in an artificial extension of his life. Not all of them looked like his current body, as often it was useful for him to become someone entirely different for spying purposes. "Is this how he always seemed to know everything?" I ask aloud. We had wondered how he managed to get around all of our codes, to find ways to learn about wh
[Cordelia]"Wally?" Holding my hand above his head, I pause, hesitating. Just a moment before I was about to take this man's life without even the smallest shred of remorse. It was necessary to protect my family. My children and my husband. "Cordelia," He blinks, his eyes roving my face and the surroundings like a caged animal. Licking his dry, salty lips, his body is otherwise completely still. "I don't have much time. He's fighting me...I..."Wally's muscles spasm, shaking Atlas as well as he holds him in place. Closing his eyes, his body stills, as if the effort of keeping still is so great that he cannot do anything else at the same time. He whispers something that I can't quite make out, so I lean in, trying to capture his words.As my hair brushes his cheek, he repeats himself. "You need to end this, Cordelia. Don't let him escape to harm another. His other mind is gone, Suzanna saw to it, but he can still jump to someone else.""Wally, what are you saying," I shake my head. "No
[Cordelia]Atlas and I raced down the hall to the exit, soldiers moving out of our way as we passed, nobody bothering to stop us as my husband's icy glare and dominant aura kept them pinned in place. Magnus is dead and I have never been more terrified in my life. The door to the outside pushes open and we are instantly blinded by the overhead sunshine that covers the beach with an oddly bright gray that stings the eyes. It is warmer than it had been earlier, the wind having died down, trapping the moisture of impending rain, held in place by the gathering storm. "Jasper," I call out gently, scanning the beach. "Wally?""Atlas do you see Jasper?" I grab my husband's arm. His pulse is rapid beneath my fingertips as we move forward as one and find the abandoned picnic blanket and Jasper's little galoshes next to a much larger pair. "Wally!" I scream out towards the waves and find him standing in the water, at the far edge of the beach. There is no sign of my son. None. It's as if the