Charlotte’s arrival in the blackout felt like stepping into a life that had been stolen from both of them. Rebecca opened the hospital door with her heart pounding and found the same eyes, the same bones, the same haunted recognition she’d seen in the burned photograph. They didn’t embrace. They just stared, two women realizing that every wound they’d carried had been engineered by the same invisible hands.

Around them, sirens, shouting, and the metallic smell of fear blurred into background noise. Martin fading on the bed. Veronica gripping a gun she’d started carrying the day Rose died. Outside, the faceless man in the dark coat vanished into the rain, proof that the trust was not a myth but a living, watching organism.

Rebecca understood then: Mauro, Patricia, even her grandfather were only pieces. The real war had always been about succession, control, and which daughter was allowed to exist in the light. For the first time, both “wrong” girls stood alive in the same doorway. And somewhere out there, the people who had built empires on their separation realized the one thing they had never prepared for—Charlotte and Rebecca had finally found each other.