The helicopter’s blades cut through the air overhead, whipping my hair and dress into a frenzy as it descended.

"Who’s coming?" I turned to Sergio and caught something cross his face — a tightening around his jaw, a coldness in his eyes that disappeared the moment he noticed me watching.

"Just some people. Nothing for you to worry about." He paused, then softened his tone deliberately. "By the way — we’re bonded, Elena. Don’t you think ’Dr. Zimmer’ is a little distant?"

The question caught me off guard. "Then what should I call you?"

"Serg." He stepped closer and smoothed my windblown hair back from my face. "And I’d like to call you Coco, if that’s alright."

Something crawled along my skin the moment the nickname left his mouth. Goosebumps rose on my arms, an instinctive recoil I couldn’t explain or stop. But he cared for me. He had done nothing but care for me. Refusing felt cruel when I’d already kept him at arm’s length for days.

I nodded. "Alright."

The helicopter touched down, and two figures emerged from it, flanked by a tight formation of guards dressed in black, faces hidden behind masks and dark glasses. The man and woman at the center looked to be in their late forties or fifties, though the woman carried herself in a way that made age feel irrelevant. She was composed, sharp-edged, the kind of person who had spent decades learning how to make a room feel smaller just by entering it.

The moment her eyes found mine, a cold shot straight through me.

The man beside her said little, but his stare was deep and unreadable in a way that made my instincts scream. Without meaning to, I stepped back and positioned myself behind Sergio.

The woman’s gaze didn’t waver. "You came all this way just for her?"

My chest clenched. I’d been right to feel it — whatever their reason for being here, it wasn’t good for me.

Sergio reached back and closed his hand around my wrist, firm and steady. "It’s okay. Don’t be scared."

But the dread didn’t leave. I had never seen these people before in my life — I was certain of that — and yet every part of me was screaming to run.

"Dad, Mom," Sergio said evenly, "you’re frightening her."

His parents.

I stared at them, trying to reconcile that. The hostility rolling off them was too obvious to dismiss — they looked at me like I was something that had gotten in the way of something they wanted. Sergio steered me gently back toward the villa, murmuring, "Don’t be afraid, Coco. I’m here. I’ll protect you this time."

This time. I filed that away quietly.

Back in the room, he asked, "Are you scared of them?"

"Your mother doesn’t like me," I said. I didn’t need my memories to know that. A woman’s instincts were rarely wrong about another woman’s contempt.

He smiled softly. "What matters is that I like you. Don’t overthink it — rest, and leave everything else to me."

He stepped out, and I heard the lock click.

I stood very still, staring at the door. Was he locking it to keep me from hearing their conversation? To protect me from them? Or was there another reason entirely? The questions stacked up on top of all the others I’d been collecting since I woke up here — the cameras I’d spotted tucked into the corners of my room, small and easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. The way he never reacted to my discomfort when he touched me, as if he’d decided not to see it. His love felt real. But something underneath it didn’t add up, and I couldn’t stop pulling at the edges of it.

I went to the bathroom to wash my face, hoping cold water would clear my head. When I reached for my cleanser and found the bottle empty, I crouched down and pulled a fresh box from the cabinet. The outer seal had been broken. Someone had already opened it before me.

Inside, folded small, was a piece of paper.

The handwriting was mine.

"Elena Morrigan, this is a note from yourself — from before you lost your memories. If you want to know the truth, make sure neither Sergio nor the second person ever sees this."

My hands went still.

I’d known. Before everything was taken from me, I had known it was coming.

I locked the bathroom door and kept reading. Every box in the cabinet held another note, numbered in sequence. I followed them in order, piece by piece, and the picture they built made my blood run cold.

"If the first person you see after waking without your memories is Sergio Zimmer — don’t trust him. He drugged you. He brought you to this island and erased your past, then positioned himself as your rescuer so you would fall for him. Even without your memories, hold onto this: there is someone who loves you. His name is Lewis Hale. He is the father of your children, and he is waiting for you. Do not fall for Sergio. Don’t."

I read it twice. Then a third time.

Sergio hadn’t lied outright — he’d been more careful than that. He had simply taken everything Lewis had done and claimed it as his own, sliding himself into the place Lewis should have occupied, rewriting our history so that Lewis disappeared from it entirely.

I hid the notes again, already deciding I would read them every day so the truth wouldn’t slip away from me the way everything else had. I found an eyebrow pencil at the bottom of the box and used it to add more detail — what I could piece together about how I’d lost my memories, what I now understood about Sergio’s role in it. He was connected to the organization. The notes made that clear. He had originally gone to the hospital looking for someone named Luther, but when he saw me, his plans changed.

If he had genuinely felt something for me once, in some other life — then how had he stood by and let someone take mine?

And those two people who’d arrived today. I couldn’t shake the feeling that they weren’t just his parents. Whatever they were involved in, it ran deep, and it ran close to the kind of people who had already tried to erase me once.

I pressed my back against the bathroom wall and breathed slowly, steadying myself.

I knew the truth now. And I had to be very careful about what I did with it.