THE MIRROR OF DECEIT

The private office at the end of the eighty-fifth floor had been stripped of its furniture.

Four small wooden chairs had been placed in a straight line against the blank cream wall. Sitting on those chairs were the quadruplets. They had not moved. They had not asked for water, nor toys, nor their mother. They sat with their backs straight, their small hands resting on their pink organza skirts, watching the door.

The heavy door unlocked with a metallic click, and Julian stepped inside.

He had removed his white tuxedo jacket, rolling his crisp white shirt sleeves up to his elbows. His gold wristwatch glinted under the recessed LED spotlights. He stood three feet from the girls, his arms crossed over his chest, studying them with the intensity of a surgeon inspecting a tumor.

"Which one of you is the eldest?" Julian asked flatly.

None of the girls answered. They looked at him with those identical blue-and-gold eyes.

Julian leaned down, resting his hands on his knees so his face was level with theirs. Up close, the resemblance was horrifying. It wasn't just the eye color; it was the sharp structure of their cheekbones, the slight indentation in the center of their chins, the way their pale eyebrows arched. They were genetic carbon copies of him—and of each other.

"I know your mother didn't raise you in this hotel," Julian said softly, his voice laced with psychological pressure. "Housekeeping staff don't raise quadruplets on fifty thousand dollars a year without government records. There are no birth certificates registered under Clara Mercer's name in the state of New York. No hospital records. No school enrollments."

He reached out, his long fingers gently picking up a strand of honey-blonde curl from the girl on the far left. The child didn't flinch. Her skin was warm, smooth, and smelled faintly of lavender and antiseptic.

"Where were you born?" Julian asked.

The second girl from the right opened her mouth. Her voice was identical to her sister's—soft, pitched, and eerily calm.

"In the white room," she said.

Julian’s heart skipped a beat. "What white room?"

"The room with the glass walls," the third girl added seamlessly, her voice picking up the cadence of her sister's sentence without a second's pause. "Where the men in blue coats measure our eyes."

"And Mommy?" Julian pressed, his breath catching in his throat. "Where is Clara?"

"Mommy is sleeping," the first girl whispered. "In the metal box under the floor."

A cold wind seemed to sweep through the room. Julian straightened up, his brow furrowed in deep, dark confusion.

Clara Mercer was dead.

If Clara was dead, who had brought these children into the hotel? Who had trained them to walk into his bridal suite at the exact moment he was about to bind his empire to Vance Bio-Tech?

Suddenly, the fourth girl—the one on the far right who had remained completely silent—looked up at the ceiling. She tilted her head as if listening to a frequency no one else could hear.