The Artist's Studio

The rental car was cheap, anonymous, and smelled of stale pine air freshener, a stark contrast to the leather-and-cedar scent of the Hawthorne limousines. Elena gripped the wheel, her knuckles white, navigating the winding Oregon backroads. The GPS signal was spotty, flickering in and out as the trees grew thicker, taller, closing in like the walls of a green cathedral.

"Turn left in... 500 feet," the robotic voice intoned, then dissolved into static.

Elena slowed down. There was no road sign, just a break in the underbrush, a gravel track that disappeared into the shadows.

She turned.

The track wound upward, climbing the ridge. The air grew cooler, sharper. It had been six months since the annulment. Six months since she had signed the papers in Valerie’s trailer and walked away from the man she loved.

She told herself she was just checking. Just making sure he was alive before she left for Russia. Before she crossed a line she might not be able to come back from.

The trees thinned. A clearing opened up.

And there it was.

The cabin was small, rough-hewn, built from logs that looked older than the country itself. Smoke curled from the chimney, a lazy grey ribbon against the blue sky.

But it was the garden that stopped her breath.

It wasn't a Hawthorne garden. No manicured hedges, no symmetrical rose beds. It was wild, chaotic, a riot of color and texture. Wildflowers grew in tangles. Vegetables burst from raised beds.

And in the center of it all, standing before a large canvas propped against an apple tree, was Jack.

Elena killed the engine. She rolled down the window.

He looked... different.

His hair was longer, unkempt. He had a beard, dark and thick, hiding the sharp, aristocratic jawline Vane had prized. He wore a flannel shirt covered in paint smears, jeans that were torn at the knees.

He looked rougher. Looser.

He looked happy.

Elena watched him work. He moved with a fluidity she had never seen in Julian Hawthorne. Julian had been stiff, careful, always conscious of the gaze upon him. Jack moved like water. He slashed at the canvas with a wide brush, attacking it, building something from nothing.

He stepped back. He tilted his head. He laughed.

It was a sound Elena hadn't heard in years. A genuine, unburdened laugh.

Valerie came out of the cabin. She was carrying two mugs. She walked with a limp, the legacy of the fire, but she didn't look frail. She looked grounded.

She handed Jack a mug. He kissed her cheek.

They stood there, mother and son, looking at the painting. They were talking, their voices low, drifting on the wind.

Elena felt a pang of jealousy so sharp it felt like a physical wound. Not because he was with someone else—Valerie was his mother, after all—but because he was whole. He had found the piece of himself that had been missing.

And he had done it without her.

She reached for the door handle.

She should go to him. She should tell him about the DNA match. About the clinic in St. Petersburg. About the third twin.

But then Jack turned. He looked toward the road.

Elena shrank back into the seat.

He scanned the treeline. His expression shifted. The smile faded, replaced by a quiet, watchful intensity. He looked like a man who was finally, truly awake.

He didn't see the car. It was hidden by the shade of a massive fir.

He turned back to the painting. He picked up his brush.

Elena took her hand off the handle.

If she went to him now, she would drag the past with her. She would bring the ghosts back. She would tell him he was a clone, a lab rat, one of three.

She would break him again.

"No," she whispered.

She put the car in reverse. She backed down the track, slowly, carefully, until the cabin disappeared from view.

She turned the car around on the main road.

She drove away.

She drove toward the airport. Toward Marcus. Toward Russia.

She would find the truth about the third twin. She would burn down the clinic. She would destroy the Architect.

But she would do it alone.

Jack Miller had earned his peace.

Elena Vance had a war to fight.

As she merged onto the highway, her phone buzzed.

A message from Marcus.

*I'm at the gate. Flight leaves in an hour. Are you coming?*

Elena typed one word.

*Yes.*

She threw the phone onto the passenger seat. Beside it lay the box from the closet. The one marked *DO NOT OPEN.*

She hadn't opened it.

But she hadn't thrown it away, either.