Aria Dalton knew when people talked about her.
She could feel it in the way words sounded suddenly strangled when she stepped into a room, how eyes read her a fraction of a second too fast, smiles a fraction of a second too wide.
Today, the silence was more deafening than ever.
Even her friends no, her minions were looking at her differently.
Like they'd seen behind the curtain.
Like they'd seen the crown wasn't sitting quite even on her head.
It started when she went to school and found the back gate wide open.
Someone had scrawled in bold letters along the side of the old gymnasium building.
"Truth doesn't wear pearls."
In white.
On gray brick.
Underneath her name.
She froze when she saw it just for a moment but that was all it took. People saw.
She walked faster.
Carried herself higher.
But her heart pounded with a force that she couldn't control.
In Chemistry, she saw them.
Zuri and Kai. Side by side. Leaning in. Sharing something.
Zuri was altered today.
Not softer but sharper.
As if she'd ceased to ask for answers and started to stockpile them instead.
As if she knew something.
Aria's stomach twisted up.
She hated the way Kai regarded her Zuri, that is.
As if she counted.
As if he thought she believed her.
No one had ever regarded Aria so before.
Not without expecting something in return.
By lunch, the rumors had turned into something else.
Not Zuri.
Aria.
Someone had started a private story thread on the school social platform. Anonymous, of course.
But the headline said it all:
"The Other Dalton"
It only had one post.
A baby picture.
Unlabeled. Grainy. unmistakably Aria's face.
But alongside it?
Another baby.
Same blanket. Different bracelet.
Red. Gold.
The comments were piling up second by second.
"Are there two of her???"
"No way this is real"
"Dalton has a twin? And she's here???"
"Looks like Zuri to me ????"
Aria sat there, staring at the screen in horror.
Someone had looked at the photo.
Her photo.
The one from the box.
The one she never showed anyone.
Her hands were shaking now.
For the first time in her life, Aria Dalton wasn't in control of her story.
She was the story.
And it was slipping away from her quicker than she could spin it.
She ate nothing that evening.
Didn't speak.
She simply stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself.
At the cracks.
The cracks that she'd spent her whole life hiding under silk and stratagem and hard smiles.
And for a fleeting flash of an instant just an instant she let out a thought she never meant to ever say out loud:
"What if I was never the whole story?"
Aria had the library to herself in the Dalton house, the only room there that no one ever entered except for the reason of appearing welcoming to guests. She could still hear the murmur of her father's voice down the hall, on one of his endless phone calls. Legal this. Legacy that.
She used to find comfort there.
It now reviled her.
She clutched her phone, reloading the thread of the story over and over. Additional comments appeared every time.
"That baby looks like Zuri…"
"She lied to all of us?"
"If it's not happening, why would she keep it a secret?"
"This is all messed up."
"I heard she had someone pay to erase the record."
"Are we being manipulated BY BOTH OF THEM?"
The last one made her nauseous.
Both.
She was no longer framed as the victim.
She was the villain. Again.
Aria Dalton the perfect girl, the overachiever, the queen bee was being exposed, unspooled, unmade by a truth she didn't even ask for.
And the worst part of it?
She had no idea who leaked the photo.
She stomped upstairs, threw open the box once more, heart pounding.
The photo was still there.
Which meant someone had another copy.
Or worse…
Someone had come into her room and stolen it.
The very idea made her chest tighten. Her world wasn't just cracking.
It was bleeding.
That night, when the house was quiet, Aria slipped into her father's home office. The one with the locked drawer.
She remembered the code.
His birth year. Her initials. The firm's founding date.
Click.
Inside, a file.
Thin. Unassuming.
Stamped: "Hart / Dalton – Closed Adoption"
She stared at it.
She could forget it ever happened.
She could burn it.
She could shred it and recreate her truth all over again.
But her fingers betrayed her.
She opened it.
Inside, two names. Two babies. Two sets of documents. One sentence circled in red:
"Patient requested no future contact between twins."
Her breath left her body.
It wasn't her parents who made that decision.
It was Zuri's mother.
Aria stumbled back.
The file dropped from her hands.
All this time, she thought she was the villain.
The saboteur.
But what if she wasn't the only one protecting a lie?
What if Zuri's life had been built on silence, too?
And what if, after all of this, they were never enemies to start with
Just two girls who had been fooled.
From the day they were born.
But it was too late to make things right with kindness.
Too late for lies.
Too late for rumors.
She grabbed her phone and opened the story thread.
Anonymous.
This time, she wasn't in denial.
She wasn't coming at them.
She was ready to take it all down.
And if Zuri thought she was ready for war…
She hadn't even begun yet.
The post was uploaded at 2:14 a.m.
No caption.
Just the photo.
Two bassinets.
Red bracelet. Gold bracelet.
Side by side.
And one line in the description:
"You wanted the truth. Here it is."
It didn't take long before phones started buzzing. Screens flashed. The student body at Saint Celeste wasn't going to be sleeping. Not tonight.
Aria watched it all unfold in the dark.
She sat curled at the foot of her bed, staring at her phone screen as the likes piled up. Reposts. Shares. The internet firestorm was unleashed, and now no one could put it out.
The crown had cracked.
So she did what she could do.
She got up.
Priced her face fresh, flawless, done up.
Rummaged through her top blazer. Her mother's pearls.
And went to school like she wasn't unraveling from the inside out.
Saint Celeste's marble halls were quiet the next morning. Not quiet but humming with the kind of sound that exists under breath.
Eyes shifted.
Whispers lingered behind her like perfume.
She just kept going.
Until she walked around the corner and saw Zuri.
Standing outside her locker.
Calm. Stock-still.
And their eyes met.
Zuri didn't move.
Didn't look away.
She just dug in her bag… and pulled out something.
A copy of the same image.
Folded along the seams. Spotted with age.
But real.
She held it between them. Like a sword. Or banner.
Aria froze.
She'd expected Zuri to attack her. To scream. To accuse her of the post, of the sabotage, of it all.
But instead, Zuri said:
"We both had it all along."
Aria's throat closed.
The hallway seemed to narrow.
She wanted to say something clever. Something stinging. Something to take back.
Nothing came out.
But she couldn't.
Because in Zuri's voice, she didn't hear a threat.
She heard something else.
Recognition.
And maybe…
A beginning.
Before Aria could reply, a voice cut through the hallway behind them.
"I knew it."
They both turned.
Kai stood there, his backpack slung over one shoulder, his sketchbook in hand. His eyes weren't wide with surprise.
They were tired.
He stepped closer, looked between them Zuri's defiance, Aria's polished terror and said, "You two aren't just connected. You're the same."
Aria tried to speak.
He held up a hand.
"I don't care who posted the photo," he said. "I care what you're going to do now that everyone knows."
Aria looked at Zuri.
Zuri looked at Aria.
And for the first time since this nightmare started, neither of them moved.
Because this wasn't just a feud anymore.
It was fate.