Chapter 150: What’s your endgame? "So," Suzy said slowly, processing the information Alice had shared with her, "you’re here because Priscilla asked you and promised to pay off your debt?"
Alice sat stiff, hands clasped tight in her lap. Now, she was sitting on the floor as well beside Suzy.
She nodded once.
Suzy’s brows arched, but she didn’t look surprised. "Priscilla asked you to pretend to be Aurora because Aurora is... in a psychiatric ward?"
. Another small nod.
Alice kept it simple. Nothing about Hardy. Nothing about Dawin. Nothing about how deep Priscilla’s hand had been in all this. If she opened those doors, she doubted she’d ever close them again.
"And you took the job..." Suzy’s gaze narrowed, pinning her like an insect on glass. "For the money?"
Her chin dipped in another nod.
She wished she could just tell Suzy to stop asking her the same questions over and over again like she was trying to better understand this situation from different angles.
"Do you have any idea what kind of game you’re playing?" She tilted her head, her eyes catching Alice’s like steel hooks. "That money won’t be worth anything if you get caught."
Alice’s throat was dry. "I’m aware," she whispered, voice barely holding together.
The silence after that stretched thin, straining at the edges.
Suzy stood abruptly, arms crossing over her chest as she paced a short line across the room. She turned, studied Alice again.
"You’re either the bravest person I’ve met," she said, her tone sharp but threaded with something almost like admiration, "or the most reckless. I haven’t decided which."
Alice lowered her eyes. She couldn’t tell Suzy that maybe she was both.
Suzy’s pacing slowed. She turned back toward Alice, eyes narrowed in that quiet, relentless way that made her feel stripped bare.
"So," Suzy said, voice low and even. "Let’s say I believe you. That Priscilla pulled you into this, and you thought the money was worth the risk." She crossed her arms tighter. "What then? What’s your endgame?"
Alice blinked. "Endgame?"
"Yes." Suzy nodded. "You think you can just... play Aurora forever? Live in this house, with him"— her eyes flicked to the door, unmistakably meaning Hades— "with this family, under the matriarch’s watchful eyes? Until when?" She tilted her head.
"What happens when Aurora is better and comes home? What happens when someone notices your slip? Or when Hades looks too closely?"
Alice felt the knot in her stomach. The questions were knives, cutting too close to thoughts she had tried to bury.
"I don’t—" she began.
"No," Suzy cut her off, her tone slicing clean through the hesitation. "You do know. You’ve thought about it. Maybe you’ve shoved it down, maybe you’ve told yourself to focus on surviving today. But you’ve thought about it."
Of course, she had. But what would thinking about it consistently do for her?
Suzy studied her face for a long, suffocating moment. Then she shook her head like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
"You’re going to burn alive in this game," she muttered. "And you don’t even have a plan for how to crawl out."
Suzy stopped pacing and turned, her eyes narrowing with sudden clarity.
"Hades. You like him, don’t you?"
Could she just... have a break from this?
Suzy didn’t wait for her to answer. She stepped closer, her tone turning hard, the way someone might deliver an undeniable verdict. "You can’t even hide it. It was all over tonight. You’re tangled in it."
Suzy scratched her head.
She looked very bothered. Worried. Confused.
"God! This is tough." She muttered to herself. "What happens when Aurora comes back? Because if you’ve really fallen for him—" She let the pause linger, heavy and merciless. "—then you’ve taken far more than your sister’s name. You’ve taken her place. Her husband. It’s a crime. Like a really big crime if this gets out. The law would chew you. This family could sue you."
Alice tried not to let the breath shudder out of her but she failed. Because she believed every word Suzy had said.
She knew the law.
She knows the Wildfires.
Suzy crouched in front of her then, bringing herself to Alice’s eye level. "We need to think clearly about what to do. For now, be extra careful. Like extra extra..."
Alice stared at her. Seeing how supportive Suzy was touched her. She didn’t even have the right words to say to her.
Alice sighed heavily and hugged her knees to her body.
"Relax. I wasn’t demanding any answers from you now," she said, almost lightly. "I just needed to know where your head was. And I believe you’ve already thought about all this even if you won’t say it aloud. You should keep thinking about it more."
Alice just stared at her. The fact that Suzy wasn’t pressing further left her oddly... unmoored.
Then Suzy’s expression shifted, softening in a way Alice hadn’t expected. She sat back on the floor beside her, her posture looser now, and tilted her head. "You know... I’m curious."
Alice frowned warily. "Curious?"
"Yes." Suzy’s voice carried no mockery, only genuine interest. "About you. About your life. Because it must have been... very different in the North compared to here." Her eyes searched Alice’s face, open but intent. "How did you manage? How are you even able to walk into this house and keep all of this going, when your background is so... different?"
Alice was caught off guard. No one had ever asked her that. Just straight up to let her know they knew she wasn’t real.
"I..." She hesitated. "It wasn’t easy. Nothing here is easy."
"I can tell," Suzy murmured.
"I just... learn quickly," Alice said carefully.
Suzy’s brow lifted. "And Hades’s pre-trial? You helped him get out of it. I even praised you for it. How did you do that?"
"I..." She lowered her voice, weaving the lie with as much steadiness as she could. "I browsed online. Read articles. Asked AI for help."
Well, it wasn’t completely a lie. She bad done those too.
Suzy stared at her, lips parting in disbelief. "...You’re telling me you saved Hades’s ass in court prep with nothing but... Google and a chatbot?"
Alice managed the smallest of nods. "Yes."
For the first time, Suzy let out a genuine laugh. Soft, disbelieving, and tinged with admiration. "I guess many of us spent all those years wasting our time in Law school then."
Alice didn’t respond to that.
Suzy leaned back into the couch cushions, folding her arms loosely. Her expression was thoughtful, almost rueful. "You know, I feel like an idiot," she said after a moment, her lips quirking in self-mockery. "For falling for it. Even for a second, I thought you were Aurora."
Alice blinked at her, unsure whether to be relieved or guilty.
Suzy let out a soft huff of laughter. "But I should have known. Aurora could never..." She trailed off, then shook her head. "Doesn’t matter. What matters is... you fooled me. You fooled all of us. And that’s no small thing."
Was this a praise? Or should she be wary again?
Alice couldn’t decide.
Then Suzy tilted her head, studying her closely. "Tell me something. Do you... prefer this life?" She gestured lightly around the room, the house beyond it, the unspoken riches embedded in every polished surface. "The one you’re living now? Or the one you left behind?"
The question dug deeper than Alice had expected. She lowered her eyes, thinking.
Slowly, she shook her head. "No."
Suzy’s brows lifted. "No?"
"Maybe..." Alice swallowed, the words thick. "Maybe because this isn’t really my life. It’s someone else’s. A borrowed identity. But even if it were mine..." She looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers like she could feel the emptiness in them. "It’s... nothing. Extravagant, yes. But nothing."
Her voice softened, laced with ache. "In the North, I had friends. Real friends who cared. We laughed together, ate together. Life was hard. So hard, but it was ours. Familial. It... meant something."
She trailed off, her throat tight. "Here..." She gestured faintly around her again, her voice breaking into a whisper. "...it’s all silence and watchful eyes. Smiles with daggers behind them. Pretty rooms with nothing inside. I feel... lonelier here than I ever did back home."
Suzy’s expression shifted, the sharp edges softening into quiet sympathy. She gave a slow nod. "I can imagine," she said simply.
And for the first time since the conversation began, Alice felt like she wasn’t being interrogated, but understood.
"Alice..." Suzy called her softly.
Alice.
Her name.
She turned to look at Suzy, not shying away from the eye contact this time.
"Do you... want to tell me about yourself?" Suzy asked in a gentle voice. One that told Alice she wasn’t trying to pry but was curious.
Genuinely curious.
"This is really going to be a sleepover, isn’t it?" Alice asked.
Suzy let out a small laugh and nodded. "It is what it is."