After a few months working at the photographer’s studio, she was called to go to a photoshoot on location. She travelled with the crew to Paris.
At the last minute, the model got sick and Annalise was asked to search the books of a local agency to find someone else suitable. Annalise went through the pictures and then, to her surprise, she found a model who not only resembled Annalise’s true appearance but was identical to it. Her name was Zuria D’Aragon. Annalise called the agency and they told her Zuria wasn’t available: she was visiting her family in Toulouse. She hired another of the models and the shoot went on, but now Annalise was curious about Zuria and the D’Aragon family in general.
Then, Annalise remembered the offer that Mr Beech had made her. Did that offer still stand?
When the shoot in Paris finished, Annalise hired a car and took a few days off from the assistant job. By then she had a lot of dirt on D’Gault, particularly his procuring of underage girls for his own private photoshoots and more. She sent this information on to Beech before she left Paris and then she took herself off radar.
She drove to Toulouse and stayed in a five-star hotel. It didn’t take her long to find D’Aragon wines and to learn the location of the winery.
From the archives of a local newspaper she discovered an article about the family and the loss of their daughter Zaphire. Annalise knew then that her life was about to change.
Removing her dowdy disguise, Annalise dressed in a long, chic maxi-dress and took a walk along the side of the Garonne. Though she had no active memory of the city, she felt an innate familiarity.
At the house any regional accent had been eradicated, and she spoke a neutral French, and a similarly neutral English as well as being able to emulate other accents when necessary – speech, languages and dialects were taught as part of their curriculum.
As Annalise paused by the river, she considered how different her life should have been. She didn’t feel angry, just curious as to why she was picked and not Zuria. She wasn’t even sure what she gained by coming to the area.
‘Zuria?’ a voice said behind her.
Annalise turned. It was a man. Young, very handsome. She expected him to realize his mistake, but to her surprise he walked towards her.
‘I thought you’d returned to Paris,’ he said.
Annalise let him kiss her on both cheeks.
‘Come for a drink with me,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’
Curious, Annalise followed him away from the river and across the road to a café. He ordered a decent bottle of wine and they sat outside, looking out at the busy city street.
‘So, what happened? You were supposed to come back to me.’
Annalise looked away, she was good at being others, but she didn’t know how her sister talked and just one word could give away that she wasn’t Zuria. At that moment, she was saved from answering as the café owner came out to speak to the man.
‘Valentin! And Zuria. I’m so happy to see you both here,’ he said.
Annalise took in the local twang of the man, rolling the name Valentin around in her head as her tongue moved to shape it.
Annalise smiled at the man, hoping it was warm enough to be from someone he knew. Neither man questioned her identity. When the owner left them, Annalise looked at Valentin and waited once more for him to speak.
‘You know I love you. Why do you torture me, Zuria?’
Understanding the relationship now, Annalise rested her hand on Valentin’s leg.
‘Are you going to give me your answer, or make me wait longer?’ he said.
Annalise shrugged, ‘What answer do you want, Valentin?’
He was shocked by her words.
‘Have you been stringing me along?’
‘No,’ said Annalise.
‘Then, tell me you’ll marry me,’ Valentin said.
Annalise thought for a moment. ‘But we must see my parents.’
Valentin’s face erupted into a smile that Annalise found endearing. As she considered the life she could have had if she had been the one to remain with her parents, she wondered if Zuria was stringing this sweet and sensual man along. After all, her sister had left him with his question unanswered.
‘When?’ Valentin asked then. ‘When shall I meet your parents?’
‘Soon,’ Annalise said. ‘Now, take me back to your place and make love to me.’
Annalise was amused that Valentin had been shocked by her suggestion that they make love. Old fashioned as he was, he had merely kissed and held her. Annalise didn’t pursue it; she didn’t want Valentin to realize just yet that she wasn’t Zuria.
Annalise was curious to see if her parents would also think she was Zuria or if they’d recognize her as the daughter they sold to Beech, when Valentin, Zuria’s boyfriend, had been unable to tell the difference. She had driven to the house with Valentin that night.
It was the oddest thing to recall Zuria. Other memories had come back into the mix at the same time, memories that even Beech’s prompting years earlier hadn’t surfaced. Not until that day when she saw herself in a modelling catalogue and realized this was the life she could have had.
Annalise had analysed those emotions – something she wasn’t used to having – and decided that she would make her parents pay for choosing Zuria over her. It wasn’t anger exactly that she felt: she’d been taught never to indulge in that area as it weakened you. It was a feeling of jealousy mixed with resentment and the underlying depression that is sparked by rejection. But she didn’t understand all of this until much later, when she got her revenge.
As Valentin had driven into the driveway and up towards the house, Annalise had experienced a sensation of elation. She was coming home! Not only had she survived all that they’d done to her at the house, but she’d excelled there. She was the best in her year group. Beech had favoured her many times and she was on her way to becoming immune from retirement, perhaps even establishing herself on the committee. All she had to do was keep her head down and do the work. The irony of this was not lost on her.
As she got out of the car, and her parents’ butler opened the front door, Annalise began to see the possibilities of the château and its amazing vineyard. She studied the house for the first time, searching her mind for any residual memories that may help fool her parents now.
‘Ma cherie?’ Valentin said. ‘Should we go in?’
Annalise looked at him, trying to see Valentin through Zuria’s eyes. Why had she hesitated to say ‘yes’ to his proposal? Why had she run away instead to Paris? And then she knew what it was: Zuria craved excitement. Valentin was safe and loving. He’d be an attentive husband, but it wasn’t what Zuria wanted.
Annalise understood that this was exactly why she found Valentin so appealing. Valentin was everything that Annalise was not permitted to have because she was an asset of the Network. Just as she couldn’t have her parents, or any semblance of a normal life.
She walked up the steps holding Valentin’s hand. It was such an ordinary thing to do but it thrilled her.
‘Are my parents home?’ she asked the butler.
He didn’t challenge her claim to be there and instead turned and led her and Valentin to the drawing room.
‘I’ll let the Madame and Monsieur know you are home,’ he said. ‘Shall I organize refreshments for you and your… friend?’
Annalise nodded and the butler left them alone in the room. She indulged herself in casually looking around. The room was awash with beautiful regency furniture. Expensive artwork adorned the walls. The sofa that she and Valentin sunk down onto was plush and expensive. Her parents had untold wealth. Probably more money than they knew what to do with. Annalise wondered where this wealth had come from.
She had a flashback moment. A man and a woman arguing. Mère et Père.
‘We’ll lose everything!’ her father said.
‘We’re talking about sacrificing our child!’ her mother, Estelle D’Aragon, said.
Estelle had crie
d then. But she’d let him do it anyway, and only a few short hours later, Annalise was on her way to Paris to begin her training.
I was called Zaphire.
‘Zuria? Are you all right?’ Valentin asked.
Annalise smiled at him. His eyes were wide as he looked at her, and Annalise knew he was confused by her behaviour. She was different from her sister, after all.
Estelle and Anton D’Aragon came into the room. Neither of them tried to hug her. Annalise didn’t know how to feel about that: on the one side something inside her craved it, on the other the idea disgusted her. They were older versions of her memory of them, but essentially the same pompous father and the same weak-as-water mother. Annalise despised them.
It was a strange encounter; one Annalise would remember years later when she was faced with a similar decision to let one of her own daughters go to Beech’s house in England.
Her parents didn’t recognize her; they accepted Annalise as the daughter they’d brought up: it spoke volumes about the relationship they’d had for the past few years with Zuria. Annalise knew there must be differences, there had to be. Zuria would have affectations that Annalise didn’t. And what of the local dialect? Had Zuria rubbed off all those edges as she’d built her career in Paris? Or was she so estranged that her parents didn’t really know her at all?
‘This is Valentin,’ Annalise said. ‘We’re getting married.’
Anton’s disdain for Valentin became obvious as he remained standing and glared at the man.
‘Zuria, you know what I told you,’ Anton said.
‘Anton…’ her mother said. ‘Can’t you see she’s in love…?’
‘She gives up on this, or she’s cut from my will!’ Anton said.
Annalise found herself frowning. Was this the problem? Her parents didn’t like Valentin as a prospect? Why?
‘You’re a grown woman. You can make your own decisions,’ Valentin said. ‘Let’s go…’
He stood and took her hand but she stopped him.
‘Let’s talk later,’ Annalise said. ‘Leave me with them. I can fix this.’
Valentin looked worried but he did as she asked. She walked him to the door.
‘I’ll come to you later,’ she said.
True to her word, she found Valentin again that night. By then her parents were no more: a freak accident that brought the real Zuria back to Toulouse and within easy reaching distance of Annalise.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Neva
Present day
The shutters are closed and the room is in darkness. Neva stretches out her hand and searches for the light switch by the door. In a glare of illumination, the room lights up. Neva stops in the doorway, shocked by what she sees: a child’s room fully preserved from the day she left it.
Except for the pictures.
Photographs cover one entire wall interspersed with newspaper clippings, all of which show details of times and places that Neva remembers. Kills. Her kills. On a small patch on another wall, Neva sees the death shots – pictures she took and sent to her handler as proof that she’d completed each job. That handler had always been Tracey and so she knows she had to have passed them on to Annalise.
Neva walks further into the room, distracted by the graveyard of toys that are covered with a thick layer of dust. There is a child’s bed, turned down ready for use, and a small moth-eaten pile of clothing waiting on top of the dresser for their tiny owner to return.
Memories hit her like a bolt of lightning in the chest. Her heart hurts: a dull homesick longing. She runs her hand over the musty fur of a once-loved teddy, remembering it clutched in her arms as she lay in the tiny bed, looking up at that one person she most trusted. Mother.
Rest, my little one.
A crack inside her brings her to her knees. Neva doesn’t notice the dust that puffs up into the air as the wrenching pain of leaving Mother and Fleur hits her again.
And Mother’s words. ‘She’s only a baby. Be kind to her, please…’
It was the moment she first saw Tracey. Thereafter, Fae died and Neva was born. A child’s life and destiny were forever changed.
‘I’m Fae,’ she says. And the crack in her sanity widens. ‘No. I’m Neva.’
The room around her swirls and writhes as Neva tears herself from one identity to another in bursts of cohesive recollection. Layer upon layer of memories fall back into place. One moment she’s playing in this very room, the next she’s honing her gymnastics skills in the kill house. Each memory overlap blurs together, as she grows and changes under Tracey’s direction. A vision of Fae in the château grounds, holding her mother’s hand, erases Neva. While in another moment, Neva plunging her knife into Kurt, eradicates Fae. Over and over, memories and moments pour into Neva’s conscious mind, dragged as they are from her subconscious. Until, unable to take in any more, her mind short circuits and Neva breaks.
Collapsing forward onto the neglected carpet, Neva’s mind shuts down, plummeting her into welcome darkness until her memories can reshape and find a place to hold it all within.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Annalise
As she lies on the bed, Annalise continues to think back to her early days at the château.
On the night she killed her parents Annalise had made sure that the château staff had seen ‘Zuria’ leave. By then Annalise had established her knowledge of the place and knew exactly how to get inside again without being seen. She’d returned later with another assassin she knew. This man helped her heft her drugged parents into her father’s Bentley. Disguised as her mother and father, they’d driven the car from the property, making sure the security guard saw them leave. It was late, but no one questioned it.
After that, rigging the car crash, along with the explosion of the petrol tank, had all been easy.
Annalise paid her colleague off: a silence she later made permanent when the man wasn’t expecting it, and then she went to Valentin. He would be her alibi in the coming days.
On hearing of her parents’ sudden death, Zuria returned to Toulouse. Annalise had used her sources to learn of the girl’s movements and so she was ready and waiting when the girl arrived at the château.
She waited in one of the unused rooms while Zuria settled back in at home. And because she didn’t want her contacting Valentin, she cut the phone line to stop her using it. It would be a few days before the telephone company would come out and fix it and so this bought her all the time she needed. She let Zuria make all of the funeral arrangements and deal with the invitations, all information that would have been challenging for Annalise to deal with, as she knew so little about her parents and their family and friends.
Then, one night, when all of the staff had retired, she went into Zuria’s room and killed her. It wasn’t messy but it was strange: looking at Zuria was like looking at the mirror image of herself. And as she pressed the plush pillow down on Zuria’s face, it felt as though she was killing herself.
Zuria was very underweight and it wasn’t too difficult for Annalise to move her body, especially with Annalise’s lifetime of training and fitness. She was strong, because she had to be. So, she’d carried Zuria over her shoulder, out into the vineyard. Always prepared, Annalise had left herself a shovel and she spent the next few hours digging a deep grave under the grapevines.
When she finished this labour, she pushed the lifeless body of Zuria into the hole and covered her over. Patting down the earth to make it appear undisturbed.
Muddy and tired, she returned to the château.
In Zuria’s bathroom Annalise took a shower, washing away the death along with the mud. Afterwards, she dressed in Zuria’s clothing. She sat at her dressing table, combing out her wet hair as she familiarized herself more with Zuria’s life by trying her beauty products.
Eventually, growing tired, Annalise got into the bed her sister had died in. She turned off the light and slept, taking on in this one evening the life and identity of her sister.
Just one week after she arrived in Toulouse, Annalise’s life had changed: she became Zuria, the heir to the D’Aragon fortune. The irony of it didn’t escape her that this same money had been given to her parents to buy Annalise from them.
Annalise married Valentin soon after her parents’ funeral. He never asked her about Zuria, but she knew that he suspected that she wasn’t really her. By then they were lovers in more than just words. It didn’t change Annalise’s world too much, but gave her a home to come back to after her kills as she continued to work for the Network, her absence from the château explained as modelling assignments.
She thought she could juggle it all. Then she received a message from Beech asking her to be the mother of a child for the Network. She refused. She was pregnant at the time and by then knew that she was having twins. She’d promised herself she would never give either of them up, and she wouldn’t have, but for Tracey.
Though Beech had taken her refusal in good spirit, eighteen months later Valentin was killed as he drove from the château to Toulouse. It appeared to be a tragic accident, Annalise never knew for sure, but she’d suspected that Beech had discovered she’d taken over Zuria’s life, and punished her for it.
Annalise understood vengeance as much as she did murder. That was why she’d triggered Neva’s first break, knowing that her daughter would exact her revenge. And she had executed Tracey magnificently.
Annalise was prepared for Neva to come after her too one day, which was why her contingency also included a way to bring her daughter back home in mind and body.
But then, Annalise hadn’t banked on Fleur breaking down like she had. Annalise doesn’t know why or how this has happened.
In the bathroom, Annalise removes the facemask and slips on a new brilliant turquoise kaftan. The comfortable clothing looks wonderful with her white hair.
Kill a Spy: The House of Killers Page 28