Chapter 13
I laid awake on the soft mattress in Cassian’s guest room, staring at the ceiling. Aziel was safe. My wounds were clean. But my chest still ached.
And I whispered to myself in the dark.
“I didn’t escape to survive. I escaped to win. I need to be stronger–not for me. For Aziel. I know Hakeem will do everything in his power to drag me back again.” I touched the edge of the bandage. “But this time, I’m not the girl who begged to be loved.”
I closed my eyes.
“I’m the woman who’s gonna make him regret ever raising his hand.”
It’s been a week of staying here on the island… My wounds are healing now and the bruises are fading slowly but steadily and the nightmares still come but I don’t wake up screaming anymore.
Cassian’s people are kind. They don’t ask questions and they don’t flinch when they see the scars. The chef even lets Aziel “help” with the bread dough in the mornings and Cassian made sure his room had glow–in–the–dark stars on the ceiling because Aziel said he liked sleeping under the sky.
Me? I’ve just been trying to remember how to exist in a body that doesn’t feel hunted every second.
One morning, Cassian sat across from me at breakfast and pushed a leather folder toward me. “These are your new IDs. Every document you’ll need for a fresh start. Diplomatic access, forged citizenships, black–market legal immunity in six countries, and a clean record scrubbed down to the marrow.”
I stared at the folder but didn’t reach for it.
He leaned back, eyes unreadable. “There’s something else. An option. Not required. Just… offered.”
I raised a brow. “What option?”
He hesitated a little. Then said it.
“Changing your face. I know it sounds extreme but the bounty they’ve put on your head- it’s not something small, Harmony. You walk into any country with that face, and someone will come for you. With a gun. With a needle. Or worse.”
My breath caught.
My face. The same face Hakeem used to call ‘his masterpiece.‘ The one Margaret mimicked down to the lip shade and lashes. The one plastered all over underworld data Ions as the woman who humiliated the Mastersons in front of the world
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logs as the woman who humiliated the Mastersons in front of the world.
Cassian’s voice softened. “I got a guy. He doesn’t operate for money, only favors. But he owes me. We can do this here. Quiet. Safe. It won’t just hide you, Harmony. It’ll free you.”
I didn’t answer at first.
I just looked out the window where Aziel was chasing butterflies barefoot and laughing.
Then I nodded. “Yes. Let’s do it.”
And he didn’t question it.
—
The procedure was rough. Months of healing. Bandages. Pressure masks. It hurt more than I expected, but it was a different kind of pain. One that meant rebirth. Not punishment. The day the surgeon cleared me for full mirror viewing, I almost couldn’t breathe.
Cassian handed it to me in silence.
And when I saw her, when I saw me…I broke.
She wasn’t perfect. She had unfamiliar angles and eyes that weren’t quite mine. But she was untouched by Hakeem. Unbruised by his love. Unclaimed by his ownership.
I cried so hard Cassian had to sit me down. I couldn’t even speak for a while.
He knelt beside me and said, “You’re still you, Harmony. This face doesn’t erase the pain, but it ends the obsession. You’re invisible to the men who wanted you chained. Now you get to choose who sees you.”
I wiped my eyes and whispered, “I feel like I buried her. The woman he broke.”
Cassian nodded. “Good. Now it’s time to build the woman he can’t touch.”
—
After that, things changed.
Cassian started training me every morning.
Combat drills before sunrise. Target shooting before lunch. Hacking tutorials in the basement with his tech guy after dinner. I learned how to shut down a security system in under ninety seconds and how to lie with my eyes and voice at the same time.
Then came the hardest part…public speaking. He sat me down and made me talk like I wasn’t scared of the world seeing me.
“You want power?” he said. “Then speak like you own the room. Make them listen. Make them forget you were ever prey.”
And slowly, I stopped being afraid of my own voice.
Cassian watched me one night as I broke apart a glock and reassembled it faster than the instructor.
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instructor.
ཅས་་ད༦ པ་་༦ ད་“ཟློ
I་༦ སPས༔ ་ པ པྱ་པཅད་ ཕ་་
0 X
–
……་༦
Then he smiled and said, “Survival isn’t soft, Harmony. It’s smart. Don’t waste your pain. Use it. Mold it. Turn it into power.”
And I did.
Every scar, every sob I had to swallow, every scream I buried…I turned them into armor. Because I didn’t escape just to hide.
I escaped to make sure no one like Hakeem Masterson could ever do this to another girl again.
And next time he sees me?
He won’t recognize me. But he’ll remember me.
And now?
Cassian gave me a new name today. Celeste Aragon. He said it while handing me a manila folder stamped with gold letters and biometric IDs. “Clean slate. No past. No trace. This name can get you into any boardroom in Geneva and out of any checkpoint in South America,” he said, watching my reaction like he wasn’t just handing me a new life.
I stared at it for a while before whispering, “Celeste…”
He nodded once. “Celeste Aragon is untouchable. She was raised in Luxembourg. Educated in Singapore. Speaks five languages. Background in humanitarian law and diplomatic negotiation. She never cried over a man. She never bled in someone else’s house. She doesn’t even know who Harmony Masterson is.”
I looked up at him and said, “But I do. I still feel her in my bones.”
Cassian leaned in, gentle but firm. “Then make her your ghost, Harmony. Let her haunt the people who thought they buried her. Let Celeste be the one who turns their legacy to ash.”
So I did.
Every day, I trained my voice to match the cadence of an international lawyer. I practiced my posture in front of a mirror, correcting every slouch, every trace of the girl who used to shrink when Hakeem raised his voice. Cassian’s team grilled me with fake interrogations, rapid–fire questioning in multiple accents, timed entry through simulated border control. If the scanner twitched so much, we reprogrammed. We reset. We kept going.
