My Boyfriend Came Back as a Different Man

The words left my mouth in broken, ragged fragments.

I stopped fighting. I let the weight of the man on top of me pin me down, let his hands close around my throat.

"Mr. Sanchez..."

"Mr. Sanchez, let go of her! If you keep this up, she... she's going to die!"

Tears blurred my vision. Through the haze, I thought I saw Leopold standing in front of me.

He reached out his hand. "Sibyl, don't be afraid."

"Sibyl, I'm back."

A siren wailed somewhere nearby. I felt myself being lifted, carried somewhere.

The first time I met Leopold was during the winter eight years ago.

I had no parents. At eighteen, I followed some people from my village into the city, but an unexpected turn of events landed me in a hostess club.

To make sure I treated the clients well, they beat me and starved me. It was routine.

At my lowest, I crouched behind the hotel kitchen's dumpster, intercepting food before it was thrown out.

"Here, eat this. It's clean."

Leopold appeared on a cold winter night like that one, standing at the back door of the bar across the alley, pressing a piece of bread into my hands.

Later, I learned he was a singer at the bar. He'd slip me food from time to time after that.

The hunger, I could endure.

The beatings, I couldn't.

Eight years ago, on Christmas Eve, my virginity was auctioned off for eighty thousand dollars.

The man who bought me was Leopold.

"Damn. That was literally all the money I had." He clicked his tongue. "Eight grand total. Gone in one night."

In the dim, gaudy haze of the private room, his voice was full of regret and self-pity.

But underneath it, I could hear something else. Happiness.

Leopold scraped together money from somewhere after that and paid another eighty thousand to keep me for a month.

That month was the happiest time of my life.

It was also when I first noticed that Leopold was different from other people.

He often talked to himself in the mirror. His voice would turn harsh, almost vicious, but the moment he turned to face me, he'd become gentle and patient again.

When I woke in the middle of the night, the bed across from mine was empty nine times out of ten.

Eventually, I followed him.

I watched him climb into an expensive black sedan and ride to a place so grand it looked like a palace.

The people there called him "Mr. Sanchez."

At the time, I thought he'd been pretending to be poor to trick me. Like something out of the countless novels I'd read, I thought a prince-falls-for-the-pauper story was playing out in my own life.

Sure enough, when the month was up, the club shut down.

The company that acquired it was called Grandview Corporation. The owner's last name was Sanchez.

Being with Leopold felt like the most natural thing in the world.

He was good to me. So good that I would have given him everything.

Until one night, when Leopold stirred awake in the dark, I reached out and caught his hand.

"Leo, where are you going?"

In the dim light, I saw the look in his eyes as he turned back.

Impatience. Cold detachment.

Those eyes were like a bottomless well, the kind that could swallow a person whole.

I squeezed my eyes shut and pretended to be asleep, mumbling nonsense like I was talking in a dream.

Click. The door closed behind him.

I lay awake the rest of that night, turning that look over and over in my mind. I searched through article after article, page after page, until I was certain: Leopold had dissociative identity disorder.

After that, I started paying attention. I noticed the other personality almost always surfaced in the small hours of the morning.

On the rare occasions he appeared during the day, he carried an aura that screamed stay away. Whenever I sensed it, I found an excuse to make myself scarce.

I told myself that as long as I was careful, as long as I watched closely, Leopold and I could stay together forever.

But slowly, I realized he was disappearing for longer and longer stretches. The time he spent at that grand estate, being "Mr. Sanchez," kept growing.

"Sibyl, he's getting stronger."

"Sibyl, I think I'm disappearing."

In the dream, Leopold stood before me, his face pale as paper. A blinding light pierced through him the next second, and his body shattered into fragments.

"Leopold!"

I screamed myself awake, a dull ache throbbing behind my ribs.

The hospital room was empty. The only sound was my own breathing, short and ragged.

My first day back at work after being discharged, my coworker stared at me with stars practically dancing in her eyes.

"So? So? Tell me everything!"

"Did anything happen between you and Mr. Sanchez? I knew it. I just knew it. He's totally into you."

She chattered away in my ear, trying to pry something out of me.

The memory of Winston pinning me down in that hotel room, his hand around my throat until I couldn't breathe, sent an involuntary shudder through my body.

"Sibyl, you have no idea how panicked he looked carrying you out of the hospital that day!"

She dropped her voice low, doing her best impression of him: "'This is my responsibility. If she doesn't make it, every last one of you is going down with her!'"

She had his mannerisms down to a tee.

I froze.

That didn't sound like something Winston would say.

It sounded more like... Leopold.

Winston had left his number in my phone, but I never reached out. I knew he was waiting.

I was on the night shift that day when Winston checked in again.

This time, he was alone.

He leaned one elbow on the front desk, his long fingers sliding an ID card toward me.

The name on the ID read Leopold Sanchez.

A thunderclap went off inside my skull. My coworker's impression of him echoed back, those words she'd mimicked with such uncanny accuracy.

My gaze snapped up to the man standing in front of me.

"Leo?"