I thought I was the only Julian Pierce, the perfect heir to a billion-dollar empire. Then I met the boy in the gutter who wore my face, and I learned the terrifying difference between a son and a product line: sons are born, but we are made to be replaced.

The heated leather seat of the Bentley warmed my spine, but my blood ran cold the second the traffic light on Fifth Avenue turned red.

It happened in a heartbeat. A microsecond of alignment between two worlds that were never meant to touch.

Outside, the New York winter was brutal, a grey slush that coated the sidewalks and bit into exposed skin. Inside, Vivaldi played softly over the sound system, and the air smelled of my mother’s Chanel No. 5 and the sterile scent of new money.

I looked out the tinted window, bored, adjusting the cuffs of my bespoke prep-school blazer. And there he was.

He was shivering, huddled over a vent near a Starbucks, clutching a cardboard cup like it was the Holy Grail. He looked up just as I looked down.

Time didn’t stop; it shattered.

It was my face.

Not similar. Not reminiscent. It was my face. The same sharp, aristocratic nose that my father prided himself on. The same distinctive heterochromia—one eye icy blue, the other flecked with gold hazel—that had gotten me featured in Teen Vogue’s “Heirs to Watch” list last month. The only difference was the layer of grime, the matted hair, and the jagged scar running down his left cheek.

But it was the expression that froze me. He didn’t look at me with the hunger of the poor staring at the rich. He didn’t hold out a hand for change.

He recoiled.

His eyes went wide, filled with a primal, visceral terror. He mouthed a word I couldn’t hear through the bulletproof glass, but I saw the shape of it perfectly.

You.

“Stop the car,” I whispered.

My driver, heavy-set and paid not to ask questions, hesitated. “Master Julian, your father expects you at the gala in twenty minutes. The traffic is—”

“I said stop the damn car, Arthur!”

I didn’t wait. I popped the lock and shoved the door open, the sudden rush of freezing noise and exhaust fumes slapping me in the face. Horns blared instantly.

“Julian! What are you doing?” my mother shrieked from the backseat, clutching her pearls in a cliché of maternal distress that felt as rehearsed as her smile for the charity cameras.

I ignored her. I scrambled over a pile of dirty snow, ruining my loafers. I ran toward the vent.

But the boy was gone.

In the space of ten seconds, he had vanished into the labyrinth of steam and shadows of the city. All that was left was the crushed cardboard cup, steam still rising from the dregs of coffee, and a strange symbol scratched into the grime of the concrete wall with a rock.

A Roman numeral.

IV.

The obsession started quietly, like a virus in the bloodstream.

For three days, I didn’t sleep. I sat in my room—a sterile suite in our penthouse overlooking Central Park that felt less like a bedroom and more like a museum exhibit for “The Perfect Son”—and replayed that face in my mind.

I had always been an only child. That was the narrative. The Vanderbilt-level narrative. The Golden Boy. The Prodigy. I played cello at concert level by ten. I spoke three languages by twelve. I was being groomed to take over Pierce Industries before I could legally drink.

“Mom,” I asked at breakfast on the fourth day. The dining table was long enough to land a plane on. She was at the other end, dissecting a grapefruit. “Did you ever have… miscarriages? Or a twin that didn’t make it?”

Her knife paused. Just for a fraction of a second. A glitch in the matrix. Then she smiled, that perfect, porcelain veneer. “Julian, darling, you know you’re a miracle. One of a kind. Why on earth would you ask that?”

“I saw someone. Someone who looked like me.”

“The city is full of people, Julian. Genes are funny things. Eat your protein.”

She was lying. I knew it not by a twitch or a sweat—she was too good for that—but by the fact that she immediately signaled the maid to clear the table, despite having barely touched her food.

I hired a PI that afternoon. Not a corporate one my father used, but a shady guy I found on a Reddit thread for “untraceable services.” I gave him the location, the description, and five grand from my emergency cash stash.

Two days later, he sent me a grainy photo and an address. An abandoned subway tunnel in the Lower East Side.

I went at midnight. I told my parents I was staying at Preston’s house to study for the SATs.

The tunnels were a different planet. They smelled of rust, urine, and ancient dust. I wore a hoodie and ripped jeans, trying to blend in, but I knew I stuck out. I walked with the posture of someone who had never feared for his next meal.

I found him by a fire in a rusted barrel. He was alone, whittling a piece of wood with a shard of glass.

When I stepped into the light, he didn’t run this time. He just sighed, a sound so weary it made him sound eighty years old.

“Took you long enough,” he rasped. His voice was mine, but deeper, scratchier. Like my voice if I’d spent five years screaming into a pillow.

I stood there, paralyzed. Up close, the resemblance was horrifying. It was like looking into a funhouse mirror that reflected your soul’s decay.

“Who are you?” I demanded, my voice shaking. “Are you my brother?”

He laughed. It was a dry, barking sound. He stood up, and I saw he was limping. His left leg was twisted slightly inward.

“Brother,” he mocked. “That’s cute. Is that what they tell the new models now? That you’re a ‘miracle’?”

“I don’t understand.”

He stepped closer. The firelight danced in his mismatched eyes—my eyes. He reached out a dirty finger and poked my chest. “You’re Five. V. The Roman numeral five.”

“I’m Julian,” I said, stepping back.

“Yeah. We’re all Julian,” he spat. “I was Julian. Before me, there was the one who died of the heart defect. And the first one… well, he didn’t even make it out of the nursery.”

My stomach turned over. “You’re insane.”

“Am I?” He pulled down the collar of his raggy oversized coat.

There, branded onto the base of his neck, faded but legible, was a small, neat tattoo.

IV.

I reached up instinctively to my own neck. Smooth skin. Nothing there.

“You won’t find it,” he said, reading my mind. “They stopped branding us after me. Too hard to explain at the country club if someone sees it. They switched to microchips. Check your right shoulder blade. feels like a grain of rice.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. I had a ‘cyst’ removed there when I was seven. Or so I was told. Or… did I still have it? I pressed my hand against my shoulder. A tiny, hard lump. I had always ignored it.

“No,” I whispered. “My parents… they love me.”

“They love the result,” the boy—Number Four—said. “They love the grades. The cello recitals. The perfect image. But you know the pressure, don’t you? The way Father looks at you when you get an A-minus? That coldness? That’s not disappointment, Five. That’s quality control assessment.”

He circled me, limping. “I was perfect too, you know. Top of the class. Captain of the fencing team. Then the accident happened.” He pointed to his twisted leg. “Car crash. Doctors said I’d have a permanent limp. Couldn’t play polo anymore. Couldn’t walk the runway at the debutante balls.”

He leaned in close, his breath smelling of stale coffee.

“A limping Julian Pierce isn’t a Julian Pierce. So, I ‘ran away.’ That’s the official story. The truth is, they drove me out here. Gave me a choice: disappear, or disappear permanently. They had you ready in the incubators three months later.”

“Incubators?” The word felt foreign, sci-fi, impossible.

“Clones? Designer babies? I don’t know the tech. I just know the cycle.” He grabbed my shoulders. His grip was iron-strong. “Listen to me. You have to run. You have to get out.”

“Why?” I choked out. “I’m perfect. I haven’t failed them.”

Four looked at me with pity. “Because you’re aging. You’re seventeen. That’s when the genetic degradation usually starts to show. Why do you think I have the limp? It wasn’t just the crash. My bones… they got brittle. Why do you think the first one died? Heart failure. We aren’t built to last, Julian. We’re built to peak and then be replaced.”

He let me go. “I saw the new shipment, Five. I watch the house sometimes. I saw the van pull up yesterday. They brought in a toddler. Blonde hair. Mismatched eyes.”

“No,” I gasped.

“He’s Six,” Four whispered. “Which means your expiration date is coming up. Have you felt tired lately? Headaches? Nosebleeds?”

I froze. I had a nosebleed this morning. I blamed the dry winter air.

“Get out,” Four said, shoving me toward the tunnel exit. “Go to Europe. Change your name. Dye your hair. Just don’t go back to that house.”

I stumbled out of the subway station, my mind fracturing. It couldn’t be true. It was a psychotic break. The boy was a lunatic lookalike. A coincidence.

But my hand kept drifting to my shoulder blade. To the grain of rice.

I hailed a cab. “Park Avenue,” I told the driver.

I had to know. I had to prove him wrong.

The penthouse was quiet when I entered. It was 2:00 AM. My parents would be asleep. I crept down the hallway, past the gallery of portraits.

I stopped.

I looked at the portrait of “Julian” at age five. Then the portrait of “Julian” at age ten.

I looked closely. The earlobes. In the five-year-old portrait, the earlobes were attached. In the ten-year-old portrait—my portrait—they were detached.

A genetic impossibility.

I felt the vomit rise in my throat. I backed away, turning toward the library, needing to find a safe, dark place to think.

The library door was cracked open. A slice of golden light spilled onto the floor. I heard my father’s voice. Low. Business-like.

“The transition needs to be smooth, Martha. The shareholders are watching.”

“I know,” my mother’s voice replied. She sounded sad, but in the way one is sad about a broken vase. “It’s a shame. This one had such a lovely temperament. Better than Number Four, certainly.”

“His cognitive scores are plateauing,” Father said. “And I saw the nosebleed tissues in his trash. The degradation is accelerating. He won’t make it through the first year of Harvard.”

“Is Number Six ready?”

“Ready and waiting. We’ll stage the ‘boating accident’ next weekend at the Hamptons house. Closed casket.”

My knees hit the floor. Not metaphorically. Physically. I collapsed against the wainscoting, making a dull thud.

The voices inside stopped instantly.

“Julian?” my father’s voice called out. Not angry. Just… alert.

I scrambled up, adrenaline flooding my system. I had to run. I had to find Four. We could leave together. We could—

The library door swung open.

My father stood there. He was wearing his silk robe, a glass of scotch in his hand. He looked down at me, his expression unreadable. Not fearful. Not guilty.

Just disappointed.

“Oh, Julian,” he sighed, swirling his scotch. “You always were the curious one. That was your flaw.”

“Stay back,” I warned, backing toward the front door. “I know. I know about Four. I know about Six.”

My mother appeared behind my father. She was holding a toddler. A beautiful, sleepy boy with blonde hair and one blue eye, one hazel eye.

The toddler looked at me. He smiled. It was my smile.

“Don’t make this difficult, darling,” my mother said softly, bouncing the baby—my replacement—on her hip. “Arthur is waiting by the elevator.”

I turned to the heavy oak front door. I grabbed the handle.

Locked.

I heard the heavy, rhythmic click of my father’s dress shoes on the marble floor behind me. Click. Click. Click.

“You know,” Father said, his voice getting closer, calm and reasonable, “Four ran away. We let him go because he was damaged goods. But you… you’re still valuable, Julian. Organ donors are so hard to come by with this specific blood type.”

I spun around, my back against the locked door.

My father smiled. It was the last thing I saw before the needle in Arthur’s hand pierced my neck.

“Sleep tight, Number Five,” Father whispered. “Your brother needs a heart.”

The darkness took me, and my last thought was of the boy in the gutter. He wasn’t the unlucky one.

He was the only one of us who was free.