My Boyfriend Came Back as a Different Man

The next time I saw Leopold Sanchez, it was at the hotel front desk.

He walked in with a woman on his arm, slid two IDs across the counter, and grabbed three boxes of condoms in the same motion.

One luxury suite. Ring these up together.

He dipped his head, murmuring something low and sweet that sent the woman in his arms into a fit of giggles, her body trembling against his.

When he glanced up, his gaze landed on my face and lingered.

"Have I seen you somewhere before?"

The hand holding his ID trembled, just slightly.

The woman in his arms looked like she'd swallowed something sour.

"I don't think so. I just have one of those faces people always think they recognize me."

I lowered my head, finished the check-in, and handed the IDs back.

The name on the card read Winston Sanchez. I'd never met him. I didn't know him.

The man I'd dated for five years the one who swore he'd marry me or no one was Leopold Sanchez, Winston's primary personality.

He hadn't surfaced in three years.

Winston had barely been upstairs when the front desk phone rang. His room.

My coworker picked up, then passed the call to me.

"Send up a bathrobe."

A pause.

"Silk."

That familiar voice filled my ear again, and my heart stumbled over its own rhythm.

I buried the storm inside me and answered evenly.

"Of course."

After I hung up, my coworker nudged me with her elbow, grinning as she launched into the latest gossip.

"Sibyl Henson, I think he's got his eye on you."

"That's the CEO of Grandview Corporation! Net worth in the billions, gorgeous and loaded. One night and you'd walk away with a six-figure tip!"

"Come on, Sibyl. You're not even a little tempted?"

I shook my head. "That kind of luck doesn't happen to girls like me."

I turned and headed to housekeeping, where I pulled two silk robes from the shelf.

"I heard Mr. Sanchez was overseas getting treatment for years. What do you think was wrong with him?"

"He's so young. You don't think it's, you know... a performance issue?"

My coworker covered her mouth, laughing without a shred of restraint.

"Keep gossiping about guests and see what happens when the manager overhears. That's coming straight out of your paycheck."

I slipped the robes into a hotel garment bag, gave her a look, and stepped into the elevator.

The day Leopold told me about his condition, he held me so tight he wouldn't let go.

The way he clung to me, I thought the world was ending tomorrow.

"Leo... what's wrong?"

In that cramped studio apartment, I wrapped my arms around him just as fiercely. Our breathing tangled together in the narrow space between us.

"Sibyl, do you know what dissociative identity disorder is? I have another personality. His name is Winston."

"He's been getting stronger lately. He keeps trying to take over."

"I... might have to go away for a while. For treatment. And if it doesn't work" His voice caught. "You'll never see me again."

I was stunned. And somehow, at the same time, completely calm.

I looked at him without a word. "Will you come back?"

A tear slipped from the corner of my eye.

Leopold held me gently, soothing me, whispering reassurances against my skin. He pressed his lips to the tear and kissed it away.

"Sibyl, if I win this time, I'll come back and marry you."

"I have to go."

"My flight's at nine. If they can't find me, they'll trace my location and find you instead."

The first pale light of dawn crept across the sky. Leopold held me from behind, arms locked around me like he was afraid I'd dissolve.

I cried until my voice gave out. I couldn't even form the words to ask him to stay. All I could do was watch that thin wooden door close behind him.

Leopold Sanchez vanished from my world.

That same day, Grandview Corporation announced that its heir had gone abroad for medical treatment.

Three years. Both Winston and Leopold might as well have disappeared off the face of the earth.

I was still waiting. My friends couldn't stand it they cursed him on my behalf, branded him a man who'd abandoned the woman who loved him.

"Exactly! He was talking out of his ass."

"If he really was the CEO of Grandview Corporation, he probably got bored and went back to marry some heiress. Dual personality? Who does he think he's fooling?"

"Sibyl, stop waiting for him. There are plenty of men out there. I'll set you up!"

It wasn't like I hadn't tried seeing other men. Every single attempt ended in failure.

Leopold lingered in my mind, clinging to me like a nightmare I couldn't shake.

I taught myself to use the internet, scouring the news for any trace of him. I found nothing.

The only thing I did find was a brief notice from a few days ago: Leopold Sanchez had legally changed his name. To Winston.

I knew what that meant. That was Leopold's second personality.

But I never expected Winston to show up in front of me, wearing the same face.

The eyes, the mannerisms completely different.

Leopold had been gentle and humble, effortlessly warm. But the man I'd just seen carried a spring breeze in his gaze that seemed approachable on the surface, while underneath, his eyes were still as a frozen lake, radiating a pressure that kept the entire world at arm's length.

I stood outside room 802, drew a deep breath, and knocked.

"Mr. Sanchez, the silk robe you requested is here."

The door opened.

Winston's smiling eyes betrayed nothing. "You're Sibyl Henson?"

"Leopold dated you for five years?"

His gaze swept over me from head to toe, dripping with undisguised contempt as if the relationship were something to be ashamed of.

I didn't want to confirm it. I didn't want to deny it, either.

I just held out the bag, stubborn and steady. "Your silk robe."

My fingers tightened around the handles until my knuckles ached.

I'd never imagined hearing Leopold's name come from Winston's mouth.

If Winston was standing here today, it meant Leopold wasn't coming back.

The promise he'd made that he'd come back and marry me once he'd won had scattered like dust in the wind.

And the man I'd loved and treasured for five years was nowhere to be found.

Winston pointed toward the table inside the room, gesturing for me to bring it in.

I frowned, swallowed my discomfort, and stepped through the door.

The moment I crossed the threshold, a cloying, rotten-sweet smell of wilting flowers hit me full in the face.

A woman lay on the bed, pale thighs dangling bare over the edge, swinging lazily. The floor was littered with used condoms.

"I've set it down for you."

I wanted to leave. Fast. But when I turned, I walked straight into Winston's chest.

"What's the rush?" His voice was low, almost amused.

"I had you in my bed for five years too. Drop the innocent act."

He seized my wrist, his grip so crushing it felt like he could snap the bone.

He wrenched me forward and threw me onto the suite's sofa, pinning me beneath him in one fluid motion. "I've always wondered what is it about you that had him so hooked?"

"Five years with the same woman. He was even willing to try to destroy me for your sake."

"Did he forget who carried him from rock bottom to heir of the Sanchez family? If it weren't for me, he'd have died in that fire eight years ago."

His weight pressed down on me, suffocating and immovable. I thrashed against him, but I couldn't shift him an inch.

"Sibyl, technically, he and I are the same person. Why don't you give me a try?"

The contempt dripping from every word sent rage roaring through my skull.

"You and him are not the same person."

"You never were."

"You think changing Leopold's name to Winston means you can replace him completely?"

I ground the words out through clenched teeth.

Winston's expression darkened instantly. His eyes locked onto mine, sharp as a blade.

"Shut up."

His hand closed around my throat. The air vanished.

"Even if you changed the name..." I choked out, each word scraped raw, "...everyone still knows... you were supposed to be Leopold..."

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?"