The Substitute Bride's Bargain
Today was supposed to be my sister's wedding day.
Instead, I'm the one walking down the aisle.
The man waiting for me is a billionaire tycoon, cold, untouchable, and infamous for crushing anyone who stands in his way.
Power bends to his will, money erases his mistakes, and emotions are a weakness he never allows himself to feel. I was never meant to marry him. I'm only here because my sister ran away… and if he discovers I'm a substitute bride, my family will be ruined overnight.
So when the officiant asks if I accept him, my lips tremble as I whisper, "I do."
His gaze locks onto mine, dark and possessive.
"You're mine now, kitten," he murmurs, as if sealing my fate.
The nightmare begins that moment.
I manage to escape his bed on our wedding night, hiding behind excuses and fragile lies. But the days that follow terrify me more.
The walk-in closet is filled with clothes in my sister's favorite colors.
The dining table overflows with dishes she loved.
He researched her. Memorized her.
Or so I thought.
Then he slides a peanut butter bagel toward me, my sister's favorite.
I'm allergic.
I glance up, my pulse roaring in my ears, only to find his expression unreadable. Calculating. Watching.
Has he already realized I'm not the woman he married? And if this ruthless billionaire uncovers the truth… will he destroy me?
Because marrying him was never part of my future, and falling for him might be the most dangerous mistake of all.
อ่าน
Chapter: Chapter 61: Always MeantThe light came through the studio window at seven fourteen.Elena knew the time not because she had looked at a clock but because she had been in this room enough mornings now to know the light by its angle, the particular quality of it at this hour, the way it arrived not all at once but incrementally, the room revealing itself in slow degrees, the canvases on the walls emerging from the dark the way familiar things emerged, without surprise, with the quiet recognition of things that had always been there.She was already at the easel.She had come up before he woke, had moved through the penthouse in the early stillness with her tea in both hands, the good tea, the Earl Grey he had stocked without being asked, which she no longer found remarkable because it had become one of the ordinary facts of her life, like the angle of the light and the weight of a good brush and the specific sound the studio door made when it opened.She had set the mug on the work table. She had stood before
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-05-26
Chapter: Chapter 60: The StudioHe said it the way he said most things that mattered — without preamble, without the architecture of announcement.They were still at the table. The coffee had gone cold. The file lay open between them, the rendering of her grandmother's hotel facing upward, the afternoon light moving across it the way afternoon light moved across things it had no opinion about. She had her hand in his. The ring was on her finger. The yes was in the room with them, settled now, no longer something being carried toward a destination but something that had arrived.He looked at her for a moment with that particular quality of attention, the kind that meant he had made a decision and was standing on the other side of it, in the clear air after the deciding."Come with me," he said.Not a question. Not a command either. The offering of it, the same register as sit, as come in, as all the small invitations that had accumulated across the mornings until they became a language she knew how to read.She follo
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-05-26
Chapter: Chapter 59: The Question of PermanentShe called him on Sunday morning at nine seventeen.She had been awake since six, which was not unusual for her, the early light came through the east window at an angle that had been waking her for nine years regardless of what was happening in the rest of her life, indifferent to the nature of the day it was opening. She had lain in it for a while. Had watched the ceiling do the thing it did when the light moved across it at that hour, the slow brightening of it, the room revealing itself incrementally the way rooms did before you decided to be fully present in them.She had gotten up. Made the good tea. Stood at the kitchen window with the mug in both hands and looked at the tree, which was further along than yesterday more of the tentative green at the branch ends, more committed to what it was doing. She had stood there until the mug was empty.Then she had gone to the table and sat down with the phone.She had not written anything. She had thought, during the week, that she woul
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-05-26
Chapter: Chapter 58: The ReckoningCatherine had arranged it for nine o'clock, which meant Diane arrived at eight fifty-two and stood at the window of the small conference room on the thirty-fourth floor, not Alexander's floor, not the one with the view she had always preferred and waited with the posture of a woman who had not yet been told what she was waiting to hear.Alexander came in at nine exactly.He set nothing on the table. He did not sit. He stood across from her with his hands at his sides and the door open behind him and looked at her the way he had learned, in the past several weeks, to look at things that required his full attention before they required his words.She turned from the window."You look tired," she said. It was the version of hello she had always given him when she wanted to name something without naming it."I want to say something to you," he said. "And then I want you to have some time with it before you respond."Something moved across her face — not fear, not quite. The thing adjacent
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-05-26
Chapter: Chapter 57: The Press ConferenceShe found out the way she had been finding everything out that week, through her phone, through the corner of the internet she had organized her attention around since Sunday, since the annulment filing appeared in the dry language of a legal record and she had read her own name in it and set the laptop down.The alert came at nine forty-three on Thursday morning.Blackwell Capital chairman to address press. 11 AM.She read it. Set the phone face-down. Picked it up and read it again. Sat with the feeling of something arriving whose shape she had not anticipated, the particular recognition that preceded understanding, that said this before it said what this is.Eleven AM was eighty-three minutes away.The week had come in layers. Her mother calling twice daily with the efficiency of a woman who had a plan. Her father's new voice, the frightened one she had never been allowed to hear and then the return of the ordinary voice, the one she had been cataloguing for thirty-six years, saying
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-05-22
Chapter: Chapter 56: The Empty ApartmentShe took the subway.She had not thought, when she pushed through the stairwell door and crossed the lobby and came out onto the pavement in the cold, that she would take the subway, had not thought specifically about the mechanism of returning, the particular logistics of getting from the building that had been the apartment for thirty-seven days to the apartment that had been hers before the thirty-seven days. She had thought about the note on the counter and the five sentences and the wardrobe she had not taken anything from. She had thought about the yes she was carrying. She had not thought about the subway.But the subway was what she took.She walked three blocks in the cold with the bag on her shoulder and the grey sweater not enough for the temperature of a Saturday afternoon in this season and she descended the stairs and she swiped the card that was in her wallet, her card, the MetroCard she had been refilling since she was nineteen and had never stopped refilling, that had
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-05-17
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