Chapter 1

“Do you think the dress would fit?”

Emily stared at her parent in horror as they pulled out the wedding gown specifically made for her elder sister out of the closet and tossed it in her direction, staring at her like they were trying to visually size her up.

The entire Stark family had been thrown into chaos and the worrying about a wedding gown fitting was supposed to be the least of their worries. The very least of their worries.

“Have you both lost your minds?” Emily immediately rose to her feet, unable to tolerate the madness anymore. “What are you talking about? You should be looking for Stacy not doing this. It’s her wedding not mine!”

She could swear she was losing her mind. For the past couple of weeks, it had been already decided that her elder sister, Stacy Stark was to get married. Both families had been preparing for the wddding including Emily herself and when the day of the wedding finally came, her sister was declared missing.

“Your sister isn’t missing, honey,” her mum placed a hand on her shoulder to give it a light squeeze. “She ran away from home. She left a note. She does not want to get married.”

“What?”

It was a lot to take in at once but with deep breaths, Emily could finally see herself understanding what was going on.

Her sister had ran off. On her wedding day.

The wedding was never her decision but regardless, she had accepted to it. It was one of the results of the numerous bad decisions their father had made- he had borrowed a ridiculously huge amount of money from a famous billionaire and since he had nothing to use as a collateral, he just his daughter.

And when it was finally time to pay up, he had no dime to spare, leaving him with no choice but to agree to getting his eldest daughter married to the billionaire’s son.

“No,” Emily shook her head. “Fine, let’s agree Stacy ran off because of this. Shouldn’t you be worried about her? Shouldn’t that be enough reason for you to cancel all of these? To tell the man you can’t get your daughter married to him cause she fleed?”

“Don’t you know your sister, Emily?” Her mum sighed and she shook her head. “She won’t return home. She ran away on purpose and won’t return until she sees there’s no possibility of her ever getting again.”

Emily sighed too. Truthfully, she barely knew her sister. Though they grew up together, they fell out along the line. Their ideologies and view of things were miles apart and to make it worse, they decided to attend college in different cities making them only see each other at most, twice a year.

“Albert would never understand,” her father spoke up. “He would think I’m doing it on purpose. He would think I’m trying to not keep my own side of the deal.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before borrowing such a huge sum of money from him,” Emily was irked. “Maybe then you wouldn’t be in such a puddle right now.”

“I did it to feed and keep this family together!”

“Well that’s going so great, isn’t it?”

“Emily,” her mother hissed to caution her. “Mind your words. This isn’t your father’s fault.”

“Of course,” she rolled her eyes. “Definitely.”

Compared to her sister, she had always had a sharper tongue. She found it impossible to stay still while things were going wrong. Especially when it was things a couple of words could fix.

“Try to understand us, Emily,” her mother continued. “You have no idea how powerful the Rueben family are. They would have all of us locked up if we are unable to keep to our side of the deal.”

“You both can’t be serious.”

“Please,” she was literally pleading. “All they know is one of our daughters would be getting married. They don’t know which one of them would be getting married so no one would notice anything if you stand on the alter instead of your sister. Please do this for our family, Emily.”

“I am not Stacy who would listen and do whatever you ask her to,” Emily immediately replied. “I am a final year student in college with plans for own life too. I have a freaking boyfriend too! And here you are telling to toss all of that into the garbage just to get married to some billionaire?! You’ve lost your minds, I repeat.”

“Emily-“

“What this family needs is someone with balls,” she cut her mum off. “Someone to tell this billionaire family my sister ran off and as a result, there won’t be any wedding taking place. And if both of you are unable to do that, you’ll leave me no choice but to go ahead and tell them myself.”

“Emily-“

Ignoring the calls from both her mum and dad, she stormed out of the room and headed downstairs to the hall the wedding was supposed to take place.

She got there, her eyes immediately roaming the hall. It was heavily decorated and she could only imagine how much money the billionaire family invested in the wedding hall.

If they had so much money to spare why not use it to pay their debts instead of forcing girls that didn’t want to get married into unpleasant marriages.

“Albert,” she muttered as she continued to look around. “Albert Rueben.”

She had absolutely no idea what both the billionaire and his son looked like as she had barely paid any interest to the whole wedding and its plans since it began. But now that she was the substitute to walk down the isle, she knew she needed to find the man behind it all and talk some sense into his head.

There were barely guests around yet so she could guess anyone around was an important member of the family. Using that information as a clue, she looked around the hall again, her eyes immediately landing on a fairly aged man.

“That must be him.”

Without hesitation, she took to her feet and began walking towards him. He looked like he was in his early fifties and from his outfit, she could tell he was one of those extremely rich people who loved to flaunt their riches.

“Excuse me?” She got his attention the second she was in front of him. “Are you Albert Rueben?”

He took a sip of the champagne in his hand then stared at her from head to toe. “Yes. Who are you?”

“Emily Stark,” she immediately replied, glad she had found the man behind all of the madness going on. “Stacy Stark’s little sister.”

“Oh!” He seemed a bit excited to see her. “We haven’t met before! Anyways, we’ll do that now that our families are about to be joined. Where’s your sister? Getting ready?”

“To kill herself and cause the biggest drama ever? Yes, definitely.”

“Excuse me?”

Albert immediately turned to his side, signaling to all the men around him to leave. His expression hardened, his grip around the wine glass tightening as he took a step towards Emily. “What in the world did you mean by that?”

There was no need beating around the bush so she went straight to the point. “Mr. Albert Rueben, my sister ran away from home. She doesn’t want this wedding.”

“Emily!” She was interrupted by her mum’s loud squeal as she rushed towards her. “What do you think you are doing?!”

“Telling him the truth.”

“What is going on here?” Albert immediately demanded. “Is she saying the truth? Where’s your daughter? What is to happen to this wedding?”

“Um- she- Stacy is-“

“The wedding would get canceled because there is no bride,” Emily interrupted her dad. “After all, you can’t have the groom get married to himself.”

“Emily! Would you stop talking?!”

“No,” Albert shook his head and let out a light chuckle. “The wedding won’t be getting cancelled. I put so much effort in it. I can’t let all of that go down the drain.”

“What?”

“I see you have quite the tongue,” he took a step closer towards Emily. “You’re confident and outspoken too. I like those qualities.”

“Excuse me?”

“But you should have tried to understand things better,” he continued. “Your parents should have explained things to you better.”

“This isn’t a joke,” his expression changed. “I didn’t borrow your father over ten million dollars to have him tell me a sob story when it was finally time to pay. He didn’t have any problems collecting the money when I lended it to him so why should there be any problems when it’s time to return it?”

“But I understand. Life happens and things go wrong. Which is why there is a collateral. Something to fall back to incase something like this happens. And in your father’s case, his collateral was his daughter. No name, no age- nothing of that sort. Just his daughter.”

Fear immediately gripped Emily as she realized she might have just dug her own grave. She looked at her parents and all they could offer her was apologetic looks.

“A collateral should always exist which is why you exist. You’re the second child. The spare child. The backup in case anything happens to the first.”

“And since the first child has proved to be unavailable to pay her parents’ debt, that leaves us with you. To pay it in her stead.”

“What?” Emily could her voice crack as she let out. “I can’t get married instead of her! I’m not- I can’t- It can’t happen!”

“Don’t be silly. You don’t have a choice here.”

“But-“

“I’m sorry, you do have a choice,” he interrupted her to smile. “You refuse to get married in your place of your sister and as a result, your parent’s debt remains unpaid. And since I’m not a really generous person, I call the police and you and the rest of your family would be thrown into jail until you can miraculously find the ten million dollars to pay me back. Oh and did I forget to add? Your sister that ran away would be found. And would have to not just pay for the money you all owe me, but would have to compensate me for all the stress she put me through. The damages, the expenses incurred on the wedding, the money I’m going to spend in the hospital to recover from this trauma- it’s going to be a lot. To round it up, about thirty million dollars.”

“What?”

“So the choice is yours. Either you get on that alter and get married in place of your sister or you wire thirty million dollars to my account. Right now.”