Chapter 2

The next morning, my employee, Maureen Somner, handed me a document envelope as soon as I stepped into the store. "Beth, someone dropped this off for you this morning."

Frowning, I opened it. It was an offer letter from Fraser Corporation.

Maureen couldn't help but exclaim, "Fraser Corporation? Beth, is it the Fraser Corp. that I'm thinking of?"

"Yeah," I mumbled, looking down at the letter.

"But how do you know—"

I calmly tore the offer into pieces and threw it into the trash. "I dated Clarence Fraser for seven years."

It was a relationship I once believed would end in marriage.

I had just turned 18 when I met him. My mother had died young, and my father was a gambler who ended up in prison, leaving behind a mountain of debt. It was just my grandfather and me, and we were all the other had left in this world.

The day the debt collectors came knocking, I fought them until I was bloody and bruised.

And that was when Clarence appeared. With a cigarette between his lips, he paid off all my debts with a casual wave of his hand. His gaze when he looked at me was unreadable.

"Want to come with me?" he asked. Though his voice was faint, my heart skipped a beat.

Hence, I moved into the Fraser residence, and Grandpa got a new house.

Clarence was a man of few words, and he never said he loved me. Yet he gave me only the best of everything. If my gaze so much as lingered on something for a fraction of a second longer, it would appear in my room the next day.

He also skipped every date his family arranged for him.

When someone humiliated me in public and slapped me, he took me by the hand and went to settle the score with them. "Tell me who did it. Point them out, and I'll deal with every single one of them."

My heart raced wildly that day, and it was then that I fell hopelessly in love with him.

After that, I began accompanying him to every business meeting, and when his stomach acted up, I would drink in his place. As time went on, I ended up with a perforated ulcer. But even that didn't stop me. I naively believed it would make Clarence care about me more.

For seven whole years, I was the only woman by his side. That was, until Lynette Wyndham showed up. Like me, she was a journalist too.

The day she appeared at the Fraser residence, Clarence's grip on my hand loosened. His movements slowed, and I clearly saw the determination in her eyes.

Gradually, Clarence stopped coming home as often, and his replies got slower and slower.

I stared at a screen full of messages I'd sent him. The only responses from him were the occasional "one" and the even rarer "two". It was a code we shared between us. One meant no, and two meant coming back for sex.

I thought that he was just naturally slow to warm up and convinced myself that at least he loved me.

Then, on my birthday, he finally sent me a two.

I bought a cake and came home hoping to have a proper talk with him. Instead, I walked in on him and Lynette in my bedroom, stark naked and pressed tightly together.

"Didn't you say you hated me and would never forgive me? Why are you so bold now? What about that little pet of yours? Aren't you worried she'd kick up a fuss? Who knows, she might even use a pregnancy to pressure you into marrying her," Lynette said.

Clarence's voice was strained and laced with genuine emotions. "Her? Keeping her around is fine, but she's not fit to be a wife. If I'm going to marry anyone, it has to be someone like you."

My hands shook uncontrollably as I pushed the door open. "Then what have you taken me for in the past few years that I'd been with you?"

Clarence carefully draped a robe over Lynette and looked up slowly. "You scared her. Her clothes are dirty now. Go find something from your closet for her to change into."

My steps were unsteady as I stumbled forward, holding onto the wall as I walked toward him. "Clarence, answer me. What have you taken me for in the past few years?"

Lynette chuckled softly and nestled deeper into Clarence's arms. "Have you really lowered your standards so much while I was away? She has no manners, and frankly, her figure leaves a lot to be desired."

"Yeah, she's nowhere as good as you," he said, stroking Lynette's cheek as he shot me an impatient look. "Well, what are you still standing here for? Get out. Lynette's staying here from now on. Don't you dare give her a hard time. Oh, and she's taken a liking to all the dresses in your closet, so they're hers now."

I thrashed everything in the room in a rage before staggering out the door. But then, I ended up in his study, and there, I found a yellowed diary.

One of the entries read, "Third year of loving Lynette. She got a boyfriend and says we're just friends."

The next entry read, "She broke up with her boyfriend, but she still turned me down."

Then, another entry said, "She went abroad. Her social media posts are full of other guys."

Followed by one that said, "I met someone named Bethany Holmes. She looks a lot like Lynette."

Finally, one of the entries read, "Beth says she wants to get married and have kids, but if it's not Lynette, then it just feels wrong."

Wrong?

Tears dripped onto the pages, smudging his handwriting. I trembled uncontrollably.

So it turned out that he wasn't slow to warm up. He wasn't emotionally distant either. It was just that I reminded him of Lynette. All along, I had been nothing but a stand-in.