The Billionaire's Affair Bk.7 Somewhere in my Past

CHLOE

“You’re really going to marry her?”

The woman's laughter came from behind the closed bedroom door.

Then I heard him…Brandon answered.

“I was trying to.” He said.

My smile disappeared like pollution. I couldn't believe my own ears. I didn't know I was holding my breath until my throat hurt.

I had spent the entire evening believing the man I loved was preparing for our wedding. Instead, I was standing outside a locked door, listening to my fiancé talk about me as if I were his greatest mistake, as if I were the last thing he wanted to deal with.

*****

The quiet hallway of the luxury suite suddenly felt suffocatingly narrow.

Less than twenty-four hours from now, I was supposed to walk down an aisle covered in a white veil, take Brandon Parker’s hands in mine, and exchange vows in front of three hundred people, and in front of those who had mocked my size.

I had spent four years building my entire world around him. In college, when the whispers grew too loud, when those slim girls or slim-thick girls, threw pitying looks at my curves, Brandon had been my shield. He was the one who pulled me close, wrapped a protective arm around my waist, and told me that my body was breathtaking just as it was.

And I had believed him.

I loved him with a quiet, unconditional devotion that made me swallow every doubt I ever had about my worth. So when he vanished from the rehearsal dinner an hour ago, leaving his assistant to handle the caterers, I had only felt concerned. I thought the pressure of inheriting Parker Industries, mixed with the chaos of the wedding, and had finally pushed him into an anxiety attack.

I had excused myself, chased his master suite key, and walked up here with a bottle of water and his favorite tie. Now, my hand froze an inch above the cold brass handle. I heard it before I saw it. A cry that didn't sound like pain. It was a pleasure, raw, moan.

“Arghhhh…God…Fuck me…just like that…Keep going…Shitt… You're driving me wild.”

The sound tore through the quiet hall, slicing straight into my chest like a sharp blade. My breathing stopped entirely. My blood ran cold, vibrant, and terrifyingly heavy in my veins. My mind tried to form excuses…a television, a video, maybe the groomsmen…anything else…but my body already knew the truth.

I heard it again. This time it was him.

“Ohhhh…yeahhh…babyyy… ride this damn cock… like that… fuck it… It belongs to you.”

My hand trembled as I gripped the metal handle, pressed down, and pushed the door wide open. The air in the room was thick, warm, and heavy with the unmistakable scent of expensive perfume mixed with the scent of sex. On the bed… My sister was riding my fiancé's cock. While he was sucking her breasts. They were both fully naked.

The silk sheets were tossed erratically across the foot of the massive king bed. Sienna’s long, blonde hair cascaded down her bare back, swaying with every frantic movement of her hips. Brandon’s hands were clamped firmly onto her waist, his face buried deep between her breasts as his mouth pulled greedily at her skin.

“Yesss…Brandon… Suck me hard… leave bruises… show me how much you love this… I wonder why you still wanna marry that fat bitch…”

Her words made my heart skip, before it started pounding hard against my ribs. The water bottle slipped from my cool fingers, thudding against the rug.

Neither of them jumped apart immediately.

The sudden intrusion only made Brandon’s eyes snap open, glazed with heavy arousal. When his gaze landed on me…the desire didn't wash away into instant horror. It changed into annoyance.

Sienna slowed her rhythm, but she didn't attempt to cover herself. She just slid off him with a lazy, deliberate grace, casually pulling a satin robe around her narrow shoulders without tying the sash. She tilted her head, her glossy lips curving into a smirk that held no shame—only a dark, victorious glint.

“Chloe,” Brandon grunted, slowly sitting up on the edge of the mattress.

I didn't answer right away. I couldn't.

He grabbed a pair of trousers from the floor and pulled them on, his movement sluggish, completely unbothered by the fact that I was standing three feet away, drowning in my own blood.

“You're supposed to be downstairs with the florist.” His voice stayed firm as if nothing had happened.

My voice didn't sound like my own when it finally broke through my throat. It was small, fractured, bleeding.

“Bra…Brandon... what the fuck is this?"

"Oh, please," Sienna threw in, leaning back against the wooden table, crossing her slender, bare legs. “Don't play dumb, big sis. It's so embarrassing... You walked into a bedroom without knocking. What did you think you were going to see?"

My fingers tightened at my side until they hurt. I couldn't even look at my own sister. The girl I had shared a bedroom with growing up, the girl whose tears I used to wipe away when our parents fought, was standing in front of me with my fiancé's bite marks on her collarbone, like she had just been marked by her mate.

My gaze stayed locked on Brandon, searching his face for the man who had kissed my forehead this morning, the man who had promised to grow old with me. The man who promised never to look at other women. The man who promised me heaven and earth.

“Brandon… tell me this… is a joke," I stammered, my vision blurring with hot, heavy tears that refused to fall. “Tell me… you didn't just do this... Not with her… Not the night before our wedding.”

Brandon ran a hand through his messy hair, letting out a sharp, exasperated breath. He didn't rush over to touch me. He didn't ask me to sit down. He simply stood up, watching over me, his features cold, rigid, and entirely distant.

“I didn't plan for you to walk in," Brandon said, his voice flat, devoid of a single drop of warmth. "But maybe it's better this way... It saves us from dragging this mockery onto an actual stage tomorrow.”

The floor beneath my feet felt as though it had dissolved completely.

“A…A mockery?”

“Look at yourself, Chloe," Sienna laughed, her tone light and mocking, as she reached for a cigarette on the nightstand and lit it. She blew a cloud of sweet smoke toward me. “Look at the two of you together. Did you honestly think this was going to last? You look like his mother standing beside him, not his bride. If he's your brother, are you going to allow him to marry someone like you?”

“Just shut up, Sienna,” I choked out, a raw sob scraping my throat. “Stay out of this!”

“Why should she?” Brandon asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

I flinched as if he had physically struck me. “Brandon...?”

“She’s saying what everyone else has been whispering behind our backs for four years, Chloe,” he spat out, his eyes hardening into something cruel, something entirely foreign. “Do you have any idea what it’s been like for me? Walking into those corporate dinners, attending Parker Industries galas, dragging you along while you squeeze yourself into dresses that look like sailcloth?”

The words hit me like physical blows, knocking the air cleanly out of my lungs. My hands instinctively moved to cover my stomach, my fingers digging into the soft fabric of my oversized sweater…the same sweater he used to tell me made me look soft and kissable, he'd tell me he feels like fucking the hell out of me while in that sweater.

“You... you told me you loved my body,” I stammered, my heart shattering into sharp, agonizing pieces with every word. “You told me you didn't care about the fashion standards…You told me you loved my curves… You told me I was beautiful the way I was… you said I didn't need to watch my weight.”

Brandon let out a bitter, mocking laugh that echoed off the high ceilings. “What was I supposed to say? No, honey, you look massive? … No, Chloe, I'm embarrassed to hold your hand in front of my father's board members?” He finally took a step closer, his shadow stretching cold over me. “I was trying to be a good guy in front of people… I defended you because I felt sorry for you!”

“You felt... sorry for me?"

“Yes!” Brandon snapped. “I felt guilty! You were always there, cooking for me, managing my schedule, acting like a faithful little puppy. Acting like wife material.”

He shook his head in disgust. Sienna chuckled darkly as everything was planned and she was enjoying the real show.

"So I tried.” He continued. “ I really tried to convince myself that I could live with it. I tried to convince myself that looks didn't matter. But every time I touch you, every time I look at you without clothes, I have to force myself to tolerate you. I can't even enter you peacefully without struggling…Do you know how exhausting that is?"

I covered my ears with my hands. My eyes shut tight. “Brandon, stop,” I sobbed, the tears finally spilling over my cheeks, burning my skin. “Please... just stop… I can't take this anymore…”

“No, let him finish,” Sienna said smoothly, stepping up next to him, slipping her hand effortlessly into his back pocket. She pressed her thin, delicate body against his side, a stark, painful contrast to everything I was. “You need to hear this, sis. You've lived in this illusion for way too long. You thought just because you have a pretty face, a man like Brandon Parker would settle for someone who can't even fit into a standard size eight?”

She blew another puff of smoke, her eyes narrowing. “He's a Parker. He needs a woman who fits in his arms, not someone who looks like she eats her feelings… not someone who snores like a pregnant pig every fucking day…”

“Sienna,” I whispered, turning my shattered gaze toward my sister. “When you had nothing, when you were struggling, I gave you money... I gave you a place to stay... I brought you into my life… I gave you everything I could…”

“And I took what should have been mine from the start," Sienna replied casually, running her manicured nails down Brandon's arm. “You stole the spotlight our whole lives just by being the suffering, misunderstood, big sister. Well, guess what? Brandon doesn't want a martyr. He wants a real woman. Someone he can actually be proud to show off."

I looked back at Brandon, desperate for a particle of the man I knew.

“Brandon... please…Look at me… And tell me all this is a lie.”

Brandon looked at me. But there was no love in his eyes. No regret. No guilt. There was only a cold, repulsed sneer.

“The wedding is off,” Brandon said simply, as if he were canceling a business luncheon. “I'm not standing at an altar tomorrow promising to spend the rest of my life looking at a fat pig like you."

The insult hung in the air, heavy, toxic, and absolute. The word stripped away every layer of confidence I had spent years trying to build. Every tender memory, every quiet night, every softly whispered reassurance he had ever given me crumbled into dust, revealing the terrifying truth underneath: it had all been a lie.

He hadn't protected me from the world's judgment. He had simply been waiting for the right moment to deliver the final blow himself.

Sienna smiled, her eyes gleaming with absolute satisfaction as she leaned up and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to Brandon's jawline. Before she spoke again.

“You should have known he would eventually get tired of pretending.”