Chapter One

"Make a divorce papers ready, with my name and Nathaniel's boldly written on it,,” I demanded, my voice came out steadier than I expected. "And I need them fast."

I clearly heard him sigh on the other end of the phone. He knew more than anyone how desperate I am right now and I hope he wouldn't go about questioning my decision.

"Elena," he called, dragging my name out like he was giving me a chance to take all I just said back, "Are you sure about this? Your married Nathaniel for a reason and your parents…”

“To hell with what they have to say about it,” I half yelled. “I was pushed into this Marcus. Nathaniel doesn't love me, my presence disgusts him. I wanted to adapt…I thought I could hold it in for a little longer but, I tried,” Hot tears rolled down my cheeks, as I kept sniffing my nose every second.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the couch. Family survival and bankruptcy. The company my father built from nothing and then drowned in bad investments and worse decisions. 

All these were the reasons for our marriage, most especially…Elora.

"Just get them ready," I told him. I didn't want to hear the reasons again. I had lived with these reasons for two years.

"He won't sign quietly," Marcus warned, and I could picture him shaking his head in his office, the one with the glass desk and the view of the city I never got tired of visiting.

"I don't care." I meant it, too, maybe for the first time in a long time, I actually meant something.

Marcus went quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was softer, almost gentle. "Okay. I'll call you in two days."

He didn't say goodbye, and neither did I. I can't remember the last time we ended a phone call with goodbye. 

I've lived with Nathaniel for over two years now and all I regretted was saying “I do” I shouldn't have. I should stand by my words when I said I wasn't going to be a substitute bride…but then, my family never cared for me a little. I had no choice but to stand in for their favorite child.

And now I am done.

The doorbell rang before I could take another breath, and for a second I just stood there in the middle of the living room with my heart pounding and my mind still tangled up in the past. I walked to the front door on legs that felt heavy and slow, like I was wading through water, and when I opened it my whole body went cold.

She was standing right there on my doorstep.

Elora.

“What…why are you here?” I found myself questioning. Should that be the right question for her?

She chuckled, “Why else would I be here?” She still had that manipulative, annoying expression I so much hate staring at.

Then I heard footsteps behind me, coming down the stairs; slow, unhurried, the way my husband always moved when he was coming down for his morning coffee.

"Who is it?" he asked, his voice casual and still rough from sleep.

I wanted to close the door. I wanted to push her away and lock the door and pretend I had never seen her face, but my body wouldn't listen to me. He reached the bottom of the stairs, and I heard him stop, not the smooth, continuous movement of someone walking into the kitchen, but a sudden, sharp halt, like he had walked into a wall. The silence that followed was worse than any sound I could imagine.

Then he whispered her name. "Elora?"

Not my name, of course. Never my name.

I turned my head just enough to see his face, and the look there was something I had never seen before; his mouth open, his eyes wide, his hand reaching out toward the door like he was trying to touch a ghost. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at her, always at her, and I felt something twist in my chest that I couldn't name.

Elora smiled, but not at me. Her eyes were fixed on him, soft and warm and full of something that looked like relief. Then her gaze moved to my face, slow and deliberate, and the smile changed, still sweet, but sharper now, like she was enjoying something I couldn't see.

"Big sister," she said, her voice soft and familiar, the same voice she had used when we were kids, the same voice she had used right before she broke my favorite doll in front of me just to watch me cry. "I guess you're not happy to see me."

Big sister…Yes, Elora was my sister, my younger sister, my parents' favorite, the one who got everything without asking while I scraped together whatever they left behind. She was the one who was supposed to marry Nathaniel, but she ran away on the wedding morning and left me to clean up her mess, leaving me to take her place like a dress she didn't want anymore. And now she was back.

I finally found my voice, though it came out thinner than I wanted. "What are you doing here?" I asked again 

She turned her head, that small smile still playing on her lips. "This is my home too."

My blood went cold, enough that I felt it in my fingertips. "No," I replied, and my voice came stronger this time. Harder. "This is my house and my marriage."

She laughed; a soft, short sound that didn't match the sharpness in her eyes. "Your marriage?" She looked past me at Nathaniel, who was still standing at the bottom of the stairs with his hand still reaching out and his eyes still fixed on her face. "Nathaniel, tell her."

Nathaniel didn't look at me. He didn't even seem to remember I was standing there. He just stared at Elora like she was the answer to a prayer he had stopped praying years ago. 

"Elora," he spoke, softer this time, and I heard everything in that single word; longing and confusion and something that looked like hope.

I felt something inside my chest. A crack like ice under a boot, like the thin surface of a frozen lake when you know the water is waiting underneath.

"I came back to claim what's mine," Elora said, and she said it calmly. 

There was no hesitation in her voice, no shame, no awareness that she was standing in front of her sister's house talking about her sister's husband like he was a belonging she had misplaced.

"Nothing here is yours," I said, but even as the words left my mouth I could feel how weak they were, how little they sounded.

She smiled again, wider this time. "We'll see."

Then she stepped forward, and I didn't move, it's not like I could move. She brushed past me to enter the house, her shoulder touching mine for just a second. She went straight to Nathaniel and reached up to touch his face.

I watched his eyes close. He leaned into her palm like a starving man leaning into a meal. I watched my husband melt for another woman right in front of me, in my own house, while I stood there holding the door open like a servant waiting for permission to leave.

"I'm sorry I left," Elora whispered, and her voice was so soft and so sweet that I almost believed her.

Nathaniel shook his head slowly, his eyes still closed. "It doesn't matter," he said. "You're here now."

It doesn't matter? Two years of cooking his meals and attending his dinners and smiling at his colleagues and sleeping in the same bed while he turned his back on me and it doesn't matter because she was here now?

I took a step back, then another, and neither of them noticed. I picked up my phone from the couch and walked to the stairs without looking back, and when I reached the bedroom I locked the door behind me and sat on the floor with my back against the wood and my knees pulled up to my chest. I was leaving. Not tomorrow or any other day but now. I opened my phone and saw a message from Marcus: 

"Papers will be ready in two days. Are you sure?" I typed back with shaking fingers: 

"Make it one."

Then I started packing, not much, just a small bag with clothes and my passport and the little money I had saved without Nathaniel knowing. I would disappear somewhere no one knew my name, somewhere no one knew I was the substitute bride, the unwanted daughter, the forgotten sister. I would start over, and I would never look back.

Downstairs, I heard laughter; hers first, then his. I zipped the bag and stood up. Let them have each other, the house and the marriage and the life I never wanted in the first place. I reached for the door handle, but my phone buzzed again before I could touch it. Marcus. 

"One more thing. Your husband's company just filed a new contract. If you divorce him now, your family's bankruptcy protection ends. Your father will lose everything."

I stared at the screen, and my hand stopped inches from the door handle. Downstairs, the laughter continued, bright and careless, and I realized I couldn't leave. Not yet. I looked at the bag on the bed; freedom, right there, ten steps away but my father's company meant my mother's house and my younger brother's school and my family's name, the same family that had sold me to save themselves. And I still couldn't let them fall.

I sat back down on the floor, the phone slipping from my hand, and I cried, not loud or long, just enough to remember why I hated this life, just enough to remind myself that one day I would burn it all down.

Downstairs, the front door opened and closed again, and I heard footsteps, two pairs this time, coming toward the stairs. Then Nathaniel's voice, flat and tired: "Elena? Come down. We need to talk."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, stood up, and unlocked the door. When I walked downstairs, Elora was sitting on my couch with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap like she owned the place. Nathaniel was standing beside her, and they looked like a painting; the perfect couple, the lovers reunited at last and I was just the extra brushstroke, the mistake on the canvas that no one wanted to look at.

"We need to discuss arrangements," Nathaniel said, and he didn't say please or sorry or even look me in the eye. He just looked at me like I was a problem he needed to solve, a piece of paperwork that needed filing.

Elora smiled up at me from the couch, sweet and sharp at the same time. "Don't worry, big sister," she said. "I'll take good care of him."

I looked at both of them; my sister and my husband, the two people who had destroyed me without ever raising a hand and I smiled back. It wasn't a happy smile. It was the kind of smile you give someone when you've stopped being hurt and started being dangerous.

"Of course you will," I responded "You always do,” my smile came out mischievous.