Chapter 4: The Twin and the Trap

POV: Ares Voss

The moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she wasn’t meant for me—not in the way fate typically wraps things in bows or in the way destiny carves love stories out of blood and chance. No, this girl didn’t belong in my world, and yet, somehow, her presence in that room felt like an open wound I couldn’t look away from.

She wasn’t here to flirt, to tease, or to entice me the way so many others had—those desperate women who latched onto our last name like leeches hoping to drain power from our veins. No, this one was different. She wasn’t polished or primped. She didn’t smell of ambition or seduction. She looked… destroyed.

Ruined in a way that called to something dark inside me, something I didn’t show the world but carried like a blade beneath my ribs. Her eyes were hollowed out with grief, glassy with tears she probably hadn’t had time to cry. Her dress, once elegant, now hung limply around her body, wrinkled and smeared with evidence of the night she’d rather forget. Her movements were jerky and unbalanced, as if she was running on adrenaline that had long since turned to dust. She looked like a woman who had screamed herself hoarse behind closed doors, then glued her pieces together just long enough to come here and beg.

And she didn’t even know who she was looking at.

To her, I was Lucian.

And that… that was where the game began.

I stayed where I was, casually leaning against the edge of the minibar, the soft amber lighting bouncing off the sharp lines of my jaw and cheekbones, casting shadows where I wanted mystery to linger. I held a glass of scotch between my fingers, swirling it slowly—not because I needed a drink, but because I knew the image it painted. Calm. Collected. Powerful.

I didn’t speak. Not right away.

I watched her instead.

Every twitch of her fingers. Every frantic sweep of her eyes across my face, looking for something—recognition, comfort, a shred of decency she thought my brother had.

It didn’t take long.

“You,” I said after a while, my voice tight, laced with mockery. “You’re the woman causing such a fuss outside my suite?”

Her disbelief was almost touching.

Her lips parted. Her brows pulled together. “You don’t remember me?”

I tilted my head slightly, allowing the corners of my lips to twitch, not quite into a smirk but close enough to provoke her.

Should I?

The unspoken question danced between us, daring her to reach for answers she didn’t want.

She stumbled through her pain with surprising strength, announcing that she was the woman Lucian had slept with the night before. The honesty in her voice, the rawness of that confession, almost pulled a laugh from me. Because the irony was richer than the scotch in my hand. My flawless, careful, golden brother—the perfect heir to the Voss empire—had unknowingly tossed his little scandal into my lap. She had come here, broken and desperate, pouring her soul into the wrong twin’s hands.

And me?

I didn’t correct her.

Not even for a second.

Because there was something sinfully entertaining about being mistaken for Lucian. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. But it was the first time the misunderstanding tasted this sweet. Like revenge soaked in honey. Like power born from chaos.

Pretending to be Lucian was a game I’d played more than once. One we never discussed. One he would detest if he ever found out. But that’s the price of being born second. Of entering the world two minutes too late, only to find every door already closing in your face. No matter how sharp your mind, how brutal your ambition, you’re always the afterthought—the echo of someone greater.

Lucian was everything I was expected to be. Charming. Polished. The picture of restraint and intellect. A walking statue of control and calculated success.

And me?

I was the sin behind the family name. The sharp end of the blade Lucian kept sheathed. The voice that whispered when he needed silence. The hand that reached into shadows when he refused to get dirty.

So yes—I leaned into the lie. And I savored every second of it.

She stepped closer, voice cracking as she explained—begged—her side of the story. Her father. The video. The setup. The betrayal. Her whole life unraveling by the hour. She believed she was appealing to the man who had spent the night with her. She thought I was the one who had kissed her skin and tangled her limbs with mine. She thought there might be compassion behind my cold stare.

Lucian might have blinked in sympathy. Might have given her a tissue, nodded quietly, and promised to “have someone look into it” before ushering her out the door with cold civility.

But I?

I preferred fire over pity. I fed on discomfort, on vulnerability, on people thinking they could control the storm when they were already drowning in it.

“You think one night between the sheets entitles you to a favor?” I asked, my voice smooth and slow, a venomous caress. “Do you even understand who you’re talking to?”

She straightened, trying to gather the scraps of her pride, and snapped back with certainty. “Lucian Voss. CEO of Voss Global. Untouchable billionaire with more money than God and a personality to match.”

I nearly laughed. The ignorance, though not her fault, was delicious.

Oh, sweetheart. If only you knew how wrong you were.

I began to circle her like a wolf stalking its prey, watching the way she tensed with every step. Her chest rose and fell quickly, her breath shallow, her hands twitching slightly at her sides like she was trying to hide the fear blossoming beneath her skin.

This one had fire. Beautiful, reckless fire.

But fire was fragile when surrounded by ice.

I kept my gaze fixed on her as I let the words bleed from my mouth, sharp and poisonous. I wanted to see exactly where her pride ended and her desperation began. When I finally tossed the check at her feet—ten thousand dollars, a mere flick of the wrist for a Voss—the way she froze was almost erotic in its intensity.

She stared at it. Then back at me.

And when she crushed it in her fist and tore it apart without blinking, I felt something inside me spark.

Lucian would’ve sighed. Maybe even respected her resistance.

I, however, felt something much darker.

A pulse.

Deep. Primitive.

A throb of interest that wasn’t physical, but far more dangerous.

She was unbreakable—at least for now.

“You think you can buy me?” she whispered, her voice hoarse with rage, her chest heaving as she tried to hold herself together.

I tilted my head and studied her. “I think I already did.”

Her reaction was instant. She snapped. Called me arrogant. Called me a bastard. Soulless. Disgusting. Her words were sharp, loud, and filled with more heat than sense.

But none of it pierced.

I’d been called worse by better.

Then came the slap.

Hard. Unapologetic. Her hand cracked against my face with all the fury of a woman who had just watched her life collapse in slow motion.

And for the first time in years, my skin tingled.

Not from pain.

From pleasure.

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t blink. I just stood there and let her see that she hadn’t hurt me.

Because she couldn’t.

Not like that.

But in that same moment… something shifted.

A flicker.

A jolt deep in my spine, electric and strange. The echo—that strange, barely-there connection Lucian and I shared since birth—flickered to life. A phantom memory bled into me. Not mine, but his. Lust. Guilt. Confusion. Emotion buried under years of discipline.

He had felt something that night. He wasn’t supposed to, but he had.

And she—this woman standing in front of me, spitting fury like bullets—had made him feel it.

That changed everything.

Lucian didn’t feel. Not deeply. Not genuinely. Especially not for women.

So what the hell had she done to him?

When she stormed out, heels snapping like gunfire against the marble floor, I let her go. I watched the sway of her body, the set of her shoulders, the storm in her eyes.

I could’ve stopped her.

I could’ve told her the truth.

That I wasn’t the man who’d kissed her. That I wasn’t the one who had held her in that bed, whispered things against her throat, made her forget the name she carried.

But I didn’t.

Because this… was better.

Let her sharpen her hatred like a blade.

Let her plot her revenge against the wrong twin.

Let her bury herself in a vendetta that had nothing to do with me—until it did.

Because eventually, she would find out.

And by then?

It would be far too late.

She’d already be tangled in my trap.

And I’d be the one holding the chain.

I returned to the couch, the ghost of her scent still hanging in the air like a sin I didn’t regret. Something soft and floral, but beneath it, something wilder. Spiced. Untamed. Like her.

She didn’t know who I was.

But that made her the perfect target.

Lucian may have touched her body.

But I?

I planned to touch her soul.

And when I was done, she’d burn for me in ways she never expected.