The Wrong Twin He Buried
Elise has always lived in her twin sister's shadow-until she's forced to take her place and marry a ruthless billionaire to save her family. What begins as a desperate lie turns into a dangerous game of identity and power when her husband's secrets surface-and he may already know she isn't who she claims to be. As betrayal unfolds, Elise must decide whether to keep pretending or finally claim her own life.
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Chapter 3
The "gift" was a penthouse.
Fifty-seventh floor. Glass walls. A view of Manhattan that cost more than my dad's entire company used to be worth. The bedroom was already full of clothes in my size. Not Celeste's size - _my_ size. Dresses I'd liked on Instagram and never bought. A sketchbook with my initials. A copy of _The Count of Monte Cristo_ with the corners dog-eared at my favorite chapters.
I was standing in the middle of it, still in the wedding dress, when I found the safe.
Biometric. Thumbprint.
I pressed mine to it without thinking.
It opened.
Inside: a stack of cash, a passport, and a red leather diary. _Property of C. Kaine_ stamped on the cover in gold. Celeste's. I'd seen her write in it when we were kids. She stopped after Mom died. Said writing things down made them real.
The first page was dated three years ago.
_January 12th_
_I met him today. Not Dame - the other one. Lucien. He was at the Kaine Foundation gala, standing by the ice sculpture like he wanted to stab it. He doesn't look like his photos. He's thinner. Meaner. He called me Celeste and I didn't correct him. He said, "You hate these things too, don't you?" And I did. I really did._
My stomach dropped.
I flipped pages.
_February 3rd_
_Lucien kissed me behind the fundraiser tent. He tastes like whiskey and bad decisions. He thinks I'm engaged to his brother. I haven't told him. I can't. Dame looks at me like I'm a contract. Lucien looks at me like I'm a fire._
_March 19th_
_D knows. I don't know how, but he knows. He came to my apartment. Didn't yell. Just said, "You have two choices. End it, or I end him." He said it like he was discussing a stock split._
_April 1st_
_Lucien's gone. Boat accident. They said it was an accident. D told Dad it was a tragedy. He didn't even come to the funeral. He sent flowers. White roses. I hate roses. They give Elise hives._
I slammed the diary shut.
He knew. Damian knew Celeste was in love with Lucien. He knew three years ago. And he'd just told me, _"You said you'd quit the day you stopped loving me."_
But Celeste never loved him.
So who was he talking to?
A floorboard creaked behind me.
I spun, the diary clutched to my chest. Damian stood in the doorway, tie loosened, jacket off. He looked human for the first time all day. Tired.
"You found it," he said. Not a question.
"I wasn't-"
"Looking for it?" He stepped inside, shut the door. The lock clicked. "No. You were looking for her. You always are."
He knew. He knew I wasn't Celeste.
The room tilted. "Damian, I can explain-"
"Can you?" He crossed to the bar, poured two fingers of scotch. Didn't offer me one. "Explain why you've been forging her signature since you were sixteen? Explain why you took the fall for her DUI? Explain why you're wearing her dress, but you're standing in _your_ bedroom?"
Every word was a bullet. He'd counted them all.
"How long have you-"
"Known?" He drank. "Since the engagement party. You spilled red wine on your dress and didn't flinch. Celeste would have screamed. She hates merlot. You hate being embarrassed."
He set the glass down. "I proposed to her anyway."
"Why?" The word tore out of me. "If you knew she loved Lucien, if you knew I was-"
"Because she would have said no." He walked to me, slow, deliberate. Stopped a foot away. I could see the scar through his eyebrow now. It wasn't like mine. Mine was from the swing. His was surgical. Precise. "And I didn't want Celeste."
His thumb brushed my cheekbone, right under the scar. Same spot he'd touched during the kiss.
"I wanted the girl who took her punishments. The girl who memorized her coffee order. The girl who learned to drink it black, just in case."
My breath stopped.
"I wanted you, Elise."
The diary slipped from my hands.
He caught it before it hit the floor. Opened it to the last entry. One I hadn't read yet.
Dated yesterday. In handwriting I didn't recognize.
_She said yes. Finally. Get the papers ready. If Celeste runs, Elise will take her place. She always does. -D_
Yesterday. Before Celeste ran. Before I put on the dress.
He'd planned this.
The door to the penthouse slammed open.
"Hey, brother," a voice drawled from the living room. "Meet the woman who buried me."
Damian didn't even turn. "Right on time."
A man leaned against the doorframe. Same face as Damian. Same cold gray eyes. But his hair was longer. His suit was cheaper. And he had a grin that cut like a knife.
Lucien Kaine. Alive.
He looked straight at me and winked.
"You must be Elise. I've heard so much about you."
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8.9
I sold myself into a loveless marriage for $500,000 just to afford my little niece's life-saving surgery.
But my new husband, Kash, despised me, completely convinced I was a shameless gold-digger after his assets.
At 2:00 AM, he called to demand I fulfill my end of our twisted bargain: giving him an heir.
He forced me to sign a supplementary agreement surrendering all custody rights before I was even pregnant, treating me like a rented womb he bought at auction.
When my niece's condition suddenly worsened and I desperately begged him for a $50,000 advance, he hurled a black credit card directly at my face, leaving a stinging red welt.
"Take the money and get out," he sneered, his eyes filled with absolute disgust.
He immediately set up real-time transaction alerts to track my every purchase, waiting to catch me on a selfish shopping spree.
He thought I was a parasite, completely unaware that every single penny went straight to the pediatric intensive care unit.
Even my abusive former guardians cornered me at the fertility clinic, loudly mocking me for selling my body while my niece was dying.
I endured the degrading contracts, the cold IVF appointments, and Kash's relentless contempt, suffocating under the weight of his cruel assumptions.
Why did he have to strip away my dignity when he already owned my life on paper?
But as I clutched the hospital receipt that finally secured my niece's surgery, the fear inside me died.
With a new career starting tomorrow and a high-powered lawyer suddenly stepping in to audit my stolen inheritance, I was done playing the helpless victim.
I was going to show my arrogant husband exactly what happens when you push a desperate woman too far.
9.5
On the day she discovers she is pregnant, Amara is handed divorce papers by the man she loved for three years. Betrayed by her husband and her best friend, she walks away with nothing-except the secret growing inside her.
But what Ethan Cole doesn't know is that the woman he abandoned is not weak... and not alone.
When Amara returns as a powerful heiress, no longer the woman he could control, Ethan begins to regret everything. But as secrets unravel and the truth about her pregnancy comes closer to light, one question remains-
When he finally finds out the child is his... will it already be too late?
7.6
To pay for her father's life support, Haleigh sold herself into a marriage with Fabian Blackburn, a ruthless billionaire in a deep coma.
But on her wedding day, she caught her boyfriend cheating with her stepsister, laughing about how they would steal the inheritance the second Fabian stopped breathing. Cornered and desperate, Haleigh secretly underwent IVF using her comatose husband's frozen sperm to secure the family trust.
Weeks later, a miracle happened. Fabian woke up.
But instead of gratitude, he treated her like trash. He threw annulment papers at her face, completely disgusted by the arranged marriage.
"If you try any dirty tricks to get pregnant, I will personally drag you to a clinic and have that bastard scraped out of you."
Terrified, Haleigh hid her positive pregnancy test and desperately tried to hack her way to enough cash to escape. But while using his computer, she accidentally opened a highly classified folder.
Inside was a medical file and a photo of a severely disabled girl who looked exactly like Fabian.
Before she could process it, Fabian walked in. Seeing the screen, his cold mask shattered into pure, unhinged madness. He lunged across the room, lifting her off the floor by her throat, completely ignoring her desperate gasps for air.
"Lock her in the basement," he roared to his guards. "No food. No water."
Curled on the freezing concrete, clutching her newly pregnant belly, Haleigh didn't understand what she had just seen that turned him into a murderous monster.
But she knew one thing: if she didn't escape this terrifying estate, both she and his unborn heir would die in the dark.
7.9
On my wedding day, my fiancé Connor received an urgent phone call.
He told me a D-list actress had broken her leg on set, then abandoned me right at the altar.
In my past life, I cried until my throat bled, begging him not to leave.
But my tears only brought endless humiliation. My mother and adopted sister mocked me, framed me, and forged my signature to steal my multi-million dollar trust fund.
They kicked me out of the family estate without a single dime.
I ended up freezing to death in the minus-twenty-degree New York blizzard, listening to my mother's voicemail telling me to die in the street as long as I didn't bleed on her carpets.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why my own blood relatives hated me so much, yet treated an adopted daughter like a precious princess.
The only person who showed me any mercy—draping his wool coat over my frozen corpse and giving me a proper burial—was Connor's ruthless, untouchable uncle, Harding Snow.
Opening my eyes again, I was back in the bridal suite, right as Connor was rushing out the door.
This time, I didn't shed a single tear.
I let him run to his actress, then walked straight into the VIP room to face the most feared billionaire on Wall Street.
"The wedding proceeds as planned, but the groom's name changes to yours."
9.2
Arla was supposed to marry Clinton Freeman, the perfect fiancé who had promised to love her and protect her five-year-old son.
But instead, the cold steel of a dagger pierced her chest.
As she collapsed onto the freezing basement floor, she watched her adoptive sister Blair laugh.
"Look at her," Blair sneered, kicking her son's small, blue, lifeless body.
Clinton stood there, calmly wiping the bloody blade on a pristine handkerchief.
In her dying moments, the horrifying truth became clear. Her fiancé and her adoptive family had been plotting all along to steal her massive trust fund.
To break her, they had secretly tortured her child. Clinton had watched Blair pierce the little boy's arms with sewing needles, rewarding him with candy to keep him silent.
Arla's lungs burned with the taste of copper and ash.
She couldn't understand why the family she trusted could be so monstrous, or why they had to brutally murder an innocent child just for money.
The darkness swallowed her whole, drowning her in suffocating hatred and absolute despair.
Then, she gasped for air.
The concrete floor was gone, replaced by the silk sheets of a hotel penthouse suite.
Arla had been reborn to the exact night six years ago—the very day Blair first dragged her son into the dark attic.
This time, she picked up a solid silver letter opener, ready to burn them all to the ground.
7.1
After the one-night stand with a man who refused to tell her his name, Charlotte would figure out on TV that the man she had s*x with the previous night was the heir to a billionaire empire.
At the same time, Jace Norman-the infamous playboy heir-faces a public scandal that threatens his inheritance. To protect the family empire, his ruthless father forces him into an immediate contract marriage.
And just like that Charlotte would get married to the spoiled, reckless son of the most powerful billionaire in the city.
That One night, Room 55 and Five thousand dollars she desperately needed would change her life forever.
Weeks later, Charlotte discovers she's pregnant.
But before she can process the truth, her manipulative boyfriend claims the child is his and begins blackmailing her.
As their fake marriage becomes dangerously possessive, secrets begin to spiral. An ex-boyfriend demanding money. Jace's jealous college lover is determined to destroy Charlotte. Charlotte's sister is hiding betrayal behind sweet smiles. And a billionaire father who will eliminate anyone to protect the Norman name.
When a forged DNA test claims the baby isn't Jace's, the empire turns on Charlotte.
But the truth is far darker than any of them realize.
Because someone has been orchestrating every lie from the beginning.
And when Jace finally discovers the baby is his...
He will have to choose between his father's empire-
Or the woman carrying his heir.