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Calling me an idiot right now?
Completely valid.
Honestly, what else do you call a girl who just discovered she has two birth sisters? A girl whose supposed husband….no, contract husband married her just to hand her over to a father she never even knew?
A girl whose mother lied to her every single day of her life?
Whose sister is a suspected maniac that possibly murdered someone in the same house she’s still living in?
A girl who’s standing in the same room with the man who kept all these secrets—
And kissing him?
I didn’t even ask how he got to know about me.
Didn’t stop to think about how much he already knew.
I wasn’t asking the most reasonable questions, like:
Where is Beatrice now?
Is she being tracked by the authorities?
Do they even know where she is?
Does Beatrice know I’m here to replace her?
Of course she knows.
She must.
Because that’s what I am, right? A stand-in.
Kissing him.
Pointlessly.
Stupidly.
To the point where his hands were already tugging at the straps of my nightie, pulling them down, his mouth still pressed hungrily against mine as I tasted the vodka in his tongue.
He didn’t stop. As he slowly walked me backwards towards the bed.
And I… God help me… I didn’t tell him to.
His kiss was fire…. scorching, greedy, unapologetic. His bare chest burned against mine as his hands slid lower, cupping my breasts, dragging the thin fabric down until it hit the rugged floor.
I lay beneath him…bare, exposed, vulnerable as his warm body blanketed mine.
And all I could feel was heat, Want and Confusion.
He kissed my jaw, then my throat, trailing lower with a reverence that had no business belonging to me.
A strangled moan escaped my lips, unbidden. I didn’t know what was happening anymore what was wrong, what was right.
But I knew this much:
I had started it.
And I wasn’t in my right mind.
Not with everything.
Not with the world spinning too fast beneath me.
“Alex—” I whispered, barely able to find my voice through the haze.
“Shhh,” he hushed, voice low and thick, his breath brushing my ear. “Don’t talk…”
“Alex, wait.”
I drummed weakly against his chest, barely registering that I was naked, that his unmistakable arousal was pressed firmly between my thighs.
He hissed—strained—like he was fighting something inside him.
Then, all at once, he rolled off me, turning his back to me on the bed.
I gasped as the air hit my skin. Prickling my nipples.
Tugging the covers over myself, I clutched them tightly to my chest.
He didn’t speak. Neither did I.
We just lay there—back to back—like strangers who had wandered too far into something we couldn’t name. Something we were too broken to hold.
This wasn’t right.
Not even close.
Not with the chaos circling around us.
Not with all the secrets stacked between us.
Not when I knew the truth.
He loved Beatrice.
Not me.
And deep down, I knew he would do everything in his power to bring her back. To fix her. To save her.
I hadn’t even asked about the child. The one he said she ran away with. The one who should have been his future.
And me?
I was just a substitute.
A placeholder.
A walking, breathing echo of someone else.
Even if thar someone else was my blood.
I could never truly be her not when he worshipped her with a devotion I could never earn.
Not when his every glance at me carried a shadow.
And I still had so many damn questions.
“What was that?” he suddenly asked, voice sharp, slicing through the stillness like a blade.
I didn’t answer. What could I say?
Partly because I didn’t known what exactly he was directing at.
Him kissing me senselessly or the fact that I’m intruding his personal space.
He stood from the bed abruptly, eyes flicking to where my nightie lay crumpled on the floor.
I tensed beneath the blanket…. there was no way in hell I was getting up like this.
He noticed.
With a sigh, he bent down, picked it up, and tossed it onto the bed.
“You should get dressed,” he said, voice clipped. “And leave my room.”
Classic asshole Alex.. GREAT!!
Then, without another word, he turned and walked into the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind him.
Humiliation crashed through me like a tidal wave.
I scrambled to slip into my nightie, fingers shaking, skin still burning from where his had touched mine.
I yanked the door open and bolted down the hall to my room, breath ragged, heart pounding so hard I thought it might crack my ribs.
I shut the door.
Locked it.
Pressed my back to it.
And then it hit me—
This was the first time he was kissing me… Truely kissing me.
He wasn’t dazed or sleepwalking….
⸻
“Girl, this is too much to take in.”
Candice blinked at me like she didn’t know where to start. “But you—” she paused, eyes narrowing. “You look more like you’re heartbroken than confused.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“I mean, damn… you’ve got a big-shot dad. Your mom… oh my God… that woman held back so many secrets from you. And I remember you crying like hell in the hospital when she was sick.”
She shook her head. “She could’ve just picked up the phone and called your big-shot dad to help. But nah. She just let you suffer through it.”
“Candice…” I started, rubbing my temples.
“Okay, okay, fine,” she said quickly, hands raised in surrender as she dipped her head into the fashion magazine spread out in front of her.
We were sitting in a small cafe near the Hudson. I know why I chose the location. So I could throw myself into the damn river if things got any worse.
You’d probably ask why I was even here on a Saturday… why I wasn’t lounging in the massive estate I was now supposed to call home.
The same estate I was meant to sit around in… waiting.
Waiting for a father I never knew to show up like some rebranded knight and say, “Hey, I’m your dad. Let’s pretend none of this ever happened.”
The hell?
I just found out about the man. I can’t magically accept him. Can’t just erase the fact that he never came looking. That my mother never told me.
“Your mom sure did keep a lot of secrets from you,” Candice murmured again, her voice softer now.
Then she looked at me, really looked at me. “At this point… I kinda feel like it’s a good thing you met Alex. Because if you hadn’t met him, your mom would’ve been—”
She stopped when my eyes snapped to her.
The silence stretched.
Then, in a whisper, she muttered the word.
“Dead.”
She wasn’t wrong.
But damn it… she wasn’t entirely right either.
Because now I’m starting to see that this whole thing, this entire circus was just a damn play for Alex.
There was no way he just found out about me right when my mom was dying. Right when I needed five hundred thousand dollars to keep her alive.
They could have helped her without putting me in this ridiculous contract marriage. Without pushing me into the arms of a stranger.
A stranger who turns out to be my sister’s husband.
A sister I never knew.
A sister who literally walked into the estate, killed someone, and vanished.
What the actual fuck is my life?
I looked up from my spiraling thoughts as Candice shifted in her seat. She was wearing a tight tank top and one wrong move and her boobs were gonna stage a rebellion and skin-tight jeans that hugged every curve like they had a mission.
Someone whistled from behind her.
She stood to look, flipping her hair and shooting them a wink.
The cafe was buzzing—people weaving in and out, mechanics from the auto shop next door dragging in heat and sweat. It was hot. The sun was blazing like it had a personal vendetta.
And this?
This was not a place for a Blackwood.
But screw it. I needed air.
Because the moment I go back to that house, that estate, that perfectly trimmed, gold-dipped prison…
To make matters worse, I hadn’t even told Candice about the almost intimate moment I shared with Alex.
Not because I was ashamed.
Okay—maybe a little.
But mostly because I didn’t want to hear her go off on one of her soap opera rants about rich contract marriages and how it’s “so romantic when love unexpectedly blooms.”
This wasn’t that.
This was bullshit.
Straight up.
And just when I thought the day couldn’t get any messier, I found out Drew and his lovely mom were coming back to New York.
GREAT. FREAKING. FANTASTIC