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 4
Lucien didn't wait for an invitation.
He walked into _my_ bedroom like he owned the penthouse, the air, me. He picked up the diary from the floor, flipped to yesterday's entry, and whistled. "D, your handwriting's gotten worse. You always did press too hard when you were lying."
Damian didn't move. Didn't blink. "You weren't supposed to come upstairs."
"Plans change," Lucien said. He looked at me. Really looked. Not like Damian, who catalogued. Lucien _saw_. "So you're the forger. Smaller than I expected. Meaner eyes."
"Get out," I said. My voice didn't shake. Three years of coffee training was good for something.
Lucien grinned. "She sounds like you when you're pissed, D. It's uncanny." He tossed the diary onto the bed. "I'm just here for the merger documents. The ones Daddy signed this morning. The ones that transfer Kaine Corp's controlling shares to the 'Kaine spouse' in the event of his death."
Ice slid down my spine.
Damian's expression didn't change. "You're not dead, Lucien."
"Not legally, no." Lucien pulled a folded paper from his jacket. A death certificate. _Lucien Kaine. Cause of death: accidental drowning. Date: April 2nd, three years ago._ "But you filed this. You buried me. You told the world I was gone so you could have the company to yourself. And now you've married her"-he pointed at me-"so when you _do_ die, she gets everything. Not me. Not Dad. Her."
I looked at Damian. "Is that true?"
"Yes."
No denial. No explanation. Just _yes_.
Lucien laughed, but it wasn't amused. "He's been planning this since college, sweetheart. He knew Celeste was weak. He knew you were strong. He just needed you legal. A wife can inherit without a will. A mistress can't."
"So I'm a loophole," I said.
"You're the whole damn plan," Damian said quietly. "Lucien embezzled forty million from Kaine Corp three years ago. I covered it up. I declared him dead to save the board from a scandal. In exchange, he disappeared. He was supposed to stay gone."
"Until you married the wrong twin," Lucien cut in. "Now I'm back, because if I don't get those shares, I go to prison. And if I go to prison, I'm taking you with me, brother. I kept records. Of everything."
He stepped toward me. "That includes the part where you told Celeste to break it off with me or you'd ruin her. The part where you leaked the boat accident story yourself. The part where you've been stalking Elise since she was twenty."
Damian's jaw ticked. First crack I'd seen all day.
"Stalking?" I asked.
Lucien pulled out his phone. Swiped. Turned it to me.
Photos. Hundreds. Me at college. Me at my old apartment. Me signing Celeste's name on a loan doc. Me, last week, buying this exact wedding dress _in my size_ because Celeste "lost weight."
Time-stamped. Date-stamped. Years of them.
"He had me followed," Damian said. "For your protection."
"Protection," Lucien mocked. "He has a room, Elise. At his old place. Walls covered. Schedules. Food orders. He knows you hate cilantro. He knows you cry at dog food commercials. He knows you forged Celeste's SATs so she could get into NYU."
I felt sick. Violated. _Seen_ in a way that had nothing to do with love.
"So what now?" I asked. My hands were steady. They always were when I was cornered. That's what made me good at forgery. "You two fight to the death and I get the company?"
"No," Damian said. He finally looked at Lucien. "We do what we agreed. She signs the documents."
"What documents?" I said.
Lucien smiled. "The ones that make her CEO if you die, D. And the ones that make me CEO if _she_ dies."
He pulled a knife from his jacket. Not to stab. To cut.
He sliced his thumb, then held it out to me. "Biometric safe needs fresh blood, sweetheart. Yours or his. I'm betting you don't want it to be his."
Damian didn't stop him. He just watched me.
And I understood.
This wasn't a marriage. This was a hostage exchange. Damian wanted me to control the company so Lucien couldn't. Lucien wanted me to sign so he could kill me later and take it anyway.
And Celeste? Celeste was the decoy. The only person in this room who got to run.
I looked at the knife. Then at Damian. "Three years ago. The fundraiser. You said I told you I'd quit coffee the day I stopped loving you."
"Yes."
"Celeste never loved you."
"No," he said. "But you did."
The room went silent.
"What?"
"The fundraiser," he said. "You were there. You weren't on the list. You wore the catering uniform so you could watch Celeste. You spilled wine on your apron. I helped you clean it up. You told me you were pre-med. You told me you hated your sister's life. And you told me you'd quit coffee the day you stopped loving the man who made you wear that uniform."
I remembered. God, I remembered. One night. One conversation with a stranger who had kind eyes and a scar through his eyebrow. I'd thought he was a waiter. He'd thought I was the help.
"You never told me your name," he said. "But I found out. And I've been waiting for you to stop wearing hers."
Lucien snorted. "Jesus, D. You're sicker than I thought."
Damian ignored him. "Sign the papers, Elise. Take the company. Burn it down. I don't care. I just want you to choose. Her life, or yours."
He slid a folder across the bed. _Kaine Corp Contingency Transfer_. My name already typed. _Elise Kaine_.
Not Celeste.
Lucien put the knife to his own palm. "Sign it, and I walk. Don't, and I start with him. Your choice, Mrs. Kaine."
My forger's hands didn't shake.
I picked up the pen.
And signed it _Celeste Marie Kaine_.
Perfect. Flawless. Indistinguishable from the real thing.
Damian's face went white.
Lucien started laughing. "Oh. Oh, you're _good_."
I dropped the pen. "If you wanted Elise, you should have proposed to her," I said to Damian. "But you didn't. You proposed to Celeste. So that's who you married."
I looked at Lucien. "And if you want the company, you'll have to kill the right twin. Good luck figuring out which one that is."
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7.4
Evelina Barrett was the legitimate daughter, yet she was framed for a disgusting sex scandal, expelled from the Ivy League, and locked out of her late mother's massive trust fund.
While she was thrown out to rot on the streets with a jagged, hideous red scar covering half her face, her father and step-family were throwing a lavish charity gala to celebrate her total ruin.
They laughed as they officially published her disownment notice in the Times to cut her off forever.
"Without the school halo, that ugly freak will be begging on the streets by tomorrow," her sister Aspen sneered.
Her stepmother Annabella toasted to taking out the trash, perfectly happy to steal Evelina's inheritance while ignoring the fact that Evelina knew exactly how they had murdered her mother.
For years, Evelina had been locked in a dark basement, abused by bodyguards, and treated worse than a stray dog.
Why should she, the true heir, suffer in the gutter while the leeches who destroyed her life enjoyed the wealth that rightfully belonged to her?
She refused to be their victim anymore.
Washing away her fake scar to reveal her true, breathtaking face, Evelina blackmailed New York's most lethal billionaire into marriage to secure the ultimate shield.
Then, she put on a black mourning dress, ordered a dark web ghost crew, and climbed into a heavy semi-truck.
At exactly 6:00 PM, she smashed through the iron gates of her family's elegant gala, delivering three pure black coffins directly to the lawn.
7.4
My mother was dying and desperately needed a half-million-dollar deposit for an experimental heart surgery by tomorrow.
I swallowed my pride and begged my wealthy husband, Garrick, to save her life.
Instead of helping, he laughed coldly and threw a thick stack of divorce papers right in my face.
"A hen that can't lay eggs gets slaughtered," he sneered, ruthlessly poking my flat stomach.
He revealed that his secretary, my supposed friend Lacey, was already pregnant with his heir.
To him, our three years of marriage was just a business transaction, and now that my family was bankrupt, I was nothing but damaged goods.
He flicked a humiliating five-thousand-dollar check at me as his final act of charity, then locked me out of our townhouse into the freezing, pouring rain.
I had spent years enduring agonizing hormone treatments for a fertility issue that wasn't even my fault, only to be discarded like trash when I needed him the most.
Was my dignity, my absolute devotion, and my mother's life really worth nothing to him?
Driven by pure, reckless desperation, I threw myself directly into the path of a moving Rolls-Royce Phantom on Fifth Avenue.
It belonged to Holden Tillman, the ruthless patriarch of the Tillman empire—and the uncle Garrick lived in absolute terror of.
I thought I was walking into my death, but instead, I became his fiancée, ready to make Garrick and Lacey pay for every tear I shed.
8.7
Emerson worked grueling twelve-hour shifts just to keep her five-year-old son, Leo, alive. Her only lifeline was her partner Alden, who was willing to give up his wealthy family to protect them.
But when Leo's bone marrow completely failed, the doctor delivered a death sentence. The only way to save him was a two-million-dollar treatment, or having another child with his biological father.
That father was Finnegan Mcconnell, the ruthless billionaire who had accused Emerson of faking her pregnancy and abandoned her five years ago.
Desperate for the medical fees, Emerson submitted her designs to Finnegan's company.
Instead of advancing the money, Finnegan tore her portfolio to shreds and trapped her as a prisoner in his estate.
To force her complete submission, he systematically destroyed her reality. He framed Alden with federal charges, leaving him facing twenty years in prison.
Alden's mother stormed into the pediatric ICU, violently strangling Emerson against the wall.
"Beg Finnegan to let my son go! You are a curse!"
Even Emerson's own adoptive mother showed up at the hospital, just to publicly mock her dying child.
Emerson was suffocating in despair. Finnegan already had a beautiful new wife and a five-year-old daughter—absolute proof he had been cheating while she was pregnant and alone.
He had his perfect family. Why did he have to hunt her down and sever every lifeline she had left, just to watch her drown?
With her son's heart monitor fading and Alden locked in a cell, her pride finally shattered.
Emerson walked into the top-floor executive office and dropped to her knees at the devil's feet, but the desperate mother looking up at him was preparing for a devastating revenge.
9.8
When I woke up on the muddy bank of the freezing river, I unlocked a brutal, unfiltered preview of my actual future.
For the past six months, I had been the town's ultimate joke, chasing after a city boy who looked at me like a diseased insect. Everyone thought I jumped into the river because he rejected me.
But the nightmare didn't stop there. In the future I foresaw, my entire family was destroyed. My eldest brother was handcuffed and dragged into a squad car. My second brother died in a pool of blood on the asphalt. My parents passed away from sheer grief and humiliation, and our farm was foreclosed.
Meanwhile, Bart Hawkins—my family's sworn enemy, the boy everyone accused of pushing me, but who actually jumped in to save my life—became a billionaire tech mogul. I ended up starving to death in a damp, moldy basement, completely alone.
I finally understood that I was just a pathetic, tragic side character meant to drag my family into hell. My own sister-in-law, Felicie, had been stealing our food and money, laughing at my misery behind my back.
But right now, my mother was still alive, my brothers were safe, and the farm was ours.
When Felicie walked into my bedroom, playing the devoted sister-in-law with a bowl of clear, meatless broth while a stolen roasted chicken thigh leaked grease through her apron pocket, I didn't play along.
"What's in your pocket, Felicie?"
This time, I was going to tear that horrific future apart with my bare hands.
9.5
Janet woke up gasping, the phantom fire of a deadly explosion still scorching her lungs. She had been reborn three years in the past, on the exact day her mother forced her into a marriage contract with Gaylord Bradford, a paralyzed and severely disfigured billionaire.
Before she could even process her second chance, her cousin Kandy kicked the bedroom door open, flaunting a massive diamond ring. Kandy, who had also been reborn, smugly announced she had stolen Janet's Wall Street golden boy fiancé, Jax Adler.
"You're going to marry that paralyzed monster," Kandy spat, gloating that she would build a billionaire dynasty with Jax while Janet wiped drool off a rotting corpse. Kandy expected Janet to have a complete mental collapse, completely unaware that Gaylord's own medical team was secretly injecting him with lethal neurotoxins to finish him off.
But Janet only felt a cold, clinical pity. Kandy's "prophetic" memories were a polluted lie. Jax was actually sterile and dying of irreversible kidney failure, while Gaylord wasn't a dying freak—he was a dormant god whose body was merely in a high-dimensional hibernation. Why would Janet mourn losing a doomed fraud?
Leaving her delusional cousin behind, Janet packed her bags and headed straight to Gaylord's maximum-security military cell. She physically tackled his corrupt doctor, drove three bio-electric silver needles into the crippled king's spine to awaken his deadened nerves, and looked him dead in his glacial blue eye.
"Sign the marriage contract," Janet whispered. "I will make you walk again, and we will take back everything."
7.9
Erin woke up in her luxurious Fifth Avenue penthouse, three days after returning from the cold, sterile psychiatric hospital where her husband had locked her away.
On the night of their third anniversary, Crockett Winters came home smelling of his mistress's perfume, expecting his docile wife to serve him.
Instead of playing the obedient fool, Erin calmly exposed the million-dollar diamonds he had just bought for his lover.
Furious at her sudden defiance, Crockett tried to physically intimidate her, pinning her against a wall to reassert his dominance.
When his aggression failed, he threw a brutal divorce agreement on the table.
"Sign it, and you walk away with nothing. You can't survive without me, and you know it."
He sneered, convinced the ironclad prenup would terrify her. He thought her rebellion was just a pathetic, jealous tantrum, a desperate play for his attention while he continued to pamper his mistress.
He truly believed she was just a beautiful canary who would eventually crawl back to her gilded cage in tears.
But Erin didn't cry, and she didn't sign the papers.
Instead, she locked him out of the master suite and pulled out his unlimited Centurion card.
In a single night, she calmly spent ninety million dollars of his money to buy up prime real estate and hidden assets, taking the first step to build an empire that would completely destroy him.