Liam Tyrell Zach

The night I married Damien Cross, he looked at me across the altar and said, "You're not her. You'll never be her." I smiled and said, "I know." He thought I married him for his money. The whole city thought so. The poor orphan girl who clawed her way into the Cross empire by stealing her dead sister's wedding. But I didn't marry Damien for his billions. I married him because I had exactly ninety days left to live, and there was one thing in his vault I needed before I died. My twin sister, Elena, drowned eighteen months ago. Damien loved her the way storms love the sea—violently, completely. When she died, something in him died too. Then he found out I existed. The identical face. The same voice. So he married me. Not to love me. To punish me. To keep a living ghost of Elena in his house and torture us both with what he could never have back. "Lyra," he said, gripping my chin hard enough to bruise. "Don't ever forget. You're a stand-in. A replacement. The day I stop needing your face, I'll throw you out like garbage." I let him. Because here's what Damien Cross didn't know. I wasn't the replacement. Elena was. And the truth was locked inside his vault, behind a door he swore I'd never open. He pressed a cold kiss to my forehead—the kind you give a corpse—and whispered, "Welcome home, little liar." I closed my eyes. Ninety days, Damien. Ninety days, and then you'll know what you've done. I moved into the east wing that night. Elena's old room. He had kept it exactly as she left it. Her perfume still hung in the air—jasmine and rain. The housekeeper, an old woman named Marta, wouldn't look at me. "You shouldn't have come," she muttered, setting down my single suitcase. "You'll only break what's left of him." I almost laughed. What was left of him had already broken me first. I walked to the mirror and pulled off the wig. My real hair spilled out—not the silken black they all knew, but ash-pale, thinning. The medication did that. I touched the hollow of my cheek, the bruise blooming where Damien had held me. For ordinary people, a bruise is nothing. For me, it could be the beginning of the end. The door slammed open. Damien stood there, tie loose, eyes burning with whiskey and grief. "Take it off," he ordered. "Take what off?" "That dress. It was hers." I hadn't chosen it. His assistant had. But I didn't argue. I never argued. I reached for the zipper, slow, calm, and his face twisted. "You don't even fight," he hissed. "Elena would have screamed at me. She would have thrown something. Why are you so—" His voice cracked. "Why are you so quiet?" Because screaming costs energy I don't have, Damien. I looked at him steadily. "Do you want me to be her?" I asked softly. "Or do you want me to disappear?" He stared at me like I'd struck him. Then he turned and walked out, and I heard glass shatter against the hallway wall. I sat down on Elena's bed, pressed my hand to my chest, and counted my heartbeats until they slowed. Eighty-nine days.

Five years after I buried my husband, I watched him slip a wedding ring onto another woman's finger. Same crooked smile. Same scar on his jaw. Same hands I once held as they "stopped breathing" in a hospital bed. I was the wedding photographer. He didn't recognize me behind the lens. "Smile for the camera," the officiant said. So I did. I lowered my camera and stepped into the aisle, my heels clicking against marble. "Adrian," I said. "You've gotten taller, for a dead man." The room froze. A hundred guests turned. The bride's champagne glass slipped, shattering on the floor. Adrian's face drained white. The fork he'd been holding to feed his new wife clattered onto the cake. "Maeve," he whispered. "You're not supposed to—" "Be alive?" I tilted my head. "Funny. I was just thinking the same thing about you." His new bride, a willowy blonde in couture lace, grabbed his arm. "Adrian, who is this? Who is she?" I smiled at her. Warm. Practiced. The kind of smile I'd perfected over five years of telling our daughter's headstone good morning. "I'm his wife," I said. "His real one. The one who signed his death certificate." Gasps rippled through the hall. Someone dropped a phone. The wedding planner sprinted toward the doors. Adrian stepped toward me, hands raised like I was a wild animal. "Let me explain. Please. It wasn't—it wasn't supposed to be like this." "You're right." My voice didn't shake. I'd cried all my tears into a tiny coffin years ago. "It was supposed to be you in the ground. Not her." His head snapped up. "Her? Maeve, what are you—" "Lily," I said. And I watched the name hit him like a bullet. Because Adrian didn't know. He'd faked his death and vanished before he ever learned I was eight weeks pregnant. He didn't know I'd carried our daughter alone. Birthed her alone. Held her tiny, struggling body in a NICU for ninety-one days, alone. He didn't know I'd buried her three years later, after the heart condition no surgeon could fix finally won. He'd been busy. Starting over. Building a new life with new money and a new name. "You have a daughter?" he choked. "Had," I corrected. The word echoed off the cathedral ceilings. Adrian's knees buckled. He caught himself on the altar, breathing hard, his expensive suit suddenly hanging on him like a costume. The blonde bride looked between us, mascara already streaking. "Adrian, say something. Tell me she's lying." He couldn't. Because I had photos. I had documents. I had a small velvet box in my coat pocket containing two things he would never be able to explain away. I'd planned this for three years. Every detail. Every guest list I'd hacked. Every favor I'd called in to land this exact job, this exact wedding. He thought he'd buried our past. He had no idea I'd been digging it up the whole time. I reached into my coat and pulled out the velvet box. Adrian's eyes locked onto it, and for the first time in five years, I saw real fear cross my dead husband's face. "Adrian," I said softly. "Do you want to know what's inside?" He shook his head. Once. A man begging. I opened it anyway.