Object Substitute
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While My Husband Cheated, I Married His Powerful Brother
To help her husband build his business empire, Veyra worked two jobs, skipped meals, and sacrificed everything she had. When her mother desperately needed life-saving treatment, she couldn't even scrape together the money. Then, on a New Year's Eve flight, fate seated her beside her husband's mistress. That's when she discovered the cruel truth. Her husband had secretly amassed millions long ago. The wedding ring that belonged to Veyra now glittered on another woman's finger. The $500,000 that could have saved her mother's life had been spent instead on luxury gifts and pocket money for his lover. She lost her baby. She lost her mother. And finally, she lost every illusion about the man she'd loved for years. After leaving the airport, Veyra walked into a bar, kissed the most dangerous-looking stranger she could find, and spent one reckless night in his arms. By sunrise, she disappeared without leaving so much as her name. She thought it was nothing more than a farewell to her broken past. She was wrong. The stranger was Dorian-the most powerful, mysterious billionaire in the business world. Meanwhile, her cheating husband finally realized what he had thrown away. He begged on his knees, signed a postnuptial agreement worth billions, and swore he would give up everything if she would come back. But just as Veyra began plotting to reclaim everything that had been stolen from her, a mysterious car accident brought Dorian back into her life. Only then did she learn the truth. He wasn't a stranger at all. He was her ex-husband's older stepbrother. Now two powerful men are fighting for the same woman-one consumed by regret, the other determined to make her his. Sorry, cheating ex... I choose your brother.
Chapter 1 First Class Betrayal
Caspian had been working overtime through the entire New Year holiday. Veyra Solenne decided she would surprise him. She'd fly out, knock on his hotel door, watch his tired face crack into a smile.
Only business class seats were left. Although she felt bad about the ticket price, she thought it was worth it.
She sat there for a full minute, unable to figure out how to lower the tray table.
The woman beside her - polished, bored, gorgeous in the particular way that costs money - let out a short laugh.
"Never flown business before?"
Veyra managed an awkward smile. "Sorry. You must run a company or something. You've got that air about you."
"Me? No." The woman waved a manicured hand. "But my benefactor does. If I'm not in business class, he sends a private jet."
"A benefactor," Veyra said. "Those must be hard to come by."
"Not really." The woman's mouth curved. "I'm his subordinate. I keep making expensive mistakes at work. He scolds me until I cry, and then-" she smiled, letting the sentence finish itself.
A small chill moved down Veyra's spine, though she couldn't have said why. "Funny," she said slowly. "My husband has a colleague like that too. Always making mistakes."
"You're married?" The woman's eyes swept over her, cataloguing. "His wife's about your age, actually."
She examined her nails.
"He says he got tired of her ages ago. Says touching her feels stale. Less interesting than watching me flip my hair."
Veyra's stomach turned, quietly, the way it does before you know why.
"I told him I wanted to see him over the holiday," the woman went on, pleased with herself. "So he told his wife he had to work."
That was when Veyra saw it. The ring on the woman's finger. A diamond, cut exactly like the wedding band she had lost two years ago.
She went still.
Caspian is an ordinary employee, she thought. So, calm down. Similar rings don't mean anything.
Her eyes fixed on the ring.
"That's a wedding band," Veyra said, her voice coming out strange to her own ears. "Did you marry him?"
"This?" The woman - Xiomara, she introduced herself, admiring the stone as it caught the cabin light - "I made him take it from his wife."
The air went out of Veyra's lungs.
"I wasn't trying to make trouble for her, honestly," Xiomara said. "But on my birthday she had a miscarriage and dragged him to the hospital. I spent it alone."
Veyra's hand drifted, without her permission, to her stomach.
The memory came back whole and freezing: black ice on the walk home from the market, a fall she hadn't seen coming, three months along, and then nothing but blood on frozen concrete. Caspian at her bedside for three days straight, not sleeping. Waking to find her ring gone along with the child.
It's okay, he'd said, voice breaking. We'll have another baby. I'll make you a new ring.
Don't, she'd told him. They're doing layoffs. Save the money. When you make it, get me one then.
She had believed, at the time, that this was a small and noble sacrifice. She had not known she was negotiating away her own ring to a woman she hadn't met yet.
"So he gave you his wife's ring," Veyra said carefully.
"He didn't want to, at first. Said he'd buy me something better." Xiomara tilted her hand, watching the light slide across the diamond. "But that old thing acts so superior just for being his wife. If I don't put her in her place, she'll think she owns the world."
"When a woman lets herself get that pathetic," Xiomara added, almost kindly, "there's really no saving her."
Veyra's fingers found the hem of her sleeve and held on. "If he spends this much on you, he must be paying her a fortune to keep quiet."
Xiomara laughed, bright and careless, and leaned in close enough that her perfume became a wall.
"Here's the funny part," she whispered. "That pathetic woman doesn't even know he runs a company."
---
"Why keep it from her?" Veyra asked. Something in her was still hoping - stupidly, stubbornly - that there was an explanation that didn't end where she thought it did.
"Because what's the point?" Xiomara turned her nails toward the window light. "She already spent her best years slaving beside him while he built everything. If you were a man and you finally made it, would you keep spending on a wife who's already worn out? Money doesn't buy back anyone's youth."
Veyra caught her own reflection in the cabin glass - hollow-cheeked, shadowed under the eyes, ten years of scraping by written into her skin. She used to look better than this. She used to look like Xiomara.
"You know, sis, you've still got some looks left," Xiomara said, studying her with the clinical warmth of someone appraising livestock. "A little cosmetic work wouldn't hurt. Your husband hasn't been that interested lately, has he?"
Veyra said nothing.
"My benefactor gives me half a million a month just for living expenses," Xiomara added, unprompted, unbothered. "Procedures are separate."
"How long," Veyra made herself ask, "has this been going on?"
"Since June twelfth, last year." Xiomara checked her nails again, already bored of the question.
Veyra's grip on her own sleeve went white-knuckled.
June twelfth. The day her mother had needed five hundred thousand dollars for surgery she never got. Caspian had begged everyone he knew and come back with three hundred fifty thousand - everything I have, he'd told her, weeping, and she had believed him, had scraped together eighty thousand more herself and still watched her mother die eighty thousand short of enough.
I'm sorry, he'd said into her hair. I'm worthless. I couldn't even save your mother.
She had wiped his tears instead of her own. You gave everything you had. That's enough. Just wait a little longer, she'd told him, and he'd gripped her hand like a man drowning and sworn they wouldn't suffer forever.
He'd had the other hundred and fifty thousand the whole time.
"Funny thing," Xiomara said, watching her now with real interest. "That woman's mother needed exactly five hundred thousand that same month."
Veyra looked at her and said nothing at all.
Xiomara winked. "He was going to pay it. Originally."
"You took it," Veyra said. "For an allowance."
"Please, he's got plenty more where that came from. I just told him - once her mother's dead, that woman has no family left. Nowhere to go. If he ever gets caught keeping me, she won't dare make a scene." Xiomara smiled, cat-content. "I wanted a Chanel piece that month. Five hundred thousand, as it happens."
"Aren't you afraid she'll find out?"
"I'm smarter than that." Xiomara stretched, satisfied. "It was my idea - tell his wife he'd scraped together everything, let her think he gave his all. She'd be too grateful, too guilty over the shortfall, to ever look for someone else in the picture."
Then, almost as an afterthought, she added the last piece.
"The annoying part is, the only reason he finally agreed to do it was so that if I ever got found out, his precious wife wouldn't leave him." She snorted. "Tch. Some women have all the luck."
The slap landed before Veyra had decided to throw it.
"What is wrong with you?" Xiomara shrieked, hand flying to her cheek.
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Substitute Bride, Substitute Love
"You're so cheap. And you don't even have a basic sense of shame." "I am not cheap at all. You are my first man. But for her, you aren't." He cupped my neck with his hand directly and asked word by word, "What did you say?" I reached out and pinched his waist gently with my fingers, pretending to be
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Substitute Illusion
I followed Tristan for three years. Relying on this face to become his substitute for the moonlight. People all say that I am just a canary trapped in a cage. But who knows, all of this is voluntary? Because the heart beating in Tristan's chest. Originally belonged to my lover...
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Substitute bride
In a twist of fate, Selena Vance steps into a wedding gown meant for her sister, sealing a pact with Aiden Evans, a billionaire bound by debt rather than desire. As secrets and lies weave a tangled web around her, Selena must choose between the chains of duty and the whispers of a forbidden love.
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Beloved Substitute
"One rainy night: Morris Shaw was chased and killed, accidentally hit Aria Rice, so, Aria took him home, escaped the robbery. Seeing him covered in blood, she thought he was a murderer, so she avoided him after that. MK Multinational Group: Without wealthy-family background, Aria was often bullied b
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Substitute Bride
He married her to punish her. He didn't expect to fall for the girl he swore to destroy. She was supposed to be his revenge. Instead, she became his obsession. Chloe Adams was forced to marry billionaire Liam Reigns. Not for love. For debt. For the death of his sister Rose. The girl Chlo
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Substitute Wife, Destined Lover
"I'm in desperate need of money to pay Grandmother's medical fee. I will marry Charles instead of Yvonne as soon as I get the money." When her sister Yvonne ran away from the wedding, Autumn was forced to pretend to be Yvonne and marry Charles. Her only wish was to get a divorce after a year. Cha
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Her Substitute Husband
Hate is a vivid emotion in this book of twists and turns. Charmaine Sham, daughter to a failing political mogul, finds herself in an arranged marriage with Ammitel Aetheris, New York's god of business and politics, despite being betrothed to another. However, a night before the scheduled wedding
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My Substitute Wife
In order to seal a $ 1 billion contract deal with the affluent family, the Fanny’s, Brian goes out of his way to fall in love with a girl, whose family’s horrible past shouldn’t be toiled with. Later Kate is heartbroken as she discovers Brian has a wife and four children and has deceived her all alo
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MR WALLACE'S SUBSTITUTE BRIDE.
Anastasia Moore has spent four years being the perfect secretary to the brilliant and demanding Travis Wallace. Quiet, efficient, and easy to overlook, she never imagined her handsome employer would truly notice her. But after heartbreak changes Anastasia forever and Travis's glamorous love affair f
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The Substitute Wife's Revenge
"I' m sorry, Ms. Davies, but there seems to be a problem." The government clerk's words hit me like a physical blow. Liam and I were so excited, registering our baby' s birth early, making it all feel real. Then she said it: "Mr. Liam O' Connell is already married. His marriage to a Ms. Sienna Ree
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No Substitute For Love
Amelia was a substitute bride. Her husband Oscar was originally in love with some other woman named Cassie, but Cassie put up a front on the day of their wedding and ran away. Four years later, she returned to the city and asked Amelia to step aside so that she could reunite with her lover. Was it g
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The SUBSTITUTE WIFE RETURNS
Ariana Hale was the ailing twin that nobody ever gave a thought, until her sister vanished one day before the wedding. Being compelled to substitute her at the altar, Ariana was a wife in front of people and a replacement behind the closed doors. Ariana was sent away and paid to keep the swap a se
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Beyond A Substitute
After Beth, the love of Kingsley's life, left him, his world fell apart. Drowning in heartbreak, he vanished into obscurity... until Katherine found him and helped him heal. Her familiar aqua-blue eyes brought him peace and, eventually, love but secrets, lies, and the return of his ex-fiancée, Beth,
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The Substitute Twin Bride
"I will pay for your mother's surgery, but you must agree to my terms, Rose." A devilish grin played on Romilda's lips. "Mom is your mother, too!" "Business is business, Rose. Do you want my help or not? Don't get carried away with me, all right?" "What exactly do you want, Romilda?" "Give your virg
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The Alpha's Substitute Mate
Amelia, an 18-year-old omega, has been suffering physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her family members for her inability to shift into a wolf. When her step sister, Linda, who was initially betrothed to the ruthless and cunning werewolf lord, Alpha Adrian, becomes unavailable, Amelia is
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The Alpha Substitute Bride
After both of her parents' disappearances, Scarlet Marigold, daughter of an alpha, is forced to live as a servant in the house of her stepmother, who was speculated to have been the cause of her parents' death. As beautiful as she is, Scarlet is regarded as useless and worthless because she is a hum
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The Billionaire's Substitute Bride
Karen reflects on her crush for Bryan and decides to go along with her family's plan as she didn't want to disappoint them in any way. She has been someone who cares so much about her family's reputation and didn't see anything wrong in being a substitute bride in place of her twin sister. Karen
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The Beast’s Substitute Bride
For over a hundred years, the human town has provided the next mate for the reigning beasts and this year, a bride is required. Paisley and Nevaeh are from the family mandated to provide the next bride for the reigning beast. Nevaeh has been selected as the eldest daughter while Paisley is engaged
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The Vampire's substitute bride
Ella happens to meet a charming and handsome man and she can't stop thinking about him. When a new transfer student arrives at school, Ella discovers that he is the very man she has been yearning for. Meanwhile, the handsome man's allure catches the attention of all the girls in school, especially S
