My Beautiful Sister Jilted Her Billionaire Fiancé, So My Father Forced Me To Marry Him Instead
Part 1
“You will marry Craig in your sister’s place, or this family is finished.”
My father’s voice was completely devoid of warmth.
I stood in the doorway of his home office, staring at the man who had always treated me like an afterthought.
“There is no third option, Megan,” he said.
“Do you understand me?”
I understood perfectly.
My older sister, Heather, had been the golden child of the family for as long as I could remember.
She was beautiful, charming, and effortlessly the center of attention in every room.
I was the one who hid in the corner with a book, nursing a cup of tea, trying to blend into the wallpaper.
Our family’s real estate business was on the verge of total bankruptcy.
My father had brokered a salvation deal with Craig, the notoriously ruthless CEO of the holding company.
It wasn’t just a merger; it was a marriage contract.
Heather was supposed to marry Craig, sealing the alliance and saving our family’s fortune.
But three days before the wedding, Heather ran off with her personal trainer.
She left a hastily scrawled note on the kitchen counter, plunging our family into absolute chaos.
My father spent two days making frantic phone calls, trying to contain the scandal.
He pulled every string he had to keep the press from getting wind of the humiliation.
When that failed to fix the core problem, he summoned me into his office.
He looked at me with cold, calculating eyes, assessing my worth for the first time in my twenty-three years.
“Craig has agreed to proceed with the merger, provided the marriage terms are honored,” my father explained.
“Since Heather is gone, you are the only one left.”
I felt all the air leave my lungs.
“He doesn’t want me,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“He wanted Heather.”
“Everyone wanted Heather,” I continued, the bitter truth tasting like ash in my mouth.
“He is taking me because I am the only option left, and because refusing would humiliate him in front of the board.”
My father didn’t deny it.
He just adjusted his tie and looked at his watch.
“I am a repair, Dad,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady.
“I am a patch on a torn coat.”
“I will spend my whole life being the sister he settled for, and everyone in our social circle will know it.”
“They will whisper about it at every dinner party and charity event.”
My father leaned across his massive oak desk, his patience wearing thin.
“I would rather you feel pitied than see this family out on the street,” he snapped.
“You are not refusing.”
I looked down at my hands.
There was a smudge of ink on my right index finger from the pen I had been chewing on while reading earlier.
I didn’t want to see my family destroyed.
I didn’t want my father to lose everything he had spent his life building.
“I am not refusing,” I finally said.
“I only ask that you do not pretend it is anything but what it is.”
“Do not tell me he wants me.”
“I can bear the marriage, but I don’t think I could bear the pretending.”
What I didn’t know was that the door to the office had been standing slightly ajar.
I didn’t know that Craig had arrived early for the meeting to discuss the revised contract.
His assistant had apparently directed him to wait in the drawing room, but he had wandered down the hall.
And I certainly didn’t know that the cold, intimidating billionaire was standing perfectly still in the hallway, listening to every single word.
Craig was a man who operated strictly on logic and numbers.
He had built his empire by removing emotion from the equation entirely.
He had agreed to marry Heather because she was a suitable, beautiful asset who would look excellent at corporate galas.
He had never expected love, and he hadn’t wanted it.
But there was a secret Craig had never shared with anyone.
Four months ago, at a dreadful charity gala, he had escaped the main ballroom to find some quiet.
He had stepped into the library and found a woman hiding behind a massive potted plant, deeply engrossed in a paperback novel.
She had looked up, completely oblivious to his identity, and sighed.
“This is the longest gala in human history, isn’t it?” she had muttered.
Craig had been so stunned by the casual, unguarded remark that he had replied honestly.
“It is interminable,” he had said.
She had given him a quick, genuine smile that reached her eyes, and then gone back to her book.
That woman was me.
His assistant discovered my name the very next day.
Learning that I was the quiet, overlooked younger sister of his bride-to-be must have felt like a cruel joke.
A man engaged to a celebrated beauty simply did not moon over the plain sister hiding in the background.
Craig tried desperately to forget the ink on my fingers and the genuine warmth of my smile.
Duty demanded he move forward with the emotionless business transaction.
But when Heather bolted, his lawyers fully expected him to cancel the deal in a rage.
Instead, upon receiving the proposal for me to take her place, Craig agreed instantly.
His own legal team looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
Allowing everyone to believe he was just salvaging the deal gave him the perfect cover.
Our family was convinced they were foisting a massive disappointment on him.
Worse still, Craig allowed me to believe I was nothing more than a convenient substitute.
Now, standing in the hallway outside my father’s office, Craig realized his mistake.
He realized that by hiding behind his cold corporate facade, he was breaking my heart before our marriage even began.
He heard the flat exhaustion in my voice as I accepted my fate as a discard.
The silence in the office was suffocating.
I stared at the floor, mentally preparing myself for a lifetime of cold indifference.
Then, there was a single, sharp knock on the partially open door.
