My Twin Sister Offered Me As A Decoy To Her Mob Boss Husband — So I Replaced Her
Part 1
Cold leather pressed against my cheek as the zip ties bit into my wrists.
They smelled faintly of engine grease and old tobacco.
I wasn’t supposed to be in the back of this armored sedan.
I was a bookkeeper who worried about electricity bills and stale bread.
But the terrifying man who dragged me out of the alley didn’t care about my grocery list.
He had looked into my terrified eyes with a lethal, exhausted familiarity.
“Welcome home, dear wife,” he had whispered, right before the chloroform hit.
I am not his wife.
The hypnotic thump of tires rolling over smooth asphalt pulled me back to consciousness.
My head throbbed with a vicious intensity right behind my left eye.
A dull spike of pain radiated down my neck as I groaned and shifted my weight.
My wrists were bound in front of me with thick plastic, the edges already chafing my skin raw.
I lay sideways across the spacious back seat of a moving vehicle.
The leather beneath me felt buttery and pristine, entirely at odds with the dirt staining my jeans.
“I see the sedative wore off faster than anticipated.”
The baritone drawl came from the opposite side of the car, smooth but edged with quiet violence.
I blinked against the dim lighting, pushing myself up to a sitting position while swallowing back bile.
He sat in the corner of the seat, casually scrolling through a smartphone that illuminated his sharp jawline.
His eyes were impossibly dark, like looking into the bottom of a dry well.
He wore a charcoal suit that screamed custom tailoring, a stark contrast to the brutal grip he’d used in the alley.
“Who are you?” I rasped, clearing my throat as terror vibrated in my vocal cords.
The man locked his phone and dropped it onto the seat beside him.
The sudden lack of light made the shadows in the car feel incredibly heavy.
He leaned forward, the smell of vetiver washing over me and making my stomach clench.
“A mistake,” he repeated softly, reaching out his hand.
I flinched violently, pressing my back against the door.
His fingers bypassed my face, catching a strand of my dyed mousy brown hair.
He rubbed the strands between his thumb and forefinger with open disgust.
“The dye job is atrocious, Brenda.”
He dragged his dark eyes over my frayed cardigan and sensible sneakers.
“Playing the impoverished civilian?”
“I’m not Brenda,” I forced out, looking him in the eye.
“My name is Megan, I am her twin sister.”
For three seconds, the only sound was the hum of the engine.
Then he let out a short, sharp exhalation of breath that held zero amusement.
“A sister,” he murmured, his tone freezing the blood in my veins.
“We’ve been married for three years and you never mentioned a twin.”
Desperation cracked my facade as I begged him to call my employer.
He moved so fast I didn’t have time to blink.
His large hand wrapped around my jaw, fingers biting into my cheeks with the absolute threat of broken bone.
Up close, the exhaustion etched into the corners of his eyes mirrored the violence in his posture.
“You stole three million dollars from my personal vault, shot my head of security, and vanished,” he whispered.
“If you open your mouth to lie to me again, I won’t wait until we get to the house to remind you who you belong to.”
He shoved me slightly, my head bumping against the window as I sat frozen.
Three million dollars.
A man shot.
Married.
Brenda wasn’t just in the underworld, she was at the top of it.
And she was married to a man who looked like he snapped necks for a morning workout.
If I kept denying it, he would think I was mocking him.
The realization hit me like a physical blow to the ribs.
To survive the night, I had to be Brenda.
The car tires crunched onto heavy gravel as we passed through wrought iron gates.
A sprawling stone manor loomed at the end of the driveway, its windows glowing with harsh yellow light.
It looked less like a home and more like a fortress.
A hulking driver opened the rear door, and my captor commanded me out.
As my sneakers hit the gravel, the cold night air bit through my thin cardigan.
“Cut these off,” I said, aiming for a flat, demanding tone as I held up my bound wrists.
A slow, cynical smirk touched his mouth before he pulled a folding knife from his pocket.
The blade slid beneath the plastic with practiced ease, snapping the zip tie.
“Better?” he asked, his tone dripping with patronizing calm.
I rubbed my raw wrists, hiding my shaking hands by crossing my arms.
I didn’t say thank you, because Brenda wouldn’t say thank you.
We walked into a massive foyer floored in stark black and white checkerboard marble.
Two men in dark suits straightened up immediately.
A woman in a maid’s uniform stood near the archway, her hands trembling as she smoothed her apron.
She looked like a rabbit staring down the barrel of a shotgun.
“Everyone,” the man announced, his voice carrying effortlessly through the cavernous space.
“My wife has decided to return from her sabbatical.”
The silence that followed was suffocating, heavy with hatred and fear.
“I’m tired, Greg,” I said, praying it was his first name based on a piece of mail I saw in the car.
His eyebrow crept upward.
“Greg? We’re back to using given names, are we?”
He gestured toward the sweeping staircase, and I forced myself to walk up without hurrying.
Three days passed in a suffocating blur of tailored clothes and icy silence.
I spent every waking hour playing a ghost in Brenda’s stiff silk blouses.
I needed a phone, a computer, a sliver of the outside world.
Late Tuesday evening, I sat in the grand dining room, staring at a plate of seared scallops.
Greg sat opposite me, hosting a nervous distributor named Dan who was sweating profusely.
Dan was complaining about border patrols and begged me to intervene.
He brought up a deal Brenda had negotiated on the northern route three years ago.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
I channeled the cruelest tone I could muster and dismissed him completely.
Greg watched me with a microscopic shift in the muscles around his eyes.
When Dan finally practically ran to his car, I tried to leave the table.
“Sit down,” Greg’s command cracked through the empty room like a whip.
My heart skipped a beat as I slowly lowered myself back into the leather chair.
He stood up, walking silently around the table until he stood directly behind me.
He leaned down, his mouth hovering beside my ear as he mentioned the northern route.
Before I could pull away, he grabbed my right hand and pulled it under the harsh chandelier light.
His thumb rubbed firmly over the tips of my fingers, tracing the smooth, unblemished skin.
He ran his thumb over my heavy, thick calluses formed by years of gripping a 10-key calculator.
“Funny thing about the northern route,” Greg whispered, his grip tightening.
“You had a slight disagreement with a rival crew, and one of them pinned your hand to a table with a combat knife.”
I stopped breathing.
“It took twelve stitches and left a nasty, puckered scar.”
He dropped my hand, moving to stand directly in front of me with a cold, calculating fury.
“Why do your hands feel like they belong to someone who has never fired a gun?”
I stared at the unblemished skin of my own hands, waiting for the executioner to draw his weapon.
