A Substitute No More, A Queen Returns

For five years, I was Jameson Blair's fiancée. For five years, my brothers finally treated me like a sister they loved.

Then my twin, Haleigh-the one who left him at the altar-returned with a fake cancer story. In five minutes, he married her.

They believed her every lie. When she tried to poison me with a venomous spider, they called me dramatic.

When she framed me for ruining her party, my brothers whipped me until I bled.

They called me a worthless substitute, a placeholder with her face.

The final straw came when they tied me to a rope and left me dangling over a cliff to die.

But I didn't die. I climbed back up, faked my death, and disappeared. They wanted a ghost. I decided to give them one.

Chapter 1

Bailey Douglas POV:

For five years, Jameson Blair was the sun my world orbited around. For five years, I was his fiancée, the woman on his arm at every gala, the one whose name was whispered in the same breath as his. And in five short minutes, I stood on a cold linoleum floor across the street and watched him marry my twin sister, Haleigh.

He had a thousand reasons why we never made it to the city clerk' s office ourselves. A billion-dollar merger that needed his undivided attention. A hostile takeover that couldn't be postponed. A trip to Monaco he couldn' t miss. Our wedding, the real one, with the dress I' d picked out and the flowers I' d agonized over, was always just around the corner, a shimmering promise on the horizon.

"Next spring, Bailey, I promise," he'd murmur into my hair, his voice a low, intoxicating rumble that made me believe anything. "I just need to close this deal, and then all my time is for you."

I believed him. I was a fool, but I believed him because I loved him, and a small, desperate part of me that had been starved its whole life was finally being fed. I thought the warmth in his eyes was for me. I thought the way he held my hand was for me.

Now, standing behind a dusty potted fern in a coffee shop, I watched him slide a simple gold band onto Haleigh' s finger. The same Haleigh who had left him standing at the altar five years ago, running off with some musician to chase a life of excitement that had eventually spit her back out, broken and broke.

The clerk, a woman with a tired face, stamped the document. Jameson never even glanced out the window. His world was inside that sterile room.

The door to the city clerk' s office swung open, and they stepped out into the harsh New York sunlight. Haleigh, my identical twin, looked radiant. You' d never know she was dying. That was her story, at least. Stage-four pancreatic cancer. A "dying wish" to finally marry the man she' d so carelessly thrown away.

She clutched