Done Being A Shadow: The Wife's Escape

On the day I finally pried open the locked drawer in Marcus’s study, I didn't find a surprise anniversary gift.

I found a shrine to my father's business partner, Izzy.

Photos of a woman who looked exactly like me stared back.

That was when I realized my marriage was nothing more than an expensive lie. I wasn't his wife; I was a customized substitute for the woman he couldn't have.

The nightmare worsened when scalding soup was spilled at a restaurant.

Marcus didn't hesitate.

He threw his body over Izzy to shield her, leaving me to take the full force of the burns.

Later, while I lay in the hospital bandaged and in agony, he didn't come to comfort me.

He came to demand I donate a kidney to save Izzy.

"If we both needed a kidney, who would you choose?" I asked him, desperate for a lie.

"Izzy," he said instantly. "She has so much more to do."

He didn't know I was pregnant.

He didn't know that while he was begging me to save his mistress, the stress was killing his unborn child.

I wiped my tears and laughed.

"Okay," I said.

I signed the divorce papers and left them on his desk.

On top of them, I placed a medical report dated that morning: *Spontaneous Abortion.*

Then, I boarded a one-way flight to Montana and vanished, leaving him to wake up to a world where he had saved his mistress but killed his family.

Chapter 1

Olivia POV

It was a Tuesday when I finally pried open the locked drawer in Marcus’s study—the same day I realized my marriage was nothing more than a very expensive, very elaborate lie.

Inside, I didn’t find financial documents or family heirlooms. I found a shrine.

Photos of a woman who looked terrifyingly like me stared back from the glossy paper. Letters written in Marcus’s sharp, architectural handwriting were stacked neatly beside sketches of a house I had never seen. The dates went back years. Long before he met me. Long before he told me I was the only woman who ever understood him.

I stared at the woman in the photograph. Izzy Vance. My father's business partner. A woman I had admired. A woman who was currently downstairs at our dinner party.

My heart didn't break. It simply stopped.

I closed the drawer. I locked it. Then, with a terrifying sort of calm, I walked downstairs.

Just hours ago, I had given Marcus a vintage Patek Philippe watch for his birthday. I had spent six months tracking it down. In return, he had handed me a rock. A literal stone from a construction site. He called it "grounding." I called it a sign I was too stupid to read until now.

I walked into the dining room. Marcus was standing by the fireplace. He looked like a king holding court. He was forty, with the kind of silver-fox charm that made women lose their breath and their common sense. I