Just A Substitute: The Wife He Failed

At the family dinner, the waiter stumbled, sending a tray of boiling onion soup flying toward the table.

My husband, Marcus, moved instantly.

But not for me.

He threw his body over my cousin Chloe, shielding her completely in his arms.

I was left exposed. The scalding liquid hit my chest and arm, burning my skin instantly.

While I screamed in agony on the floor, Marcus was frantically checking Chloe for scratches, whispering, "Thank God it missed you. You are more important than her. Always."

In the hospital, he handed me a check for fifty thousand dollars.

"It was an instinct," he said, avoiding my eyes. "Don't make a scene."

He didn't notice my hollow expression.

He didn't ask why the doctors were looking at him with pity.

And he certainly didn't know that the shock and trauma had caused me to miscarry our six-week-old baby.

For four years, I had been his perfect doll. I dressed like Chloe, painted like Chloe, and waited for him to love me.

I thought I was his wife.

I didn't realize I was just a placeholder until he sacrificed our child to save his true love from a splash of soup.

When he left to comfort Chloe again, I pulled the IV from my arm.

I placed the signed divorce papers on the bedside table.

Underneath them, I left the medical report confirming the miscarriage of his child.

Then, I vanished.

Chapter 1

Ellie POV

The knife was cold against my ribs in that Florence alleyway, but the silence on the other end of the phone was colder.

I called Marcus three times.

The first time, the thief ripped my purse from my shoulder. The second time, he shoved me into the rough brick wall. The third time, I was bleeding on the cobblestones, watching the screen light up the darkness before fading to black.

He never answered.

Marcus was my guardian, my husband, my world. He was thirty-two, powerful, and wealthy enough to buy the very city I was bleeding in. I was twenty-two, the orphan he had molded like clay. He bought me the finest oil paints, hired the best tutors, and guided my hand on the canvas until my strokes mimicked the masters. I thought it was love. I thought his obsession with my posture, my clothes, and my hair was devotion.

I was wrong.

I flew back to New York with a bandaged arm and a story about a clumsy fall. Marcus did not pick me up at the airport. He was waiting in the living room of our penthouse, a glass of whiskey in his hand.

"You are back early," he said. He did not look at my bandages.

"I lost my phone," I said. My voice was steady. It scared me how steady it was.

He nodded, indifferent. "Buy a new one. Put it on the card."

He set his phone on the marble coffee table and went to the shower. The screen lit up. I did