Part 2The Proxy Wife: Counting Down to Goodbye

The air smelled faintly of musk and tobacco.

It was suffocating.

I stiffly pulled the sheet up, trying to cover the shameful marks on my body.

I pressed my hands over my eyes.

But water still leaked through my fingers.

This was my second month married to Julian Pierce.

Or rather, impersonating my sister, Blair, to marry him.

Blair and I are identical twins.

But when we were born, our parents were struggling artists in Brooklyn. They kept the healthier sister, Blair, and left me on the steps of a church.

I was raised by my foster mother, a woman with a bad leg and a heart of gold.

Two months ago, Mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The treatment costs were astronomical.

Just as we hit a dead end, my biological parents found me.

They had made it big, becoming real estate moguls in Manhattan.

But they didn't find me to welcome me home. They found me because Blair had run away two days before her arranged marriage to the Pierce heir.

She left only a note saying she’d return in three months.

Desperate, my parents found me to take her place.

In exchange, they would cover all of my foster mother’s medical bills.