The Billionaire's Substitute Fiancée

1. Shattered Dream

Samantha

The late-afternoon sun scatters golden reflections across the Seine.

Alexander walks beside me. His dark gaze, the one I love, drifts toward the distance.

He insisted on this walk, claiming he needed my opinion on “something important.” I agreed, because I’m incapable of refusing him anything, even when every minute spent near him is both sweet and bitter.

A barge glides beneath the Pont des Arts. Tourists immortalize the sunset. Paris is magnificent, carefree, indifferent.

“I’m going to ask your sister to marry me,” he announces in his deep voice.

My heart doesn’t stop; it explodes. A sharp pain pierces my chest, as if someone had just plunged a knife into it. Air refuses to fill my lungs.

Around us, Paris goes on living. A couple kisses on the bridge, an ice-cream vendor calls out to passersby, an accordionist launches into La Vie en Rose. But my world has just tipped into a deafening silence.

I knew. Of course I knew. Three years they’ve been together. Three years I’ve avoided family lunches, invented excuses not to see them. Three years I’ve told myself I’d turned the page. But knowing and hearing are two different things. Words spoken aloud make everything terribly, irrevocably real.

My throat tightens so much I can’t utter a single word. I breathe slowly, deeply, trying to loosen the vise crushing my chest. Inhale. Hold for four seconds. Exhale slowly. A technique my self-defense instructor taught me to manage anxiety.

Alexander looks at me, waiting for my reaction, a radiant smile lighting his face.

I’ve loved Alexander since I was old enough to understand what that word means. Since I was fifteen, when our families spent every summer together at their family chateau, and he asked me, genuinely interested, what I was drawing.

For years, I believed we shared something special.

We spent long hours talking about art and culture, with or without my older brother Andrew.

When Andrew left to study in Lyon, Alexander kept taking me to exhibitions and museums. We often ended our outings with a dinner tête-à-tête. Naive as I was, I believed that—

But I was wrong. Our age gap, seven years, meant he didn’t see me that way. To him, I was the little sister he’d never had. Nothing more.

The silence stretches between us. I have to say something.

Anything. I try to smile, but my lip trembles despite me.

I turn toward the Seine, fixing my gaze on the water flowing on, unperturbed.

I can’t let him read in my eyes the devastating sorrow threatening to break me.

My legs wobble. I need to sit before they give out.

“Sam? Are you okay?” he asks, a note of concern piercing his voice.

“Yes, yes, I… it’s just…,” I stammer.

I desperately scan for a bench.

“I… I’m happy for you. Truly.”

The words taste like ash in my mouth. But I say them anyway, because that’s what’s expected of me. The understanding little sister.

“You’re the first person I’m telling,” he confides, beaming. “Even before my parents. After all, you know your sister better than anyone.”

Oh yes, I know my half-sister. I’ve known her for twenty-three years.

I know exactly what happened when she discovered my feelings for Alexander three years ago.

I’d confided my secret over the phone to Anna, a friend of mine.

Kristel overheard me. A month later, she made her relationship with him official in front of our family.

I remember her triumphant smile throughout the entire dinner.

Since then, she’s clung on. At first to prove she was better than me, then because Alexander’s scale-up, MatchMapping, has been smashing every metric.

Their innovative dating app boasts an exceptional success rate.

Built on a closely guarded algorithm, the company is valued at nearly seven billion ahead of its IPO.

“Would you come with me to Place Vend?me to help me choose the ring?” he asks, hopeful. “You have an artistic eye I don’t. I want it to be perfect.”

Place Vend?me.

The memory hits me with brutal force. My twentieth birthday.

Alexander had taken me there, claiming I needed to “see beautiful things to feed my inspiration.” We spent the afternoon admiring jewelers’ windows, inventing stories about the buyers.

He treated me to coffee at Angelina. I believed, my God, how stupid I was. I thought it was a sign.

And now he wanted me to help choose the ring that would bind him to my sister forever?

How can a dating-app genius, a man capable of creating algorithms that predict romantic compatibility with stunning accuracy, be so obtuse when it comes to real love?

Doesn’t he see that Kristel is using him?

That their conversations stay superficial?

That she never truly takes an interest in his work unless it’s about market valuation?

“I… that’s going to be complicated,” I reply, keeping my gaze stubbornly fixed on the water. “It’s a very busy week at school.”

“That’s right, what was I thinking!” he scolds himself immediately, with that instant guilt that defines him. “I’m sorry, Sam. You must be under a lot of pressure. How’s it going for you? Have you found a gallery willing to exhibit your work?”

There it is.

That’s exactly it. That genuine attention, that memory for the details of my life, the way he remembers my failures and my hopes when my own family—aside from Andrew—consistently forgets them.

As his hazel eyes settle on me with deep, sincere interest, I feel my vision blur with tears.

That’s why it’s so hard to tear myself away from the crush I’ve had on him all these years.

Alexander is one of the few people around me who truly cares about what I do, who doesn’t brush aside my dreams of being an artist.

My father keeps telling me I should “do something serious,” like my sister and her position as commercial director. My mother sighs every time I mention an exhibition. But Alexander asks me to show him my new canvases, my latest watercolors.

A tear slides down my cheek before I can stop it. I wipe it away with a sharp gesture.

“Sam…” he begins, worried.

“Allergies,” I cut in quickly. “Pollen. It’s awful right now.”

It’s early November. There’s no pollen. But he has the delicacy not to point it out.

“With galleries, it’ll happen,” he says, with that unshakable confidence he’s always had in me. “Your work is incredible. They’ll recognize your talent eventually.”

His faith in me breaks me a little more, even if he’s wrong about the true reason for my distress.

I could tell him everything. Right here, right now, on this quay where we’ve shared so many confidences over the years. The words are there, on the edge of my lips, burning, desperate.

I love you. I’m the one you should marry. Kristel doesn’t really see you. But I do. I see you, Alexander. I always have.

But I look at his face, lit by a happiness I’ve never seen on him before, and I understand with painful clarity.

He has never seen me that way. To him, I’ll always be the little sister he never had.

The girl you can talk to about art and philosophy, but not the one you marry. Not the one who makes your heart race.

And confessing my feelings now would change nothing, except make everything horribly awkward.

I’d lose his presence in my life, those sporadic outings that are both torture and balm for the heart, and that I can’t bring myself to give up.

Those crumbs of attention that feed and starve me at the same time.

So I do what I’ve always done. I swallow my tears, shove my hands into my coat pockets so he won’t see them shaking, and I lie.

“For Place Vend?me, I’ll try to free up some time. Send me your availability, we’ll find a moment.”

His smile widens, radiant.

“Perfect! I knew I could count on you, Sam. You’re the best.”

He slips an arm around my shoulders in a brotherly gesture that makes me want to scream.

Paris stretches out before us, beautiful and cruel, an indifferent witness to my breaking heart.

“Thank you, Sam. Truly. Your support means everything to me.”

I close my eyes for a second, long enough to swallow my grief.

Then I open them and smile at him.

We resume our walk along the Seine, and I wonder how much longer I’ll be able to hold on before I finally break.