Page 1 of The 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 château, 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 Vendôme to help me choose the ring?” he asks, hopeful. “You have an artistic eye I don’t. I want it to be perfect.”

Place Vendôme.

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.