The Substitute Bride
/1/124235/coverbig.jpg?v=f3ebc666ede0f2ce73fe362a2a25fc71)
While My Husband Cheated, I Married His Powerful Brother
To help her husband build his business empire, Veyra worked two jobs, skipped meals, and sacrificed everything she had. When her mother desperately needed life-saving treatment, she couldn't even scrape together the money. Then, on a New Year's Eve flight, fate seated her beside her husband's mistress. That's when she discovered the cruel truth. Her husband had secretly amassed millions long ago. The wedding ring that belonged to Veyra now glittered on another woman's finger. The $500,000 that could have saved her mother's life had been spent instead on luxury gifts and pocket money for his lover. She lost her baby. She lost her mother. And finally, she lost every illusion about the man she'd loved for years. After leaving the airport, Veyra walked into a bar, kissed the most dangerous-looking stranger she could find, and spent one reckless night in his arms. By sunrise, she disappeared without leaving so much as her name. She thought it was nothing more than a farewell to her broken past. She was wrong. The stranger was Dorian-the most powerful, mysterious billionaire in the business world. Meanwhile, her cheating husband finally realized what he had thrown away. He begged on his knees, signed a postnuptial agreement worth billions, and swore he would give up everything if she would come back. But just as Veyra began plotting to reclaim everything that had been stolen from her, a mysterious car accident brought Dorian back into her life. Only then did she learn the truth. He wasn't a stranger at all. He was her ex-husband's older stepbrother. Now two powerful men are fighting for the same woman-one consumed by regret, the other determined to make her his. Sorry, cheating ex... I choose your brother.
Chapter 1 First Class Betrayal
Caspian had been working overtime through the entire New Year holiday. Veyra Solenne decided she would surprise him. She'd fly out, knock on his hotel door, watch his tired face crack into a smile.
Only business class seats were left. Although she felt bad about the ticket price, she thought it was worth it.
She sat there for a full minute, unable to figure out how to lower the tray table.
The woman beside her - polished, bored, gorgeous in the particular way that costs money - let out a short laugh.
"Never flown business before?"
Veyra managed an awkward smile. "Sorry. You must run a company or something. You've got that air about you."
"Me? No." The woman waved a manicured hand. "But my benefactor does. If I'm not in business class, he sends a private jet."
"A benefactor," Veyra said. "Those must be hard to come by."
"Not really." The woman's mouth curved. "I'm his subordinate. I keep making expensive mistakes at work. He scolds me until I cry, and then-" she smiled, letting the sentence finish itself.
A small chill moved down Veyra's spine, though she couldn't have said why. "Funny," she said slowly. "My husband has a colleague like that too. Always making mistakes."
"You're married?" The woman's eyes swept over her, cataloguing. "His wife's about your age, actually."
She examined her nails.
"He says he got tired of her ages ago. Says touching her feels stale. Less interesting than watching me flip my hair."
Veyra's stomach turned, quietly, the way it does before you know why.
"I told him I wanted to see him over the holiday," the woman went on, pleased with herself. "So he told his wife he had to work."
That was when Veyra saw it. The ring on the woman's finger. A diamond, cut exactly like the wedding band she had lost two years ago.
She went still.
Caspian is an ordinary employee, she thought. So, calm down. Similar rings don't mean anything.
Her eyes fixed on the ring.
"That's a wedding band," Veyra said, her voice coming out strange to her own ears. "Did you marry him?"
"This?" The woman - Xiomara, she introduced herself, admiring the stone as it caught the cabin light - "I made him take it from his wife."
The air went out of Veyra's lungs.
"I wasn't trying to make trouble for her, honestly," Xiomara said. "But on my birthday she had a miscarriage and dragged him to the hospital. I spent it alone."
Veyra's hand drifted, without her permission, to her stomach.
The memory came back whole and freezing: black ice on the walk home from the market, a fall she hadn't seen coming, three months along, and then nothing but blood on frozen concrete. Caspian at her bedside for three days straight, not sleeping. Waking to find her ring gone along with the child.
It's okay, he'd said, voice breaking. We'll have another baby. I'll make you a new ring.
Don't, she'd told him. They're doing layoffs. Save the money. When you make it, get me one then.
She had believed, at the time, that this was a small and noble sacrifice. She had not known she was negotiating away her own ring to a woman she hadn't met yet.
"So he gave you his wife's ring," Veyra said carefully.
"He didn't want to, at first. Said he'd buy me something better." Xiomara tilted her hand, watching the light slide across the diamond. "But that old thing acts so superior just for being his wife. If I don't put her in her place, she'll think she owns the world."
"When a woman lets herself get that pathetic," Xiomara added, almost kindly, "there's really no saving her."
Veyra's fingers found the hem of her sleeve and held on. "If he spends this much on you, he must be paying her a fortune to keep quiet."
Xiomara laughed, bright and careless, and leaned in close enough that her perfume became a wall.
"Here's the funny part," she whispered. "That pathetic woman doesn't even know he runs a company."
---
"Why keep it from her?" Veyra asked. Something in her was still hoping - stupidly, stubbornly - that there was an explanation that didn't end where she thought it did.
"Because what's the point?" Xiomara turned her nails toward the window light. "She already spent her best years slaving beside him while he built everything. If you were a man and you finally made it, would you keep spending on a wife who's already worn out? Money doesn't buy back anyone's youth."
Veyra caught her own reflection in the cabin glass - hollow-cheeked, shadowed under the eyes, ten years of scraping by written into her skin. She used to look better than this. She used to look like Xiomara.
"You know, sis, you've still got some looks left," Xiomara said, studying her with the clinical warmth of someone appraising livestock. "A little cosmetic work wouldn't hurt. Your husband hasn't been that interested lately, has he?"
Veyra said nothing.
"My benefactor gives me half a million a month just for living expenses," Xiomara added, unprompted, unbothered. "Procedures are separate."
"How long," Veyra made herself ask, "has this been going on?"
"Since June twelfth, last year." Xiomara checked her nails again, already bored of the question.
Veyra's grip on her own sleeve went white-knuckled.
June twelfth. The day her mother had needed five hundred thousand dollars for surgery she never got. Caspian had begged everyone he knew and come back with three hundred fifty thousand - everything I have, he'd told her, weeping, and she had believed him, had scraped together eighty thousand more herself and still watched her mother die eighty thousand short of enough.
I'm sorry, he'd said into her hair. I'm worthless. I couldn't even save your mother.
She had wiped his tears instead of her own. You gave everything you had. That's enough. Just wait a little longer, she'd told him, and he'd gripped her hand like a man drowning and sworn they wouldn't suffer forever.
He'd had the other hundred and fifty thousand the whole time.
"Funny thing," Xiomara said, watching her now with real interest. "That woman's mother needed exactly five hundred thousand that same month."
Veyra looked at her and said nothing at all.
Xiomara winked. "He was going to pay it. Originally."
"You took it," Veyra said. "For an allowance."
"Please, he's got plenty more where that came from. I just told him - once her mother's dead, that woman has no family left. Nowhere to go. If he ever gets caught keeping me, she won't dare make a scene." Xiomara smiled, cat-content. "I wanted a Chanel piece that month. Five hundred thousand, as it happens."
"Aren't you afraid she'll find out?"
"I'm smarter than that." Xiomara stretched, satisfied. "It was my idea - tell his wife he'd scraped together everything, let her think he gave his all. She'd be too grateful, too guilty over the shortfall, to ever look for someone else in the picture."
Then, almost as an afterthought, she added the last piece.
"The annoying part is, the only reason he finally agreed to do it was so that if I ever got found out, his precious wife wouldn't leave him." She snorted. "Tch. Some women have all the luck."
The slap landed before Veyra had decided to throw it.
"What is wrong with you?" Xiomara shrieked, hand flying to her cheek.
/0/29764/coverbig.jpg?v=dfb0778fa19114f286b13ee938a419c9)
The Beast’s Substitute Bride
For over a hundred years, the human town has provided the next mate for the reigning beasts and this year, a bride is required. Paisley and Nevaeh are from the family mandated to provide the next bride for the reigning beast. Nevaeh has been selected as the eldest daughter while Paisley is engaged to a man she loves. What happens when Nevaeh runs away the night before her collection and Paisley is asked to go in place of her sister to be the bride of the beast.
/1/102883/coverbig.jpg?v=76b5a0c20e9ecd995f3bf98292893e5c)
THE SUBSTITUTE BRIDE TO THE ALPHA KING
Rejected by her fated mate and forced to marry a crippled prince, Lyra expects nothing but misery. But Prince Rowan is hiding something dangerous. He's not broken. He's deadly. And he's been planning a rebellion for years. When assassins hunt her and the king's threats grow lethal, Lyra must beco
/0/57394/coverbig.jpg?v=8933d617b1150c1ad4bcb7d3acbf591c)
The Unwanted Son And The Substitute Bride
How ruthless can life be? When you've fallen to your lowest point, what choices are left? Would you surrender, or would you fight if someone's very existence hinged on your strength? Amber's existence with her stepmother and stepsister was a relentless nightmare. She endured their demands, taking o
/0/50752/coverbig.jpg?v=a124c8a3a042f909c3092fcb483ce051)
The Substitute Bride of Lycan King
When the arranged bride of the famous Lycan King eloped with her boyfriend because she was impregnated, Margareth Cullens served as a substitute bride to pay her father's huge debt to the Lycan royalties. Weak, clumsy, and wolfless she-wolf Margareth has no choice but to spend her life with the ruth
/0/31689/coverbig.jpg?v=065feaa0eec1439c4e5e4e8953e18a3d)
The Substitute Bride's Fateful Lover
To pay the debt, she substituted for the bride and married him, the devil everyone feared and respected. She's desperate and out of options. He's ruthless and out of patience. He took a bite of her sweetness, and gradually submitted to the addictive lust. Before he came to his realization, he was
/0/23993/coverbig.jpg?v=55e688dbce6206c6538442c0d99096af)
The Substitute Bride Can't Escape
Olivia White replaced her sister to be engaged to Vincent Barton. She thought that the one she married would be a disabled man with notorious reputation, while to her surprise, Vincent is actually very handsome with great figure. What’s more, he treats her so well that he tends to satisfy all her re
/0/46441/coverbig.jpg?v=74edb36b829c64e45b6b948f70fb6e99)
The Substitute Bride: Billionaire's Dilemma
Raven has been in love with Ares Windsor ever since she met him. He is a man of great wealth, power, and influence, and his enigmatic charm has always captivated her. Unfortunately, Ares has only ever had eyes for Raven's younger sister, his fiancée. Raven has always felt like she lived in her siste
/1/119445/coverbig.jpg?v=4c3c3705d3ea16b1fb315b8358978489)
The Substitute Bride of the Scarred Billionaire Heir
I woke up naked in a stranger’s bed aboard the Seraphina, a luxury yacht drifting across the Atlantic. My head was splitting. My dress was torn on the floor. Bruises bloomed across my skin like proof of a crime I couldn’t remember committing. Before I could even scream, the cabin door burst open. My
/0/95383/coverbig.jpg?v=d6ec51f7f04a3f8dc0f7739c66225b2d)
Reborn as the Substitute Bride to the Disabled Tycoon
In her past life, Summer was tragically killed by a scumbag and her scheming stepsister, and they also caused the death of the husband who loved her most. After being reborn, Summer takes the initiative to marry in the place of another, becoming the bride of a disabled husband. In this new life, she
/0/28009/coverbig.jpg?v=28adee7417e39434105655627d045e99)
The Substitute Bride And The Mysterious Tycoon
Celia Kane originally came from a wealthy family, but she was orphaned by her mother at an early age. Ever since then, she was made to live a hard life. Her father and stepmother even set her up to marry Tyson Shaw who was supposed to marry her stepsister. Unwilling to accept her fate, Celia ran aw
/0/87624/coverbig.jpg?v=23046e280a358c1a765606c09e1cfbf4)
The Substitute Bride Awoke As A Legendary Heroine
For financial gain, Isla's father married her to Theodore, a comatose heir. Unconscious, he duped her; awake, he claimed she'd groped him and flirted nonstop. When she discovered she was pregnant, his "lost love" appeared, and he slid divorce papers across the bed. Isla slapped his hush money back a
/1/129537/coverbig.jpg?v=1760820ba815b1a30f29386861dd1420)
The Substitute Bride He Could Never Replace
Cassian Ashbourne's bride was never to be Neriah Vale. She was nothing more than a replacement for the sister. Suffering from a rare disease that doctors at the time thought would kill her before her 21st birthday, Neriah replaces her sister at the altar for treatment. But she regrets that de
/1/116481/coverbig.jpg?v=8c7a866619d0cdcbdb5c8a59da5d1232)
The Substitute Bride's Lethal Secret
I was dragged back to the wealthy Hayes family years after they threw me out like garbage. The matriarch ordered me to take my sister's place and marry Alaric Montgomery, a ruthless CEO rumored to be on his deathbed. "If you refuse, I will have your mother's grave dug up by tomorrow morning." The
/1/120450/coverbig.jpg?v=42e9d2839f609924a8f27c98756e3f13)
The Substitute Bride Who Stole the Alpha's Cold Heart
For eighteen years, the Sinclair family kept me locked in their attic, treating me worse than a stray dog while their precious daughter lived like a princess. Then, they suddenly barged into my room with a desperate demand: I had to take her place and marry Alpha Brandon Ewing. He was known across
/0/42984/coverbig.jpg?v=f4b609bf11994021d7c2a468dc89c4df)
The Substitute Bride Triplets And The Impotent Billionaire
Stabbed in the back by the people she called her family, Tinsley William's life ended up in shreds. Her sister called her names and tainted her reputation. She was all over the news as a husband snatcher and desperate jealous bitch which resulted in her having a one night stand with a well known Bil
/0/34460/coverbig.jpg?v=20d510939f909c4c7927f15d394a21ea)
The Substitute Bride: Forcefully Married to a Domineering Ruthless Billionaire
Mature Contents Ahead. Please this book is highly rated 18+ "You'll pay for this Amelia, mark my words, you get married to me through deception, you'll suffer the consequences. And now, you'll face your first punishment, you want to be my wife huh, you'll face what happens to them on their wedding
/0/42608/coverbig.jpg?v=85679935ad36d25b42dd2746f5461989)
The Fight For The Throne and the substitute bride of the prince
Gwendolyn, a young woman about to get married, sees her life crumble when her fiancé abandons her after being manipulated by her own sister, Guinevere. While Gwendolyn suffers from the betrayal and seeks to recover, her father, Sir Ulrich, reveals that Guinevere will be forced to marry a prince to s
