The Billionaire’s Substitute Bride

CHAPTER FOUR

Elle

I stared at this blonde haired girl, clad in a heavily beaded wedding gown. I smoothed the bodycon gown with my hands as I felt every pearl, gemstone and probably diamonds. If you had told me months back that I was about to get married to Daniel Carlton. And I was now assuming my twin sister's identity. I would have whacked you repeatedly and turned you into the psych ward. But here we are.

Leah appeared behind me as we both stared into the mirror like something out of a movie except my mother is a stone cold b***h. “ You look just like her.” She said, smiled and turned to pick something out of the wardrobe.

“Your dad couldn’t wait to die, so I’ll be walking you down the aisle.” She continued casually.

Usually you would be able to see the hurt all over my face and that would be it. “ What?” I whipped my head so fast to look at her. She was laughing. I shook my head in irritation.

“ Relax. It was a joke.”

“What is wrong with you? Nobody jokes about dead people.” She just rolled her eyes in response.

“Don’t waste my time. We don’t have all day. I’m doing you a favor. I never thought I would be walking ‘you’ down the aisle to marry Daniel Carlton. It was supposed to be her.” She said coldly. I didn’t think it was worth a reply so I just kept mute.

Dan startled us both with a quick knock on the opened door before popping his head a bit to let us know it was him. He sported the biggest smile ever as he strutted towards me and that made me forget about Leah as I in return, created a smile specially for him.

“ You’re so beautiful. You look so beautiful.” He held my hands and gave me a light kiss on the cheek.

I bet I was tomato red right then and there. “ Thank you Dan, you look handsome. But you’re not supposed to be here.” I said in between laughs cause he kept kissing my cheeks. “ Stop. You’ll ruin my makeup. You have to go.”

“I” kiss. “Told.” Kiss. “You.” Kiss. I pulled away now. “That I don’t believe in all that.” He finally finished. We had barely seen each other the past few days, so he called me earlier to know exactly where I was so he could see me quickly before leaving. I told him that it was bad luck but Dan didn’t believe in that, so here he was.

“Okay. But you have to leave.” He gave me one last kiss on my forehead before leaving. He was long gone and I was still red with a smile playing on my lips, but trust Leah to take care of it.

“ Wipe that smile off your lips. This is temporary. You’re only hurting yourself if you fall for him. He is obsessed with Sera, not you.” She finally said in that cold tone I’ve come to know and love.

I decided I wasn’t going to let her ruin the mood. Dan deserved a good wedding even though Sera clearly doesn’t deserve him.

Dan’s dad and stepmom were out of the country and were unable to make the wedding, according to him. I found that weird and was tempted to probe the info but I noticed it was hard for him to tell me, so I let it be. It was time for the worse part of a wedding. Greeting your guests.

Dan held my hand as we approached a grey haired man. “ Dr Trevor.”

“Congratulations Daniel.” The man said cheerfully.

“Dr Trevor. How are you doing?” I asked.

“Good.” He responded flatly and a bit salty I must say. My face scrunched up in confusion. Dan gave me a reassuring smile to cheer me up but I wasn’t cheered up. This has been a recurring problem for way too long. I noticed people don’t really care much for Sera. She was important but definitely not liked.

Dan left to greet a guest just as I saw a group of three girls pointing at me. Real nice and subtle. I was now used to being around Dan and had girls scowling and making faces at me for trapping their man crush with a ring. But this one felt personal. So I did something bold and walked up to them. Two of the girls left as soon as they realized they were my target, but the black haired girl with huge doe eyes stayed back.

“Thank you so much for coming.” I tried not to give myself away. My posture was just right and I tried to put the desperate look in my eyes away. She stared distastefully at me then scoffed. I arched my brows in confusion.

“What do you want, Sera? Are you going to leak my sextape this time?”

My eyes widened in disbelief. Sextape is insane. “Oh! Straight into it, okay.” I said under my breath before clearing my throat.

“ So, um..” I paused because I realized I didn’t know her name, but I don’t know why I looked to her upper chest for some sort of name tag. I blame my old life. I found what I did funny so I laughed out loud with no context and she didn’t like that and tried to leave.

“ I’m not laughing at you. I’m trying to apologize to you even though I don’t know what I did.”

“Really Sera? You’re going to tell me you didn’t leak the video of me kissing Walt McKenzie to my modeling agency so you could get the job for yourself?” I could tell I was only upsetting her even more.

“ I’m really sorry.” She stormed off in response. I sighed before picking up a random glass of champagne. My wedding but everyone here seemed to hate me. They seem to hate Sera. I spotted Toby from the company anniversary, he was a bit faraway but I was determined to get to him.

“Causing trouble?” Dan stopped me before I could leave where I was. From that comment, I take it he saw how that conversation went. I sighed in exasperation to which he responded with a kiss to my cheek while he rubbed my arm affectionately. I’m convinced he was trained to kiss everything away.

“We’ll leave soon. I know you don’t really want to be here.” He said with a half smile. I stared at his green eyes trying to make sure he wasn’t hurt.

I smiled a little. “No Dan. I’m happy we’re married. Our wedding was beautiful.” It really was.

“But it’s sort of hard to want to be here, when everyone seems to really despise me.” I continued. He took my hand as we walked.

“To be fair. You don’t really like any of these people either, Sera. But you insisted on them being here.” He laughed.

I was getting ready for the night when I heard a knock at the door. It was one of the staff. She came to ask what to do with the rest of the wedding favors.

I had assumed everything was sorted already. “Oh!” That was all I could come up with before I noticed her head was fixed on the floor. I chuckled out of amusement.

“ Come on, you can’t be that scared of he–of me. You can’t be that scared of me that you can’t even look me in the eye.”

She still wouldn’t budge. I realized I didn’t even know her name. Slowly and subtly, I caught the names of almost all the staff except hers and a few others, so I attempted to reach for her name tag on the apron she had on so I could take a closer look and she flinched so hard that it made me flinch in shock too.