I replaced his dead fiancée

"You will smile when he looks at you, you will laugh at the right moments, and you will never, ever ask questions you are not supposed to ask. Do we understand each other?" The woman sitting across from me has the kind of face that never shows anything. No warmth, no irritation, nothing. She is maybe fifty, dressed in a grey suit that probably costs more than my rent, and she has been speaking to me for the last twenty minutes like I am a machine she is programming. I shift slightly in the chair. "You still haven't told me his name." "You don't need his name tonight. You need to say yes or no." I look around the office. It is clean and cold and there are no photographs on the walls, which I always think is a bad sign for a person. A glass of water sits in front of me that I haven't touched. My name is Lyra Cole and I am twenty-four years old and I have exactly three hundred and twelve dollars in my account and a mother in a hospital two states away who needs a surgery that costs more than I have ever seen in my life. So when a woman I have never met before calls me and says she has a job that pays two hundred thousand dollars for one year of work, I come. I sit in this cold office. I listen. "What exactly does this job involve?" I ask. She folds her hands on the desk. "You will live in his home. You will attend dinners, events, and public appearances as his fiancée. You will be introduced to certain people as Elena Voss, his late fiancée, who did not die but rather chose to leave quietly for personal reasons. The story is already prepared. Your background, your documents, everything. You just have to be her." I feel something move in my stomach. "Why does he need someone to pretend to be his dead fiancée?" "His grandfather's estate. There is a clause in the will that requires Damien to be engaged before he turns thirty-two. He turns thirty-two in fourteen months." She pauses. "You physically resemble Elena enough that it will not raise eyebrows. That is why you were selected." "Selected from where? Who selected me?" She doesn't answer that. She slides a folder across the desk instead. Inside is a photograph of a woman. Dark hair, light eyes, oval face. I stare at it for a long moment before I understand what is unsettling me. She looks like me. Not exactly. But close enough that if you only half-looked, you might not notice the difference. "Who is Damien Voss?" I ask quietly. "CEO of Voss Group. One of the largest private holdings companies in the country. He is thirty-one, extremely private, and not interested in your opinions." She says it like it is a simple fact and not a warning. "He has agreed to the arrangement. You will be introduced as Elena, the relationship will be presented as a reconciliation, and in fourteen months when the inheritance is transferred, your contract ends and you walk away." I close the folder. "Two hundred thousand." "One hundred up front. The rest at the end of the year." The number sits in the air between us. I think about my mother. I think about the surgery. I think about the phone call I got last week from the hospital billing department, which I did not answer because I already knew what they were going to say. "I'll do it," I say. She nods like she already knew I would. "Your new life begins tomorrow morning." I go home to my small apartment and I sit on the edge of my bed and I try to think about whether I am making a terrible mistake. But then I open my banking app and I look at the number on the screen, and I stop thinking about it. The next morning a car comes for me at seven. It is a black car with a driver who does not speak. We drive for forty minutes out of the city and into a neighborhood where the houses don't look like houses anymore, they look like statements. Voss Estate is the last one on a long, private road. It is white stone and tall windows and silence. The kind of silence that isn't peaceful. The kind that means the house is used to keeping things in. I step out of the car with my single bag and stand on the driveway feeling extremely small. The front door opens before I reach it. He is tall. That is the first thing I notice. Then I notice that he is also extremely good-looking in a way that immediately makes me suspicious of him, because in my experience people who look like that have never had to develop a personality. Dark hair, sharp jaw, eyes that are a strange shade of grey that almost look silver in the morning light. He is wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up and he is looking at me the way you look at a problem you are trying to solve. Not like a person. Like a problem. "You're smaller than I expected," he says. I blink. "Good morning to you too." Something shifts in his expression. It is not a smile. It is more like the idea of a smile that he decided against. "Come inside." I follow him into a house that smells like expensive wood and something faintly floral that I can't place. The ceilings are high. The floors are pale stone. There are fresh flowers in a vase on a table near the entrance which surprises me, because everything else about this house says that the person living here does not care about soft things. He leads me to a sitting room and gestures at a chair. I sit. He remains standing, which I notice is a power move but I choose not to comment on it. "Here are the rules," he says. "You don't go into my study. You don't ask about Elena. You don't speak to my staff about our arrangement. When we are in public, you are warm, you are engaged, and you look like you are happy to be with me. When we are in private, you are free to do whatever you like as long as it doesn't become a problem." I look at him steadily. "And if I have questions?" "You don't." "I definitely do." He looks at me then. Really looks at me for the first time since I walked in, and there is something about it that makes the back of my neck feel warm, which is inconvenient. "One question," he says. "Where is my room?" He almost laughs. I see it happen and then stop. "Second floor. Third door on the left. A staff member will show you around." He leaves the room. Just like that. No goodbye, no welcome, nothing. I sit in the chair for a moment after he goes and I remind myself that I am here for the money. One year. One hundred thousand up front and the rest at the end. I am here to save my mother and then walk away from this cold, beautiful house and this cold, beautiful man and never look back. I go upstairs. I find the third door on the left and push it open. The room is large. White walls, pale furniture, a bed with grey linen that probably costs more than my car. There is a wardrobe full of clothes already in my size, which is strange. There is a vanity with makeup that matches my skin tone, which is stranger. I stand in the middle of the room for a moment, taking it in. Then I notice that the far wall has a small section near the baseboard where the paint is slightly different. A tiny rectangle. Like something was patched over, recently, and not quite well enough. I walk over to it slowly. I press my fingers against it. The section shifts. Behind it, in a hollow space no bigger than a shoebox, is a small leather notebook. I pull it out. It is brown and soft and well-used, the kind you write in every day. I open the first page. In neat, careful handwriting, it says: If you are reading this, you are me. Not me exactly. But close enough that they chose you. Which means you are in danger and you don't know it yet. My name is Elena. And I am very much alive. Read everything. Trust no one. And whatever you do, don't fall for him. Because I almost did. And it nearly killed me. I stand there in the silence of this room that was hers, holding her diary, and I hear Damien's footsteps on the stairs getting closer, and I do the only thing I can think to do. I shove the diary under the mattress and sit down on the bed like I have been resting this whole time. His knock is three quick, sharp raps. "Dinner is at seven," he says through the door. "Don't be late." I stare at the wall where I found the diary and I think, Lyra, what have you gotten yourself into.