The wrong billionaire

ChapterThree

Harper’s POV

Different emotions coursed through me at the same time. My mouth hung open, and my tear-streaked face felt frozen in the moment. I would have reached for him, but something kept me rooted to the spot.

He was different.

Christian’s eyes were blue like the ocean, but the person standing in front of me reminded me of the clouds just before it rained. Dark and brutal. His hair was styled just in the same manner, curly and black.

The strands fell across his face when he took a step closer, and his lips moved.

“Turn it down.” He didn’t smile. Just stood there, his presence imposing, like the whole earth had stopped just for him.

My head hurt, and I swayed on my feet. “Christian?” It came out as a whisper, an unbelievable one at that. I’d just attended his burial. He was six feet underneath the ground. So what was he doing at my doorstep?

The man narrowed his eyes in my direction. I caught a tiny scar on his jaw, almost like it was broken in a brawl. Christian didn’t have that. God! I was so confused.

“The music,” he muttered. “Turn it down.”

I kept staring, my lips refusing to press down. He exhaled, the low grunt reverberating between us before he gently stepped into my apartment. When he walked past me, I held my breath, his scent teasing my nostrils.

It felt like a sharp contrast. Tears and shivers.

I waited for the familiar wooden scent to hit, but it didn’t. Instead, he smelled like smoke, so dark and dangerous, yet I couldn’t stop breathing in. My eyes fluttered closed on their own accord, and I swallowed, the scent of leather and black pepper causing a knot in my throat.

I opened my eyes when a strange silence filled my home. My gaze fell on him, standing in front of the stereo. He looked out of place, like chaos standing in the middle of calm. He was huge, his shoulders stretching out the black tee he had on.

His eyes scanned the drink on the floor, and then they strayed to my face. I didn’t know what to expect. It felt like a dream I was going to wake up from.

A part of me thought he would walk closer and pull me into his arms, telling me that he wasn’t dead. Yet, deep down, I knew the person in my living room wasn’t Christian.

“What happened?” Even his voice was different. There was no tease to it, no laughter dancing at its edges. Just hard.

But his question seemed to have snapped me back into the present as I walked inside, eyeing him warily, the door still open behind me. “Why do you look like Christian?” My pulse thrummed underneath my veins, and my heart thudded so loud against my chest.

“Who are you?”

Nothing changed in his expression. Not even a hint of surprise crept into his eyes. He knew who Christian was. I could tell.

“Put the bottle back in the kitchen and clear this space up,” he said, his tone flat, but laden with something I couldn’t place my hands on. It wasn’t just his voice that sent a shiver down my spine. It was the certainty that came with it, like he’d already owned a part of me.

Like he knew I wouldn’t have any choice but to follow.

“Who are you to give me orders like that?” My tone didn’t hold the intensity and strength I intended it to because he didn’t flinch. Instead, he crossed the space, stopping right in front of me. From this point, I could see the intricate line of ink peeking through his collar.

Christian didn’t have any tattoos.

If I needed any other confirmation, it was this. He abhorred the idea.

“He doesn’t deserve you crying over him, Harper,” he murmured, his lips barely moving. The way he said my name, the way it rolled off his tongue like butter melting on a pan, the way it made me move slowly towards him.

I stopped myself, pressing my heels to the ground. No one knew that Christian and I were a couple, other than my best friend, Cindy. And Marcus, on the day he … he died. We made sure it stayed that way, bidding our time until it was right.

That should have been the correct question; instead, I asked. “How did you know my name?”

“I know things that you have no idea about, Harper.” He shook his head. “Like this. Christian never cared about you. It was all an act.”

“You don’t know him,” I whispered, shaking my head, fresh tears stinging the corners of my eyes again. Sure, they looked alike, but I’d heard that people were made in twos. This was probably one of those situations.

A wild coincidence, but it was all I could make of it. “You don’t have the right to talk about him that way.”

“Harper…”

“I don’t know who you are, or what you are doing here, but I got it.” I stepped away from him. From the man who looked so much like the one I was in love with. The one I lost. That had to be the reason why it was hard pulling away.

It had to be.

“I’ll turn down the music,” I snapped. “Just leave. And never come back.”

He angled his head. “Are you sure you want that?”

“What are you talking about?” I muttered, raising my hands in the air exasperatedly, my pain and frustration driving to the fore.

“Christian.”

“What about him?”

“He’s not dead.”

I laughed. It sounded heart-wrenching, bouncing off the walls in waves. And it didn’t reach my eyes, or any part of me. “I watched him get buried today. I was on the phone when the accident happened.”

The door opened behind us, and our heads snapped in that direction. But that wasn’t what had me stopping. It was my best friend, Cindy, and the look in her eyes.

Like she’d just seen a ghost.

But it wasn’t the same as me, as her words blew me away.

“Damien Knight?”