THE BRIDAL SWITCH

CHAPTER ONE

​POV: Amanda

​The clock on the wall ticked toward two in the morning, and the silence of the apartment felt heavy while I sat at the small wooden desk in the corner of my room. I was staring at the same page of my book for twenty minutes because my mind kept drifting back to the rehearsal dinner from earlier that evening, and I could still hear the sound of Audrey’s high-pitched laughter ringing in my ears. She had been glowing in her white silk dress, surrounded by friends and sipping champagne while I stood in the background like a shadow that nobody noticed. My mother hadn't even looked at me once during the entire event, as she was too busy hovering over Audrey and making sure every strand of her hair was perfect for the photographers. I turned the page finally, trying to focus on the words, but the sudden vibration of my phone against the wood made me jump so hard that I almost knocked over my glass of water.

​It was an unknown number flashing on the screen, and I hesitated for a moment because I didn't usually get calls this late, but something about the persistence of the ringing made my stomach tighten with a strange sense of dread. I swiped the screen and pressed the phone to my ear, and my voice sounded small and raspy in the quiet room when I finally spoke.

​"Hello?" I asked, and I gripped the edge of the desk while I waited for a response.

​"Is this Amanda Hart?" a man's voice asked on the other end, and he sounded hurried and clinical, which only made my heart beat faster against my ribs.

​"Yes, this is she," I replied, and I stood up from my chair without even thinking about it because I could feel the adrenaline starting to surge through my veins.

​"I’m calling from St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital, and I need to inform you that your sister, Audrey Hart, has been involved in a serious motor vehicle accident," the man said, and the words felt like they were coming from a long distance away while I stood there frozen in the middle of my room.

​"Is she okay? Is she alive?" I managed to choke out, and I didn't even wait for him to finish the rest of his sentence before I was reaching for my coat and shoving my feet into my shoes.

​"She is in critical condition and is being prepped for surgery right now, so you and your family need to get here as soon as possible," he said, and then the line went dead, leaving me standing in the silence of my apartment with the sound of my own frantic breathing filling the air.

​I called my mother immediately, and she picked up on the first ring, sounding annoyed until I blurted out the news, and then her voice turned into something sharp and cold that I didn't recognize. We agreed to meet at the hospital, and the drive there was a blur of streetlights and empty roads while I gripped the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles turned white. When I ran through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room, I saw my mother standing near the reception desk, and she looked perfectly composed in her designer coat despite the late hour.

​"Where is she, Mom? Did they tell you anything else?" I asked as I reached her side, and I tried to take her hand, but she pulled away and smoothed out the front of her jacket instead.

​"She’s still in surgery, Amanda, and the doctors said she was intoxicated when she lost control of the car and hit a concrete barrier," my mother said, and she didn't sound sad or scared, but rather like she was reciting a list of chores that needed to be finished.

​"How could she be out drinking the night before her wedding?" I whispered, and I sank into one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room because my legs felt like they were going to give out.

​"That doesn't matter right now," my mother snapped, and she began pacing back and forth across the linoleum floor while she clutched her handbag against her chest. "What matters is that the surgery is taking too long, and if she doesn't wake up soon, we have a massive problem on our hands."

​"A problem? Mom, she could die," I said, and I looked up at her in disbelief because I couldn't understand how she could be thinking about anything other than Audrey’s life.

​"Don't be dramatic, Amanda, as the doctors said she is stable for now," she replied, and then she stopped pacing and looked toward the hallway where a man in blue scrubs was walking toward us.

​The doctor explained that Audrey had suffered a severe head injury and that while the surgery had been successful in stopping the internal bleeding, she had fallen into a deep coma. He told us that they didn't know when she would wake up, or if she would wake up at all in the next few days, and I felt a sob catch in my throat as I followed him toward the intensive care unit.

​We stood outside the glass window of the room where Audrey lay, and it was jarring to see her like that, with her face pale and her long dark hair spread out against the white pillows. She looked exactly like me in that moment, stripped of her makeup and her expensive clothes, and I felt a pang of guilt for all the times I had been jealous of her. My mother stood next to me, but she wasn't looking at Audrey’s face with love or concern, and instead, her eyes were narrowed as she checked her watch.

​"Does anyone else know about this yet?" my mother asked the doctor, and her voice was low and calculated.

​"Just the emergency contacts we called, ma'am," the doctor replied, and he looked a bit confused by her tone, but he nodded and walked away to check on another patient.

​"Good," my mother whispered, and then she turned to me with an expression that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "Amanda, we cannot let the press find out about this, and we certainly cannot let the Sandler family know that the bride is lying in a hospital bed."

​"What are you talking about? We have to tell Leo, and we have to cancel the wedding," I said, and I reached out to grab her arm, but she gripped my wrist with surprising strength and leaned in close to my face.

​"We are not canceling anything, because if this wedding doesn't happen, the merger fails and our family loses everything we have worked for," she said, and her eyes were shining with a desperate kind of greed that made me want to shrink away from her.

​"But Audrey is in a coma, Mom, so how can there be a wedding?" I asked, and I looked back at my sister’s unconscious form, trying to make sense of what she was suggesting.

​"Look at her, Amanda, and then look at yourself in the reflection of that glass," my mother commanded, and she pointed toward the window where our silhouettes were blurred together. "You are identical, and with the right dress and the right veil, no one will ever know the difference."

​"No, I won't do it, and you can't ask me to pretend to be her and marry a man I don't even know," I said, and I tried to pull my wrist back, but she held on tighter.

​"The wedding cannot be canceled, and you are going to walk down that aisle tomorrow morning as Audrey Hart, or you will never see a single penny of your father’s inheritance again."

​I stared at her, and the coldness in her eyes told me that she wasn't joking.