The billionaire substitute bride

ChaptertwoThewrongbride

The name hung between us, and for a moment I couldn't understand why Adrian had said it.

By the time we arrived at Ashford Manor, the silence between Adrian and me had become almost unbearable.

The wedding had ended hours ago, yet I still couldn't understand the change that had come over him after our first kiss.

During the drive, he had barely spoken. He sat beside me in the back of the car, his body rigid, his gaze fixed through the window as Silverridge City disappeared behind us. I had tried twice to speak, but each time the words had died in my throat.

I kept remembering the way he had looked at me before whispering that name. Sophia? I had thought perhaps I had misunderstood him, but his silence afterward had made that impossible.

My fingers rested nervously against my wedding ring, twisting it slightly around my finger as I stared down at it. I was Adrian Sterling's wife now. Yet the man sitting beside me looked as though he had just discovered that he had made the worst mistake of his life.

When the car finally stopped in front of Ashford Manor, Adrian stepped out first. He didn't wait for me. I gathered the layers of my wedding dress and followed him through the enormous entrance, my heels clicking against the polished marble floor. Servants appeared almost immediately, but one glance from Adrian sent them retreating without a word.

Something about his expression made everyone understand that questions were not welcome.

I followed him down a quiet hallway until he stopped outside a private sitting room. He opened the door and stepped aside, his face unreadable. “Come in.”

I hesitated for only a moment before entering. He followed and closed the door behind us. The soft click of the lock seemed louder than it should have been, cutting us off from the rest of the house. For the first time since the wedding ceremony, we were completely alone.

I turned toward him, my heart beginning to race again. “Adrian…”

He didn't answer. He stood several feet away, staring at me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. His suit was still immaculate, but his tie had loosened slightly, and the careful composure he had worn throughout the wedding was gone.

I swallowed hard, my fingers tightening around the fabric of my wedding dress.

“Why did you call me Sophia?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Adrian's expression didn't change. He simply stared at me, his eyes moving over my face as though he were trying to find someone he had expected to see. The silence stretched between us until my heartbeat became painfully loud in my ears. Finally, his voice broke through it.

“What is your name?”

I stared at him, certain I had heard him wrong. “My name?”

He nodded once, his jaw tight.

“Evelyn,” I answered. “Evelyn Hart.”

The moment I said my name, something hard flashed across his face.

His eyes narrowed, and he took a slow step backward as if putting distance between us could somehow make the situation clearer.

“Evelyn Hart,” he repeated, almost to himself.

I nodded, my confusion deepening. “Yes.”

His gaze remained fixed on me. “Then where is Sophia if you're Evelyn?”

My stomach tightened. “I don't know.”

His expression hardened. “You don't know?”

“No, I don't.” I shook my head, trying to understand why this conversation was happening at all. “The only Sophia I know is my sister. And she isn't here now. Except you're asking about another Sophia.”

Adrian went completely still. The silence that followed was so heavy that I could almost feel it pressing against my chest.

“Your sister?” he asked.

There was something dangerous in the quietness of his voice.

I nodded slowly. “Yes. Sophia, my younger sister.”

Adrian dragged a hand over his face and exhaled through his nose, the movement sharp with frustration. He looked away for a moment, then back at me, as though he were trying to decide whether I was lying or whether the situation was somehow even more complicated than he had imagined.

Adrian turned away and walked toward the window, dragging a hand through his hair. His shoulders rose and fell slowly as he tried to control his breathing. I watched him, unsure whether I should move closer or give him space.

Everything about him felt unfamiliar, yet there was something frighteningly intimate about standing in a private room with the man I had married only hours earlier while neither of us understood how we had ended up together.

“What exactly were you expecting?” I asked finally.

Adrian looked over his shoulder at me. “I was told I was marrying Sophia Hart.”

The words landed harder than they should have. I stared at him, my mind struggling to make them fit with everything I thought I knew.

“What?”

“I said I was told I was marrying Sophia.” His voice was low and controlled, but the tension in his jaw betrayed the anger underneath it.

“Who told you that?” I asked. He gave me a disbelieving look. “Your family.”

My heart stumbled. “My family?”

“Yes.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I went to the altar believing I was marrying Sophia. I had no reason to believe otherwise.”

I shook my head quickly. “I didn't know that.”

His eyes narrowed. “You expect me to believe you had no idea?”

“I am telling you the truth.” My voice cracked, and I hated that he could hear the fear in it. “I thought this marriage was arranged for me.”

Something in his expression shifted, but only for a second. He looked away, rubbing his thumb slowly against the edge of his wedding ring as if trying to control himself. “Then someone has lied to one of us.”

The words sent a chill through me. I looked down at my own ring. It had felt beautiful when Adrian placed it on my finger. Now it felt strangely heavy, almost like a warning.

My mind raced back to the morning—the way my mother had struggled to meet my eyes, the tremor in her hands, the way my father had rushed me through every question I asked.

I remembered asking him why the Sterling family had chosen me and how quickly he had dismissed the question. Everything has already been arranged. At the time, I had accepted his answer because I trusted him. Now that trust began to c***k, slowly at first, like a thin line spreading across glass.

Adrian watched me carefully. “Did you know Sophia was supposed to be here?” he asked.

“No.” I looked up. “I had no idea.”

His jaw tightened. “Sophia is the one I'm supposed to marry, not you.”

My chest tightened painfully. “I walked down that aisle because my father told me to. I married you because I believed this was the marriage my family had arranged for me.”

Adrian's gaze held mine, but I could see that he was still fighting his own doubts. He looked at me as though he wanted to believe me but couldn't yet bring himself to do it.

That frightened me more than his anger.

Because until that moment, I had been trying to convince myself that there had simply been a misunderstanding. But Adrian's questions forced me to look back at everything I had ignored.

My mother's trembling hands. My father's silence. The strange urgency. Sophia's absence. And now Adrian telling me that he had expected my sister. Each memory seemed harmless on its own, but together they formed something I didn't want to see.

Adrian stared at me for a long moment before his voice dropped into something quieter and more dangerous.

“Then tell me, Evelyn…”

He took one step closer.

“If you weren't the woman I was supposed to marry, why were you the one standing beside me at the altar?”

My lips parted.

Nothing came out.

For the first time since the wedding began, I realized I didn't know the answer.

But then I remembered my father's hand around mine as he walked me down the aisle.

He had known exactly where he was taking me.

And for the first time, a terrifying thought entered my mind.

What if this hadn't been a mistake at all?