Replacement Twin For Billionaire

For three years, Chloe existed as a quiet, submissive fixture in her billionaire husband Julian's gilded cage.

When she finally handed him the signed divorce papers, he just laughed, assuming she was throwing a tantrum over his blatant affair.

He didn't know her real reason was a desperate secret: she was hiding their three-year-old twins in a cramped Queens apartment to protect them from his ruthless family.

Julian refused the divorce, and his obsessive need for control drove him to investigate her every move.

When his surveillance team uncovered the children calling her "Mommy," his arrogance twisted into a murderous rage.

Assuming she had betrayed him with another man, he trapped her in their penthouse and violently cornered her.

During a brutal struggle, he forcefully ripped a strand of hair from her scalp under the guise of a punishing kiss.

Chloe was left trembling and humiliated, unable to understand why a man who openly flaunted his mistress would go to such terrifying lengths to keep a wife he never loved.

She had sacrificed everything to keep her babies safe, yet an invisible net was already suffocating her.

Fleeing the apartment, Chloe thought she had finally bought enough time to escape the city with her children.

She had no idea Julian was already staring at a text message that would detonate her entire world.

"Preliminary DNA results are in."

——

"What's wrong?" Julian's voice was a low murmur against her ear, laced with the expensive scent of whiskey and something else. Something floral and sweet. Isabelle's perfume.

His hands were about to settle on her shoulders. Chloe watched his reflection in the vanity mirror, his handsome face slightly flushed from the party. Her stomach clenched. The image of Isabelle Beaumont standing on her toes to press a lingering kiss to his lips flashed behind her eyes. He hadn't pushed her away.

In the fraction of a second before his skin could touch hers, Chloe shot up from the vanity stool. The movement was so abrupt it sent a crystal bottle of perfume tumbling onto the thick carpet with a soft thud.

Julian's hands froze in mid—air. A flicker of confusion, then annoyance, crossed his features. "Chloe?"

"Don't," she said. The word was quiet, but it hung in the air between them, sharp as broken glass.

He let his hands drop, a humorless smile touching his lips. "Still upset I didn't take you to Isabelle's birthday party? It was a business crowd. You would have been bored."

He reached for her again, this time to cup her cheek, his usual gesture of placating possession.