The Placeholder Wife: A Billionaire's Secret

The Placeholder Wife: A Billionaire's Secret

Rafaela Kokkotou

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It was my 30th birthday, and I was patiently dining alone at a Michelin-star restaurant, waiting for my finance titan husband, Julian, to arrive. Suddenly, my phone screen flickered to life, displaying a TMZ headline that stopped my breath: "Julian Vance Spotted with Returning Socialite Chloe Sinclair – Old Flames Rekindled?" A video showed Julian, my husband, shielding Chloe from the rain and cameras, his arm protectively around her. Shock, cold and sharp, spread through me, as the bitter taste of betrayal filled my mouth. This wasn't just a business meeting; it was a public declaration of his true affections. The table was set for two, but the untouched food grew cold as countless minutes ticked by, each one deepening the suffocating loneliness I felt. Five years. Five years I had spent waiting; five years I had been a placeholder for the woman he truly loved, the one he married me to forget. Then, a text from Julian cemented my despair: "Raincheck on birthday. Next year." There would be no next year for us. My quiet endurance finally gave way to a hardened resolve. I signaled the maître d', trading the lavish, uneaten meal for a sturdy umbrella. I walked out into the Manhattan rain, a clear decision forming in my mind: this was the end. But for me, it was also a new beginning.

Introduction

It was my 30th birthday, and I was patiently dining alone at a Michelin-star restaurant, waiting for my finance titan husband, Julian, to arrive.

Suddenly, my phone screen flickered to life, displaying a TMZ headline that stopped my breath: "Julian Vance Spotted with Returning Socialite Chloe Sinclair – Old Flames Rekindled?"

A video showed Julian, my husband, shielding Chloe from the rain and cameras, his arm protectively around her.

Shock, cold and sharp, spread through me, as the bitter taste of betrayal filled my mouth.

This wasn't just a business meeting; it was a public declaration of his true affections.

The table was set for two, but the untouched food grew cold as countless minutes ticked by, each one deepening the suffocating loneliness I felt.

Five years. Five years I had spent waiting; five years I had been a placeholder for the woman he truly loved, the one he married me to forget.

Then, a text from Julian cemented my despair: "Raincheck on birthday. Next year."

There would be no next year for us.

My quiet endurance finally gave way to a hardened resolve.

I signaled the maître d', trading the lavish, uneaten meal for a sturdy umbrella.

I walked out into the Manhattan rain, a clear decision forming in my mind: this was the end.

But for me, it was also a new beginning.

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Love, Lies, And A Second Life

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The air in the room was stale, thick with the smell of antiseptic and despair. They told me I was sick, that grief had broken my mind. My mother-in-law, Martha, would visit, her concern a chilling mask, whispering to doctors how I was hallucinating, a danger to myself and my son, Billy. "She doesn' t understand that David is gone," she' d insist, loud enough for me to hear. But the real horror wasn't my madness; it was the truth. Three days after my husband, David, a decorated police officer, was supposedly killed, I stood at his memorial, expected to mourn. The man in the casket wasn't David. It was Mark, his identical twin, missing the faded scar David always had. That night, I found David, not dead, but alive in our summer cabin, with his childhood sweetheart, Emily Peterson. He confessed it all with chilling indifference: Mark was killed in a shootout, and David seized the chance for a new life, free from me and Billy. "I never loved you," he said, as if explaining a simple math problem. "It was always Emily." I tried to tell everyone-his mother, his captain-but they looked at me with pity, already conditioned by Martha and David' s lies. They had me committed to a white room, and David married Emily. My four-year-old son, Billy, was left in their care, crying for me every night. Then came the unbearable news: Billy was dead, a "tragic accident" from an overdose of cough medicine. My world shattered. Desperate, I fashioned a noose, remembering Billy' s bright laugh, the life David had stolen. My only regret was that David would never face justice. I kicked the chair away. Darkness took me. Then, a blinding light, and I was back on my living room couch, the day David was supposedly killed. I wasn' t dead. I was back. Martha' s face, a mask of practiced sadness, now held a triumphant curl. I heard David' s voice from the hallway, "Is she stable?" "She' s fragile, but she bought it," Martha replied. "She' ll break, just like we planned. We' ll have her committed, and Billy will be ours." "Good," David said. "Make sure she doesn' t get near the body. Mark didn' t have my scar." This time, I was not the grieving widow. I was the executioner.

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I sat on the cold tile floor of our Upper East Side penthouse, staring at the two pink lines until my vision blurred. After ten years of loving Julian Sterling and three years of a hollow marriage, I finally had the one thing that could bridge the distance between us. I was pregnant. But Julian didn't come home with flowers for our anniversary. He tossed a thick manila envelope onto the marble coffee table with a heavy thud. Fiona, the woman he'd truly loved for years, was back in New York, and he told me our "business deal" was officially over. "Sign it," He said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. He looked at me with the cold detachment of a man selling a piece of unwanted furniture. When I hesitated, he told me to add a zero to the alimony if the money wasn't enough. I realized in that moment that if he knew about the baby, he wouldn't love me; he would simply take my child and give it to Fiona to raise. I shoved the pregnancy test into my pocket, signed the papers with a shaking hand, and lied through my teeth. When my morning sickness hit, I slumped to the floor to hide the truth. "It's just cramps," I gasped, watching him recoil as if I were contagious. To make him stay away, I invented a man named Jack-a fake boyfriend who supposedly gave me the kindness Julian never could. Suddenly, the man who wanted me gone became a monster of possessiveness. He threatened to "bury" a man who didn't exist while leaving me humiliated at his family's dinner to rush to Fiona's side. I was so broken that I even ate a cake I was deathly allergic to, then had to refuse life-saving steroids at the hospital because they would harm the fetus. Julian thinks he's stalling the divorce for two months to protect the family's reputation for his father's Jubilee. He thinks he's keeping his "property" on a short leash until the press dies down. He has no idea I'm using those sixty days to build a fortress for my child. By the time he realizes the truth, I'll be gone, and the Sterling heir will be far beyond his reach.

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