The Billionaire's Substitute Lover's Escape

I was the secret lover of billionaire Brooks Fields, a living substitute for the woman he truly loved, Candice. My rare heart condition, the very thing that made me fragile, was the only miracle that could save her.

But one night, her jealousy turned deadly. She shoved me into the icy Hudson River, then staged her own fall, screaming for help.

When the rescue crew yelled they could only save one of us from the churning water, Brooks didn't hesitate.

"Her," he roared, pointing a shaking finger at Candice. "Get Candice first."

He watched me go under, choosing to save the woman he adored while leaving me to die. The man who had once saved me from the streets had just condemned me to a watery grave without a second glance.

But I survived. And as I recovered alone in a hospital, I finalized my plan. I would donate the unique tissue from my heart to save his precious Candice. In return, I would fake my own death and finally buy my freedom.

Chapter 1

Elara POV:

The decision to donate my heart tissue and fake my own death was the easiest I' d ever made, because it was the only one that was truly mine.

"You're sure about this, Ms. Vance?" the surgeon, Dr. Albright, asked, his eyes filled with a mixture of clinical curiosity and pity. He adjusted his glasses, looking from the consent form to my face, as if searching for a flicker of doubt.

I nodded, the movement small but firm. "I'm sure." My voice was a dry rasp in the sterile quiet of his office.

"This is a highly experimental procedure. We'll be harvesting a significant portion of your unique cardiac tissue. The regenerative properties are astounding, but the process itself... it carries extreme risks."

"I understand," I said. It was more than a risk; it was my escape plan.

"And all of this," he gestured vaguely towards the file on his desk, the one with Candice Robinson's name stamped in bold letters, "For her?"

I didn't need to see the file. I knew her name. It was etched onto every surface of my life, a ghost haunting every room of the penthouse I was supposed to call home. Candice Robinson. The woman Brooks Fields truly loved.

"She's very important to him," I said, the words tasting like ash.

Outside the window, a nurse was laughing with a patient in a wheelchair. They looked happy. A pang of something I couldn't name, something sharp and cold, went through me. For a moment, I imagined what it would be like to be one of them. Normal. Cared for.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips before I could stop it. A substitute. That' s what I was. A placeholder for a ghost, and now, the living sacrifice for her return.

"The anomaly in my heart," I said, my voice flat, "The thing that's supposed to make me 'fragile' and 'broken'... it can save her, right? It can regenerate."

Dr. Albright leaned forward, his professional mask slipping. "Ms. Vance, your condition isn't a flaw. It's a medical miracle. Your heart tissue has regenerative capabilities we' ve only dreamed of. To call it fragile is... an incredible irony."

The irony wasn' t lost on me. I was born on a rainy Tuesday in a public hospital in Queens. The doctors had taken one look at the strange, rapid flutter on my EKG and declared my heart a ticking time bomb.

My parents, young and terrified, saw only a defective product. A lifetime of medical bills and whispered sympathies. They left me at the hospital, a tiny bundle with a faulty heart and a blank future. They didn't even give me a name. The nurses called me Elara.

Growing up in the New York City foster care system was a masterclass in invisibility. I was the "sick girl," the one who couldn't play too hard, the one other kids pushed around because they knew I wouldn't fight back. "Don't touch her, you'll catch her broken heart," they'd taunt on the playground.

The matron at my last group home, Mrs. Gable, despised me. She saw my quietness as defiance, my artistic inclinations as a waste of space. "Quit your scribbling, Elara," she'd sneer, yanking my sketchbook away. "No one's going to adopt a broken doll."

So I learned to fend for myself. I worked odd jobs after school-washing dishes, shelving books-saving every penny. My art was my only escape, a world of color and form where I wasn't fragile, where I wasn't a mistake.

The night I met Brooks Fields, I was sketching in a small, rain-slicked alley in SoHo, trying to capture the way the neon lights bled onto the wet pavement. I was nineteen, working a dead-end job at a coffee shop, barely making rent on a closet-sized apartment. Two men, drunk and belligerent, cornered me, their laughter echoing off the brick walls.

"Look what we got here," one of them slurred, reaching for my sketchbook. "An artist."

Panic seized me, cold and suffocating. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, irregular rhythm that I knew was a prelude to blacking out.

And then, he was there. Brooks Fields. He moved with a lethal grace, a storm in a bespoke suit. He didn't raise his voice, didn't throw a punch. He just spoke, his tone low and laced with an authority that cut through their drunken haze. The men stammered apologies and scrambled away.

He turned to me. His eyes, the color of a stormy sea, scanned me from head to toe. "Are you all right?"

I could only nod, clutching my sketchbook to my chest.

He extended a hand. "Come on. You're not safe here."

That night, he took me back to his penthouse overlooking Central Park. It felt like stepping into another dimension, a world of polished marble, soaring glass windows, and quiet, immense wealth. He gave me a room, clothes, food. He told me I could stay.

I fell in love with him so fast it felt like falling off a cliff. He was my savior, my patron. He was the first person who ever made me feel safe.

Brooks Fields was a real estate mogul, a king of Manhattan. His name was whispered with fear and reverence in boardrooms across the city. He was ruthless, powerful, and emotionally distant. He would shower me with gifts-designer dresses, expensive jewelry, art supplies that cost more than my monthly rent-but his touch was always careful, his eyes always holding something back.

The first clue came a few months into our strange arrangement. I found a locked drawer in his study. Curiosity got the better of me. Inside, there was a single, worn photograph. A beautiful blonde girl with a radiant smile, standing next to a teenage Brooks. On the back, in his familiar, sharp handwriting, it said: Candice. Always.

Candice Robinson. The daughter of a rival dynasty, his childhood friend, the one who got away. I saw her in the society pages, a whirlwind of scandals, parties, and broken engagements.

He was using me. I was a beautiful distraction, a warm body to fill the space she had left. Every gift he gave me, I later realized, was in her favorite color. Every restaurant he took me to was one she had been photographed at. I was living in the shadow of a ghost, a stand-in for a past he couldn't let go of.

Then, six months ago, the ghost came back.

Candice returned to New York, her whirlwind life having finally caught up with her. The tabloids said she was broke, her reputation in tatters. She came to Brooks, weeping, claiming her manageable congenital heart condition had suddenly worsened.

And just like that, I ceased to exist.

Brooks was consumed. He poured his time, his attention, his vast resources into her. He moved her into a private suite at the best hospital, hired world-renowned specialists. He sat by her bedside for hours, holding her hand, whispering promises.

I saw it. I saw the way he looked at her. It was a look he had never once given me. A look of raw, desperate love.

The final blow came last week. He'd received a call from the hospital, his face lighting up with a desperate hope. "They found a donor," he'd said to Candice over the phone, his voice thick with emotion. "A perfect match. Anonymous, but I'll pay them anything. Ten million, twenty. It doesn't matter. Candice, baby, you're going to be okay."

I was standing in the doorway, unseen. He was talking about me. My tissue. My miracle heart. And he was putting a price on it.

Candice's voice, sickly sweet through the phone, had replied, "Oh, Brooks. You're my hero. Whoever this donor is, they're lucky to be of use to you."

Lucky.

I felt the last piece of my heart, the part I'd tried so desperately to shield, crack and turn to dust.

I walked back into the kitchen, my movements stiff and robotic. He had asked me to prepare some bone broth for Candice, her favorite. My own stomach was a knot of anxiety; I hadn't eaten all day. But his concern was singular.

"Elara," he'd said, not even looking at me as he hung up the phone. "Is the soup ready for Candice? She needs her strength."

I nodded numbly, my hands moving on their own. I picked up the heavy pot, my grip clumsy. The hot ceramic slipped, scalding my hand. I didn't even flinch. The pain was a distant echo compared to the chasm that had opened in my chest.

He took the thermos from my other hand without a word of thanks, his focus already halfway out the door, back with her.

As I watched him leave, I knew. This love was a dead end. My life, my heart, was just a tool for his obsession.

And so, I made my plan. I went online and bought a small, elegant urn. The kind one might use for ashes. I printed my favorite photo of myself-a rare, genuine smile captured on a sunny day in the park. I would give it to the surgeon, along with my final request.

I hid the urn in the back of my closet, tucked behind a row of designer shoes I never wore.

Tonight, I was supposed to be at a gala with Brooks. Instead, I stood in the alley behind the hospital, the place where my new life would begin by faking my own death. An engine roared to life down the street, and my head snapped up, my heart lurching with a familiar, primal fear.