BILLIONAIRE SECRET TWIN HEIR

Aria POV:

The weight of Elizabeth Walton's stare burrowed into my back like a drill bit as I crossed the ballroom. This gaze reminded me of five years of charity galas learned to detect the haunting silence of a mother-in-law who thought that one had failed at their most vital duty.

I clutched at my champagne glass and smiled one of those freaky smiles. The great ballroom of the Belmont Hotel glittered with New Jersey's elite diamonds sparkling light, suspended bubbles in crystal, and wealth practically oozing from walls. And there I stood, Aria Campbell Walton's dismal addition to the prestigious Walton dynasty.

"There you are." Michael's warm hand found the small of my back, his touch spreading heat through the thin fabric of my emerald gown. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

"The host is fabulous, as always," I said into his sturdy frame when I was able to spare a few seconds for refuge. "Just mingling."

His jaw tightened almost to the point of inexpectation. An outsider wouldn't have noticed. After five years of marriage, I became somewhat fluent in reading what could be called 'the idioglossy of Michael Walton' micro-expressions.

"Don't let her get to you tonight," he hissed, his lips brushing my ear. "This night is for the children's hospital, not family politics."

I half laughed, "The family political situation was the only thing that brought in half of these people for donations. Well, that and tax write-offs."

Before Michael could respond, Elizabeth glided to us, her silver gown a luminous cloud of light reflecting off polished armor. Nelson followed two steps behind- the usual dance in the Walton marriage dynamic.

"Michael, darling." Elizabeth air-kissed her son's cheeks, turning with far less warmth toward me. "Aria. That dress is... loud."

I resisted the urge to reach out and touch the emerald silk. "Thank you, Elizabeth. The Children's Hope Foundation does wonderful work. We're honored to support it."

"Indeed." Her gaze drifted to my flat stomach, lingering there with pointed significance before returning to my face. "The Gibsons just announced their daughter-in-law is expecting. Again. Their third grandchild in four years. Remarkable, isn't it?"

My chest constricted. I took a sip of champagne to hide the tremor in my hands.

Michael moved closer to me, his arm protectively around my waist. "Mother. Not tonight."

Elizabeth's eyebrows arched in skeptical perfection. "I was merely making conversation, dear. Surely that's allowed?"

Nelson cleared his throat. "The Masterson merger looks promising, Michael. We should discuss it in detail before the board meeting on Tuesday."

"Sorry," he said, loosening his bowtie. "She had no right."

I gazed out at the manicured lawns. "Five years, Michael. She's not wrong."

He gently turned me to face him, his hands on my shoulders. "Aria, look at me."

I did. In the soft light, his eyes were the same blue as the late ocean sky, the blue that made me fall for him after knowing very well who his family was and what they expected.

"We'll get through this," he said. "The treatments..."

"Aren't working." My voice cracked. "Four rounds of IVF, and nothing. I'm so tired of appointments and injections and disappointments."

He pulled me against him, and I breathed in the smell of expensive cologne mixed with sandalwood in the air.

"Then we'll try something else. Or we won't. I didn't marry you for heirs, Aria. I married you because I love you."

I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to. But just last month, I had seen the way he had stared at his business partner's children, and that look mirrored my very own ache.

"Your mother will never forgive me if I can't give you children," I managed to whisper into his jacket.

Michael stroked my back in circles. "My mother doesn't get a vote in our marriage."

I let out a laugh. "Have you met your mother? She thinks everything deserves her vote-especially when it comes to the Walton bloodline."

"The pressure will fade soon, I swear." He tipped up my chin, the dim light striking fear in his eyes. "We'll face this together, just you and me against the world, remember?"

I nodded, not trusting my voice. Michael placed his lips against my forehead in a gentle kiss.

Past him, I could see Elizabeth through the ballroom windows. She was watching us, downing God alone knows what in that wine glass and giving nothing away. Behind her back, Jessica--my sister--would laugh betraying all semblance of restraint at whatever snippet of Nelson's humor made it that far.

The bizarrely intimate gesture jolted through me, working goosebumps along my spine.

"We should head home," I blurted out. "I've had just about enough of this charity."

Michael searched my face. "Everything okay?"

No. Nothing was okay. Not having our shoulders weighed heavy with expectations, not that carsick feeling I had all night courtesy of my supposed failings, not that strange prickle on my skin at the sight of Jessica with my in-laws.

But I smiled up at Michael, the man I had sworn to love through everything, and told him, "Oh, everything's fine. I'm just tired."

As we walked through the throng with Michael leading the way toward the exit, Elizabeth came up just once more to intercept us.

"Leaving so soon?" she asks, voice coated with honey and wielding a steel underpinning.

"Aria isn't feeling well," said Michael smoothly.

Elizabeth's gaze flicked to me- assessing. For a moment, absurdly, I wondered if she would ask whether it was morning sickness.

"Such a pity," she said, patting my arm while her fingers felt cold. "Jessica has been asking for you. She has been so very useful for the foundation lately-such an excited young lady."

The unspoken comparison lay between us, stark and awkward.

"I'll call her tomorrow," I told her.

"Please do," and the perfect smile of society came to Elizabeth's lips. "The family should stick together, right?"

Michael was holding my hand over the center console, his thumb stroking my knuckles in comfort. I leaned my head against the window, gazing at the fast-blurring city lights as we drove toward our mansion.

"This pressure will soon be over," Michael said in a soft voice again in the darkness of the car. "I promise."

I closed my eyes, wishing I could trust him. But as we pulled into the estate, Elizabeth's words resounded the loudest in my mind.

_Family should stick together._

I had no way of knowing just how soon that family would splinter-and that tomorrow, on my twenty-seventh birthday, I would learn just how empty Michael's promises truly were.

Twenty-seven. That number ricochets through the hollow caverns of my mind while I rummage through those crammed plastic bags in my arms in search of my house keys. Not that I'm old but I'm not young, either, especially in Elizabeth Walton's utopia where women my age ought to have at least produced two heirs by now.

I shifted the weight of the birthday decorations to my hip and finally fished the keys from my purse. Silver and gold streamers peeked out from one bag, along with the custom cake topper I'd ordered weeks ago. Michael had been so consumed with the Masterson merger that I'd decided to handle my birthday celebration: a small and intimate dinner, just the two of us.

To connect back. After he had forgotten why we fell in love with each other, an infinite number of pregnancy checks and families became their close affairs.

The house was in silence upon entering my home, with sunlight cutting through tall windows creating elegant lines across the marble floor that echoed beneath my heels. Normally, I would expect to see Maria hovering in the entrance hall, bags in hand and ready to catch me up on all matters about the house. But today it was empty.

"Hello?" My voice echoes under the high ceilings. "Maria? Michael?"

Silence.

I placed the bags on the console table and took off my sunglasses. The wrapped gift for Michael vintage watch I'd had tracked down that matched the one his grandfather wore in the only photograph he kept of him- seemed heavy in my hand. A peace offering of sorts. It was a reminder that no matter what pressure or disappointments we faced, we were still Aria and Michael. Against the world.

Muffled voices echoed upstairs. Michael was home early. Perfect. Now I could surprise him, show him the decorations, maybe convince him to take the rest of the afternoon off...

I gathered my bags and headed upstairs, a light skip in my step. I approached the door to Michael's study, voices more distinct now. A man and a woman.

I froze, clenching the banister.

That laugh would be recognized anywhere.

Jessica.

My sister said she would come by the house to drop off some foundation documents for Elizabeth, but that was supposed to be yesterday. What was she doing here now? With Michael?

Another laugh, lower this time, more intimate. Something cold and slick uncoiled in my stomach.

The study door was cracked open, just an inch, just enough.

My feet carried me forward against their will, moving silently across the plush hallway carpet. Suddenly the shopping bags were feeling like a thousand pounds, dragging down my arms as though trying to hold me back.

Don't look. Go downstairs. Call out. Make noise.

But I could not stop. There was some horrible magnetic power drawing me toward the crack of light seeping from the half-closed door, and the unmistakable sounds coming with each step.

I pushed the door wide open.

Time splintered.

Sister. Husband. Naked bodies intertwined on the leather couch I have sat upon countless times, reading while Michael worked late. Her long legs, so like mine but not mine, wrapped around his waist. His hands tangled in her dark hair. Their bodies move in an ancient rhythm of betrayal.

The bags slipped from my numb fingers. The crash jolted them apart, Jessica meeting my gaze over Michael's shoulder.

No shock. No embarrassment. Just a cool appraisal, like I was an inconvenience rather than the wife whose life she was wrecking.

"Aria." It sounded strange on her lips. As though she was trying it as a trial.

Michael spun around, face sucking palely as he scrambled to cover his nakedness. "Jesus, Aria-"

Breath failed. The room spun, heaving the oxygen from my lungs. My lungs felt like they were on fire. My throat felt to be closing.

Jessica just lounged like the confident air she exuded into everything, lying in wait against the cushions of the couch as though she were on a beach.

"This is not what it looks like," Michael told her. It was the most pathetic lie in history coming from a spotted husband.

I felt a bubble of frantic laughter build in my chest. How could it be anything else?

"Happy birthday to me," I whispered words scraping my throat raw into forming syllables.

Jessica then beamed-the actual smile-as she finally reached for her castaway dress. "He needed someone who could give him what he wants, Aria. Five years already and no sign of a baby? Their family needs an heir."

So little air there was in the room, and the precision of that cruelty cut it from me. The room felt like it was spinning faster.

Michael was talking, stringing excuses like a toddler fumbling through broken English. My mind perhaps ever narrowed to the decorations scattered across the floor- the silver banner proclaiming "Happy Birthday" now draped obscenely across Jessica's discarded stiletto.

I backed away into the doorframe.

"Aria, please-" Michael reached toward me, half-naked, face contorted into what looked like guilt but could not be guilt because it's a fairy tale. Guilt requires a conscience.

"Don't touch me." Those words came from far away, someone too strong for me. Someone who certainly was not crushed under the weight of two betrayals.

I turned and ran. Down the sweeping staircase that had once made me feel like Cinderella entering the ball. Across the foyer Michael had carried me through five years ago, both of us laughing. Out onto the front porch, where sunlight poured in, dazzling me with its blatant cheerfulness.

I fumbled with my car keys, dropping them on the third attempt and managing to open the door. Mansion doors creaked open behind me.

"Aria, wait!"

I wouldn't look back. Couldn't. Because if I did, if I saw his face again, I would either shatter completely or, worse, I might listen to whatever lies he could come up with in the sixty seconds since I caught him in bed with my sister.

The engine purring loudly was a welcome sound. I reversed too quickly, screeching my tires all the way. Michael was in the driveway behind me, hastily dressed in wrinkled clothes, his hair brushed in tendrils by my sister's fingers.

Vision-blurred, I drove nowhere in particular-another way. Away from the mansion. Away from the vivid picture in my mind of Jessica's smug grin. Away from whatever was left of my so-called life.

I stopped at a red light, fumbled for my phone, and called the only person I could think of.

"Sam? It's me." I broke my voice. "I need somewhere to go."

"Aria? What's wrong? You sound terrible."

"My life is over, Sam," she sobbed as the first waves of tears came, hot and fast. "I believed everything, and it was a lie."

The light signaled me to cross. Horns blared behind me, but I could not move. Couldn't see through the deluge of tears.

"Where are you?" Sam's voice sharpened with concern. "I'm coming to get you."

My phone buzzed with an incoming call. Michael's face flashed on the screen, the photo I'd taken of him last summer when we'd escaped to Cape May for a weekend, and his smile had been real then. Or had that been a lie too?

I declined the call.

"I'll text you the address," I managed. "Please hurry."

I pulled into a coffee shop parking lot and killed the engine. When I stopped moving, reality pummeled me with the suffocating wave of what had just happened. My phone lit up again. And again. And again. Calls from Michael. Texts filled my screen.

*Please come home*

*It was a mistake*

*We need to talk*

*I love you*

I shut the phone and pressed my forehead into the steering wheel, my body racked with sobs that felt like they could tear me apart from the inside.

My sister. My husband. The two people I trusted most in the world.

The betrayal was not just sexual; it was Jessica's words, piercing into the core of my most profound insecurity. Five years and still not a single baby.

Was it all this while? Did I exist merely to be the example of a poor incubator for the precious heir to Walton?

I stared through the windshield at strangers coming in and out of their lives all while mine lay in smoky ruins. A mother walked by with her wee daughter coming from a mall, both licking ice cream cones with not a hint of my disturbance meters away.

Here was a family I might never have.

No, a family I did not wish-a family I did not want with a man who could betray me so completely. Not with a sister who could smile while stabbing a knife into my heart.

I will not let them destroy me. I will be no other footnote in the illustrious history of the Walton family. I took a deep and shuddering breath, then wiped my face with trembling hands.

Twenty minutes later, when Samantha's car pulled into the lot, I was no longer crying. The hurt hadn't lessened had crystallized harder, sharper, and more dangerous.

"Whatever happened, we'll get over it," she said before moving on in a fierce hug when she took one glance at my face.

I pulled back, facing her concerned gaze with dry eyes.

"I'm filing for divorce," I said, like stones dropping into still water. "I shall no longer be humiliated by them."

I never told her about the strange relief concealed under the pain, like the weight of huge burdens slowly being lifted as I imagined walking away from the Walton expectations weighing down on me for half a decade.

I never told her about the cold, almost savage, release of every ounce of pent-up joy agitating in my heart in the knowledge that from that day on, I would never have to endure another one of Elizabeth Walton's pitying glances at yet another charitable function.

Not about the icy resolve that was now building in my heart, hardening upon my shattered heart like protective armor.

If Michael and the Waltons wanted war, then they shall have it.

But they will soon find out that they have gravely underestimated what Aria Campbell-formerly known as Walton-could do when pushed.

The rain hammered against the window of Samantha's living room, which felt all too appropriate given the tempest inside me. My fingers shook, holding the mug of tea Sam had pressed into my hands twenty minutes earlier. It was cold. Just like my marriage.

"You haven't had much of your tea," Sam said, sliding onto the couch beside me. The cushion beneath her gave way.

I looked down at the amber liquid. "Can't swallow the slightest?"

Again, my phone vibrated. Again, as if the twenty-six previous times hadn't been enough. Michael. I turned it face down.

"How long will you ignore him?" Sam asked as she tucked back some dark hair.

"Forever sounds good right now." My voice was hoarse and dry from all the crying.

Sam plucked the cold mug from my hands and set it on the coffee table with a sound that reverberated through the stillness of the apartment. "He left six voicemails."

"Delete them."

"Don't you want to hear what he has to say?" Sam said

I stood up from the couch; blood rushed to my head, and the room began to spin. "What could he possibly say, Sam? 'Sorry I railed your sister on my desk? Oops, my bad?'"

Just then, the image of Michael naked with Jessica came flooding back. Her smug smile when she saw me standing there. The decorations are strewn across the floor. I was sick to my stomach.

"You need to eat something," Sam said, following me as I paced.

"I need to vomit." I pressed my palm to my mouth. The bile rolled up, only to go back down again. "God, Sam. My sister."

My phone vibrated for a third time. This time, Jessica's name appeared.

"The nerve." Sam snatched the phone before I could lay my hands on it. She read the screen and raised her eyebrows. "She says, and I quote, 'We need to talk. Michael is distraught.'"

A bark of laughter escaped me. "Distraught? He's distraught?" I snatched the phone and threw it across the room. It hit the wall with a crack.

Sam didn't budge. She had seen me mad before, but not like this. Never broken.

"Have you called your mother yet?" she asked.

"And tell her what? That Jessica is sleeping with my husband?" The word 'husband' tasted bitter. "She'll take Jessica's side. She always does."

The front door of Sam's apartment was way too close, and the walls felt too tight soon. This is what five years of my life had been reduced to hiding out in my best friend's apartment while the rest of my world imploded.

"They're just Advil. For the headache, I know you have."

Sam disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water and two pills. "Take these."

"Not sedatives."

Then there was nothing to hear except the rain beating against the window. My socks were still wet from running through puddles to get to Sam's place. I had left everything behind clothes, my jewelry, my life.

"What happens now?" Sam asked softly.

"I don't know." My voice cracked. New tears burned my eyelids, but I blinked them back. Tired of crying. "I can't go back there."

"You are not going to. You'll remain in here as long as you need to." Sam said

The vibration of my phone disappeared. The silence felt quite worse.

"I should have known." The words scratched my throat. "There were those late nights at the office. The sudden trips. The way Jessica always wanted to know how he was doing." I dug my fingernails into my palms. "I was so stupid."

"Stop it." Sam gripped my shoulders. "This is not your fault."

"His mom always hated me," I said, as the pieces started to click into place. "Five years without bearing him an heir. Elizabeth probably pushed him right into Jessica."

"The only person in this nightmare who is truly innocent is you," Sam said as he tightened his grip. "What Michael did is his choice. What Jessica did is her choice."

I slumped back on the couch, fatigue washing through me. "And what am I going to do, Sam?"

"Tonight? You're going to sleep. Tomorrow, we'll try to figure it out."

"I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see them together."

Sam settled onto the couch beside me, spreading a blanket over both our laps. "Well, then, we'll stay up all night, watching terrible movies, and eating ice cream."

"I don't want ice cream. I want a lawyer."

Sam's eyes squinted slightly. "You're going to dissolve your marriage with him?"

"What else would I do?" The question hung between us.

"I just thought... five years is a long time."

"And it took five seconds to destroy it." I picked at a loose thread on the blanket. "My life is over, Sam. Everything I believed in was a lie."

"You've already known," her voice firm, "Your life isn't over. It's just changing direction."

A humorless laugh escaped me. "Some direction. 27 year old, soon-to-be-divorced, and nowhere to go."

"You have me." Sam squeezed my hand. "And you have your design skills. Start your own business. Move to a new city. Reinvent yourself."

Life without Michael seemed as frightening as liberating. For five long years, I'd been Aria Walton, the wife of billionaire Michael Walton. Who will I be now?

"You can stay here as long as you need," Sam repeated. "What are you going to do next?"

I stared at the rain streaking down the window, a strange calm settling over me. The shock was wearing off, leaving something harder in its place.

"I'm filing for divorce," I said, the words solidifying my resolve. "I won't let them humiliate me anymore."

Sam nodded, a fierce pride in her eyes. "I'll help you find the best divorce attorney in New Jersey."

"I'll need one." My voice became stronger now. "The Waltons never lose."

"There's always a first time."

My phone buzzed, having fallen onto the floor. The screen cracked, but I could still read Michael's message: *Please come home. We need to talk. I can explain.*

I picked up the phone, with my finger hovering over the reply button, then turned it off completely.

"The first thing in the morning," I said. "I'm going back to get my things."

"I'll come with you."

I shook my head. "No. This is something I need to do alone."

The rain was calming down; it had been drumming against the glass so lightly now. In the background, the thunder rumbled away from us.

"They'll try to destroy you," Sam said. "The Waltons protect their own."

I held her gaze, something cold and determined hardening within my chest. "Let them try."

For the first time since I'd burst through Sam's door three hours earlier, drenched and sobbing, I felt a flicker of something like strength. Tomorrow, I'd go back and gather the ashes of my old life-but I won't be leaving empty-handed.

But tonight, in this safe harbor, I allowed myself to take one more night of grieving before the storm that would follow.