Chapter 1
Everyone in Brookville knew that every time Brookville's little princess Eileen Whitney and the crown prince Stanley Owen broke up, they'd kick off their usual stand-in game.
As soon as they split, each would go out and find a lookalike of the other, tormenting each other with these doubles, and they never got bored of it.
Unfortunately, Eileen chose my childhood friend Donovan Whitney to play her double.
When Donovan was sent back, he was barely recognizable.
He suffered a devastating injury that left him sterile and, ultimately, in a vegetative state.
His single mother's hair turned white overnight.
That night, she and Donovan drank poison and didn't live to see the morning.
And just like that, I lost the only two family members I had left in this world.
Standing in front of their graves, I wiped away my tears.
I said, "You two play your stand-in games, using other people's lives as your playthings.
"Well, this time, it's my turn to be the player."
After that, Brookville was turned upside down.
No one could have imagined Stanley would send Eileen straight to hell, all because of a stand-in.
[I'm honestly shipping Stanley and Eileen so hard. Every time they break up, they go out and find stand-ins who look just like each other. It's basically their way of saying, 'I still love you.']
[This isn't a breakup. It's just some next-level couple drama. Us regular folks can't even afford a stand-in, but they're out here living it up.]
[True love really means even your stand-ins have to be carbon copies of each other.]
I scrolled through all those upbeat comments online.
I was lost in thought.
It seemed like nobody really cared about how the stand-ins ended up.
I stared at the bank card in my hand.
There was a million dollars on it, no password, just open access.
Donovan's mom handed it to me right before she took her own life.
I knew this money was the price Donovan paid, with his body and his future.
Word online was, Stanley had personally smashed Donovan's lower half.
Of course, posts like that never lasted long online before getting scrubbed.
Thinking about all this, I raised an eyebrow at my reflection in the mirror, then headed straight for Brookville.
*****
A woman shouted, "Eileen, you've already ruined my face. Why can't you just leave me alone?
"Please, I promise I'll never go near Stanley again. Just stop, I'm begging you..."
The woman in front of me, wearing a mask, shouted at me, her voice full of anger and desperation.
Her eyes were wide with terror, looking totally hysterical.
From the edge of her mask, I could clearly see the jagged scars running across her skin.
I touched my face. "Do I really look that much like her to you?"
She paused, thrown off by my voice. "You're not her?"
I said, "I'm not her, but I want to take her place. Will you help me?"
The woman took the million dollars.
She told me everything she knew about Stanley.
*****
Three days later, thanks to her introduction, I got a job at a top-tier nightclub as a server.
The manager looked at my face and gave me a meaningful smile.
"Sweetheart, money's easy to make, but swallowing shit? That's a whole different story," she said.
She wasn't wrong.
Eileen had made that disfigured woman eat shit.
With that, she told me to take some drinks to the Cloudspire VIP room.
That was where the club's top VIPs gathered.
When I opened the door, seven or eight sets of eyes landed on me.
Some were sizing me up, others had a playful glint in their eyes.
In a heartbeat, the whole vibe in the room shifted. Suddenly, everything felt charged and a little off.
On the main couch, the man in the seat of honor lounged back, idly turning an amber crystal glass in his hand as he gazed out at the night view beyond the window.
The whole vibe in the VIP suite centered on him, pressing down on everyone else like he was the gravity in the room.
I saw Stanley.
"New face, huh? Interesting... Stanley, take a look at this girl. Miss Whitney's barely been out of the country a few days, and already someone's stepping up to fill her shoes?"
"Seriously, she's a dead ringer. Way more than that film academy chick from before. Those eyes, those brows, even her jawline. It's uncanny."
"Damn, you think she might be Mr. Whitney's secret kid or something?"
"Wouldn't put it past him..."
The conversation was getting a bit too intense.
Stanley finally turned his face toward me, slowly.
My breath hitched, totally out of my control.
His eyes were so dark and deep, you could get lost in them.
When he saw me, his eyes flickered with surprise.
But that surprise quickly turned into plain annoyance. He opened his mouth to speak, but someone next to him jumped in first.
The skinny-faced rich kid next to Stanley, clearly feeling the buzz, shot him a mischievous grin.
"Stanley, this one's unreal. Looks like her face hasn't had any work done. She's all natural, the real deal."
"Since you and Miss Whitney split, I haven't heard she's found a stand-in to get back at you. So, how about you let me take this one off your hands?"
As soon as he finished, the whole VIP room went dead silent. Everyone just stared at him like he was out of his mind.