Chapter 1 - The Cream-Coated Deception
The woman in the cream-colored coat walked into Bellamy Fabrics at 4:17 on a Thursday afternoon with the quiet, devastating precision of a wrecking ball. Outside, the Chicago wind was howling off the lake, rattling the old glass panes of the storefront, but inside, the air was warm, smelling faintly of raw cotton, linen, and forty years of dust. I was standing behind the cutting table, measuring out three yards of forest-green wool for a regular customer, when the brass bell above the door chimed.
She didn't look like a fabric store customer. She looked like she belonged on the cover of Vogue or stepping out of a private town car on the Magnificent Mile. Her coat was cashmere, perfectly tailored, and her eyes scanned my modest shop with a look of clinical, detached appraisal, as if she were evaluating a particularly uninteresting insect.
"Can I help you find something?" I asked, setting my heavy pair of Kai scissors down on the cutting mat. "We have a wide selection of upholstery weights over in the corner, or if you're looking for apparel fabric—"
"The man you’re falling in love with is not real," she said.
The words dropped into the quiet space between us with the weight of a lead anchor. For a second, I didn't move. I simply stood there, my hands resting on the wooden table, staring at her. Then, a nervous, bewildered laugh bubbled up out of my throat. It wasn't because what she said was funny—God knows my life wasn't a sitcom—but because my brain simply refused to accept any other reaction. The alternative, after all, was believing her.
"I'm sorry?" I managed, forcing a small, tight smile to my lips. "I think you might have the wrong store. Or the wrong person."
She didn't blink. Her expression remained completely frozen in a mask of cool, aristocratic superiority. Without breaking eye contact, she reached into her designer handbag, slid out a sleek smartphone, unlocked it with a practiced swipe, and placed it flat on the cutting table between us. She tapped the screen twice and pushed it forward, spinning it around so it faced me.
There was Ryan.
My Ryan.
The man who lived across the hall from me in Apartment 3B of that run-down, radiator-hissing brick building on West 31st Street. The man who wore faded gray hoodies with frayed cuffs and spent his Tuesday nights at the laundromat counting quarters out of a plastic cup. The man who had walked over to my apartment three nights ago with a cheap plastic tub of strawberry ice cream because he noticed I had been staring at my laptop bills until midnight with dark circles under my eyes.
“You look like you need sugar and a distraction,” he had said, flashing that crooked, boyish grin that made my pulse do a stupid little gymnastics routine. “And don’t worry, I budgeted these quarters for laundry, but ice cream wins.”
Except the man staring back at me from the smartphone screen wasn't wearing a faded gray hoodie.
He was standing on a polished marble floor beneath a glittering crystal chandelier, flanked by a black-tie charity banner bearing gold lettering. He was wearing a custom-tailored tuxedo that easily cost more than the blue-book value of my ten-year-old Honda Civic. His hair was styled with expensive product, his posture was commanding and absolute, and his expression carried an air of corporate ruthlessness I had never once seen in my hallway.
Right beneath his photograph, bold and unmistakable, were the printed words:
RYAN MERCER
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
MERCER DEVELOPMENT GROUP
I stared at the screen. My breath hitched in my throat, freezing right there. Then I looked up at the woman, my eyes darting back and forth between her cold, painted face and the glowing glass screen.
"That’s not him," I whispered, the denial tasting like dry ash on my tongue. "That's... that's some guy who looks like him. There are doppelgängers. Everyone has a twin."
The woman let out a short, humorless sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "I was with him for two years, Ms. Brooks. I think I know what Ryan Mercer looks like when he's wearing something other than thrift-store denim."
May you like
My stomach gave a sickening, violent lurch, as if the floorboards of my shop had suddenly given way.
She smiled, a cruel, razor-thin stretching of her lips. "And just so we're entirely clear? Ryan Mercer has never been poor a single day in his entire life."
