The howling blizzard of Aspen, Colorado, rattled the floor-to-ceiling glass panes of the isolated Montgomery Estate, but the chill inside the master bedroom felt far more suffocating.
The howling blizzard of Aspen, Colorado, rattled the floor-to-ceiling glass panes of the isolated Montgomery Estate, but the chill inside the master bedroom felt far more suffocating.
I dipped a soft linen cloth into a bowl of warm water, squeezed out the excess, and gently wiped the forehead of the man lying motionless on the grand velvet bed. His name was Ethan Montgomery. At twenty-nine, he was the sole heir to a multi-billion-dollar energy empire that dominated the American West. But six months ago, a tragic accident on a restricted ski slope had left him in an unresponsive, vegetative state. To the greedy relatives currently carving up his corporate assets, he was nothing more than a living ghost.
And to my family, he was a business transaction.
For twenty-three years, I was the unwanted outcast of the Sterling family. My mother and my elder sister, Amber, treated me like a servant while showering Amber with millions. When Ethan was still the most eligible billionaire bachelor in Colorado, my mother had maneuvered Amber into a high-profile betrothal with him. But when news broke of Ethan’s permanent coma, Amber threw a hysterical tantrum. She refused to spend her youth as a grieving widow to a human vegetable.
Instead of breaking the contract, my mother and sister devised a sinister scheme. They forced me into a private cosmetic clinic, where a surgeon etched a small, permanent scar onto my right cheek—a mirror match to the signature mark on Amber’s face. They confiscated my papers, shoved me into a white lace gown, and delivered me to this snow-bound tomb in Aspen under Amber’s name.
“Keep your mouth shut and tend to the cripple, Chloe,” my mother had sneered through the car window as they dumped me in the storm. “If anyone finds out you’re the fake bride, we will destroy what little life you have left.”
For three months, I lived alone with an unconscious man. I didn’t treat Ethan like a corpse. Every morning, I opened the heavy velvet drapes to let the pale winter sunlight stream over his bed. I massaged his motionless limbs, changed his linens, and spoke to him softly about the quiet beauty of the snow. Every night, I applied a special, hand-blended mountain lavender salve to his dry skin, brewing the soothing ointment myself.
And every night, once the staff left, I used a cosmetic cream to cover the surgical scar on my cheek, briefly reclaiming the face my family had stolen from me.
“Good evening, Ethan,” I whispered softly tonight, setting the linen cloth aside. The firelight flickered against his sculpted jawline and pale skin. “The board directors are calling another meeting in Denver tomorrow to liquidate your private estate. I wish you could wake up. I wish you could fight them.”
I reached for my lavender salve, gently massaging his cold knuckles. “I know I’m an impostor,” I murmured, tears brimming in my eyes. “Amber is out spending your money, while I’m trapped here pretending to be her. But as long as I am in this house, no one will ever harm you.”
I leaned forward to rinse the cloth.
SNAP.
A grip like forged iron suddenly clamped around my right wrist.
My breath hitched in my throat as my body was violently jerked forward across the mattress. The ceramic water bowl crashed onto the hardwood floor, shattering into pieces.
“E-Ethan?!” I gasped, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Slowly, deliberately, the man who had been a motionless “vegetable” for six months opened his eyes. There was zero cloudiness in his gaze. Zero brain damage. Zero confusion.
Ethan Montgomery’s eyes were a piercing, razor-sharp electric blue—blazing with the terrifying, unshakeable authority of an absolute monarch waking from a long slumber.
Ethan pulled me down until my chest was pressed against his broad torso, his grip on my wrist unyielding as his blue eyes locked onto mine in the dim firelight.
“Who…” Ethan’s voice echoed through the quiet room—not raspy or weak, but deep, rich, and dangerously smooth like velvet over steel—”…are you?”
“Ethan…” I stammered, my voice shaking uncontrollably. “You… you’re awake?!”
Ethan raised his free hand. With slow, deliberate precision, his broad fingers brushed against my right cheek, wiping away the camouflage cream and feeling the faint surgical mark beneath his thumb.
“You are not Amber Sterling,” Ethan stated, his voice a low, lethal purr. “Amber smells like synthetic perfume and greed. You smell like mountain lavender, pine needles, and honesty.”
Tears spilled from my eyes onto his hand. “I’m her younger sister, Chloe. They forced me into surgery… They threatened me—”
Ethan’s grip on my wrist softened, his large palm sliding down to wrap gently around my fingers. He pulled himself up into a sitting position on the bed with fluid, athletic power, throwing off the heavy wool blankets. Standing up on his own two feet, Ethan stood six-foot-three, broad-shouldered, radiating an aura of absolute corporate and physical supremacy.
“I know who you are, Chloe,” Ethan murmured, stepping closer and looking down at me.
My jaw dropped. “You… you knew?!”
“The skiing accident six months ago was an assassination attempt planned by my uncle and his corrupt board directors,” Ethan revealed, his voice cutting through the quiet room like a chilled blade. “I sustained minor injuries, but I chose to feign a comatose state to force my enemies into exposing their financial fraud. For ninety days, I lay in this bed watching the vultures devour my company.”
He stepped closer, his thumb gently tracing the edge of my cheek, his eyes softening with a profound, terrifying tenderness.
“And for ninety days,” Ethan whispered, “I listened to your voice every single morning. I felt your gentle hands massaging my limbs. I smelled your mountain lavender every night. You protected my body when the world thought I was dead. You held my hand when everyone else abandoned me.”
With his thumb, Ethan smoothed away the last traces of the cover-up cream, stripping away the illusion of the fake scar and gazing at my true, untouched features beneath the firelight. A low breath escaped his lips as he took in my pure, unblemished beauty.
“You are far more captivating than the cruel sister they tried to replace you with,” Ethan murmured, his thumb resting gently against my jawline. “Tomorrow, I reclaim my empire. I will expose my traitors, crush your mother and Amber for what they did to your face, and make you the most powerful woman in Colorado.”
He leaned down, his warm lips brushing against my forehead, sealing a vow in the quiet mountain night.
I looked up into his electric blue eyes, feeling the safe, fierce warmth of his presence, knowing that my days in the shadows were over forever.
TO BE CONTINUE….
