Please Come Back, My Love Chapter 177

Elena： POV

The morning Alexander left for France, I stood in our bathroom with two small plastic bags in my trembling hands. One contained strands of his dark hair, carefully collected from his hairbrush. The other held a few of Lila's soft curls, taken from her pillow while she slept.

I stared at them, these tiny pieces of DNA that would finally tell me the truth. No more conflicting reports. No more lies from either Julian or Alexander. Just cold, scientific fact from a lab that neither of them could have influenced.

I'd chosen this morning deliberately. Alexander's flight to France departed at six AM, and he wouldn't be back for at least a week. Plenty of time for me to get the results without him knowing. Without him trying to explain or manipulate or "protect" me with another carefully edited version of reality.

I slipped both bags into my purse and checked on Lila one more time. She was still asleep, her face peaceful, one arm wrapped around her stuffed rabbit. My daughter. My beautiful girl. Whatever the DNA test said, that wouldn't change.

But I needed to know. I needed the truth.

---

**The independent lab** was in a nondescript building in Hammersmith, deliberately chosen because it had no connection to Alexander's business network or Julian's family influence.

I'd made the appointment under a false name, paid in cash, and requested the fastest turnaround time available.

"Three to five business days," the technician said, labeling my samples with clinical efficiency. "We'll call the number you provided as soon as the results are ready."

I nodded, not trusting my voice. My hands shook as I signed the paperwork—another false name, another small lie in a life built on them.

As I left the building, my phone buzzed. A text from Alexander: 【Landed safely. Missing you and Lila already. I'll call tonight to say goodnight to her.】

I stared at the message, feeling nothing.

【Missing you too】, I typed back, not wanting him to notice anything was wrong.

---

I drove back to the Mayfair house in a daze, my mind spinning with possibilities. What if Lila was Alexander's daughter after all? What if Julian had fabricated his report, just as Alexander claimed?

Or worse—what if neither of them was her biological father? What if there was some third man I didn't remember, some piece of my past that both of them were hiding?

I pulled into the driveway and sat in the car for a long moment, staring at the elegant Georgian facade. This house had been my home for four years. The place where I'd learned to be Elena Hunt, where I'd raised my daughter, where I'd built a life from the fragments Alexander had given me.

But it had never felt like *mine*. Always his. Always a stage set for the role he wanted me to play.

I let myself in and went straight upstairs.

Alexander had asked me to pack a few more shirts for his trip—apparently he'd forgotten some items in his rush to catch the early flight.

I moved through his closet mechanically, pulling out the crisp white button-downs he preferred for business meetings.

That's when I saw it.

Tucked into the inner pocket of his navy Tom Ford jacket—the one he'd been wearing the day we met Julian at Harrods—was a photograph. I pulled it out slowly, my breath catching.

The woman in the picture looked exactly like me.

Same brown hair, same facial structure, same slight frame. She stood in what looked like a garden, laughing at something off-camera, her hand shading her eyes from the sun.

She wore a simple sundress, and there was something about her smile—so open, so genuinely happy—that made my chest ache.

But it wasn't me.

I flipped the photo over. On the back, in faded ink: 【Elisa Hunt.】

So this was her. This was the woman Alexander had really loved. The woman whose face I wore like a mask.

But why did she also have the last name Hunt?

I sank onto the edge of the bed, still holding the photograph. All this time, I'd been trying to understand why Alexander had pulled me from that river. Why he'd saved me, married me, raised Lila as his own.

I'd thought maybe he genuinely cared about me, about the broken woman he'd found drowning.

But looking at this picture, I understood the truth.

He hadn't saved *me*. He'd saved a ghost. A replacement for someone he'd lost.

*This is what Julian meant*, I thought, staring at Elisa's frozen smile. *When he said Alexander was using me. I really am just a substitute.*

Strangely, the realization didn't hurt as much as I expected. Instead, I felt... relieved. The guilt that had been gnawing at me for weeks—the guilt over not being able to return Alexander's feelings, over flinching from his touch, over never being able to kiss him the way a wife should kiss her husband—suddenly lessened.

Of course I couldn't love him. Of course my body recoiled from his embraces. Because he didn't really want *me*. He wanted her. Elisa. And I was just a poor copy, a consolation prize he'd found floating in the East River.

For four years, he'd cared for me and Lila with unwavering devotion. He'd given us safety, stability, a beautiful home. He'd been patient with my nightmares, gentle with my fears, understanding about my inability to be physically intimate with him.

And I'd given him nothing in return. Not even a kiss. Not even the pretense of desire.

Because my body had known what my mind couldn't remember—that this wasn't real. That we weren't real.

I stood and carefully placed the photograph back in Alexander's jacket pocket, exactly where I'd found it. Then I finished packing his shirts with mechanical precision, my mind strangely calm.

Whatever the DNA results said, whatever truth they revealed, at least now I understood one thing clearly: Alexander Hunt had never really been my husband. He'd been Elisa Hunt's lover, playing house with her ghost.