The Brother's Wife Chapter 6

At dinner that night, both Claire and Sophie noticed something was wrong.

"Someone giving you trouble at work?" Claire asked, her hand finding mine under the table.

I couldn't look at her. "Claire, what would you do if I told you... if one day I wasn't here anymore?"

Her face went pale. "What? Are you sick? Ryan, if you're sick, we'll get the best doctors, we'll—"

"I'm not sick." I took her hand. "Just... hypothetically. What if someone who looked exactly like me showed up to replace me?"

"That's impossible."

"But if it happened—"

"No." She cut me off, her grip tightening on my hand. "You don't understand, do you? After ten years together, you think someone else could just step into your shoes because they have the same face?"

Her eyes were fierce. "I would know. I would know. There's no one in this world who loves you more than I do."

The intensity in her voice made my throat tight.

That night, trying to somehow fix the unfixable situation, Claire announced a surprise gift at a corporate gala: a downtown office building, transferred entirely into my name.

"This man is my husband," she told the crowd of Boston's elite. "There will never be anyone else. He's irreplaceable."

I stood at the back of the ballroom, watching her speech on a mounted screen.

Except someone else was standing on that stage next to her.

James. Wearing my suit. Shaking hands with my business partners. Smiling my smile.