Fake Dating Her Billionaire Twin

After the holidays, I took on an unusual gig. For fifteen thousand dollars, I was hired to play the role of a doting boyfriend to a wealthy heiress. The job was simple: accompany her to her familys estate and survive one night.

The moment I stepped through the grand double doors of the house, her twin sister made her disdain violently clear. Her eyes, cold and sharp, dragged over me from head to toe.

"Hes completely out of his depth," she said.

"He's clearly here for the money."

"He is absolutely not good enough for my sister."

Her words were like glass shards, but I kept my head down, swallowing the sting, offering no defense.

It wasn't until the sister explicitly demanded that we break up right then and there that the heiress I was hired to protect finally snapped.

"Catherine, that is enough," she snapped back. "Youve known him for five minutes. Youre acting like youre his ex-girlfriend or something."

At those words, her sister slowly lifted her gaze, her eyes locking directly onto mine.

My fake girlfriend didn't know it, but her flippant, sarcastic remark had hit dead center.

Years ago, Catherine and I had been together. We dated for three years. She just never let me see the light of day.

The air in the drawing room turned to ice.

Crystal, my "girlfriend," waited for a response to her outburst, but none came. When she looked up, she saw her sister, Catherine, frozen in place.

"Cathy?" Crystal leaned forward, her brow furrowing. "Wait, do you actually know him?"

Catherine had just flown back from Europe today, and the Griffith estate was packed with extended family. At Crystals question, several heads turned our way, curiosity sparking in their eyes.

Catherine twisted the Cartier ring on her index finger. She didn't say a word.

It was their mother, Diana Griffith, who broke the silence with a soft, dismissive laugh. "Don't be ridiculous, Crystal." She adjusted her cashmere wrap, her voice smooth and dripping with old-money condescension. "Your sister isn't like you. Shes always had impeccable taste. She wouldn't look twice at an ordinary man."

The subtext wasn't subtle. On paper, I didn't even meet the financial requirements to stand on the Griffiths' front porch. Everyone in the room understood the insult.

Everyone except Crystal, who played her part flawlessly.

"What do you mean, ordinary?" Crystal frowned, her fingers interlacing with mine. She squeezed my hand, her voice ringing out clear and defiant. "Camden is incredible. Mom, Im going to marry him."

The words hung in the air.

Suddenly, Catherine, who had been completely silent, seemed to snap back into her body. Her dark eyes dropped to our intertwined hands. She let out a hollow, mocking laugh.

"Incredible?" Catherines voice was laced with pure venom. "Is that what we're calling thieves and liars these days?"

Those two sentences dropped like bombs, suffocating the sprawling room in a dead silence.

Every eye turned to me.

Crystal had been reining in her temper since we walked through the door. This was the match in the powder keg. She stood up, voices raising as she and Catherine plunged into a bitter, shouting argument.

The room dissolved into chaos.

I took a slow sip of my club soda, the icy liquid tracking down my throat. The moment I had walked in and seen Catherine standing by the fireplace, I knew this weekend was going to be a disaster.

But this was just a job. We were playing a part. Catherine dragging my name through the mud with ancient history shouldn't hurt me anymore.

Using the screaming match as cover, I slipped out of the room and retreated to a first-floor guest bathroom. I locked the door, leaning against the marble sink, trying to ground myself in why I was here.

Crystal was really dating a guy from a working-class background, and her mother was doing everything in her power to destroy it. So, Crystal hired mea guy with an even bleaker financial resumeto parade around the estate as a decoy to shock her family.

Survive the weekend, piss off the Griffiths, take my fifteen grand, and leave. Catherines viciousness was actually helping me earn my paycheck.

I turned on the faucet, letting the cold water run over my wrists.

Looking at my reflection, I put the pieces together. Crystal and Catherine didn't look identicalfraternal twinsbut there was an undeniable echo in the slope of their cheekbones, the shape of their eyes.

The Griffith family.

For three years, that was the name Catherine had scrubbed from her existence when she was with me.

I stayed in the bathroom for a while, letting the silence settle my racing heart, guessing the argument outside had burned itself out. But the moment I opened the door, I walked straight into Catherine.

She was standing in the middle of the quiet hallway, perfectly still, her eyes locked on me. They were pitch black, unreadable, and terrifyingly familiar.

She used to look at me exactly like this whenever some other girl hit on me at a bar. A possessive, suffocating darkness.

I suddenly realized that when I walked in, her demand that Crystal and I "break up" hadn't been an act of sisterly protection.

I broke eye contact and started walking past her, pretending she was made of glass.

I only made it two steps.

"Three months, Cam," Catherine said softly. A chilling, humorless scoff escaped her lips. "Ive been waiting for you to come crawling back. I didn't realize youd already found my replacement."

The club soda churned in my stomach.

I didn't stop walking, but my mind was violently pulled back in time.

Catherine had never talked about her family. It wasn't until our first month together that I realized she wasn't just well-off; she was untouchable.

I had been working entry-level at a corporate firm, and a senior manager had blatantly stolen credit for a project Id bled over for a month. I came home exhausted and vented to her over cheap takeout. The very next morning, the project, the credit, and the bonus were officially back in my name.

The senior manager actually came to my cubicle to apologize, sweating through his shirt.

I stood in my bosss office in a daze, listening to her tell me with a nervous smile that if I ever needed anything, I should bypass her and go straight to "the top."

The top. I didn't know exactly what strings had been pulled, but I knew Catherines hands were on them.

When I brought it up that night, Catherine just smiled, tracing the rim of her wine glass. I remember staring at her, realizing she possessed a kind of wealth I couldn't even conceptualize.

Slowly, the reality of our dynamic set in. She never claimed me in public. She never introduced me to a single friend.

Once, we were having dinner at a quiet, upscale bistro. Halfway through the meal, she got a text. She abruptly stood up, had her driver pack up our food, and sent me home in the back of her SUV.

I ate my cold steak alone in my apartment.

I found out later that her socialite friends happened to be in the neighborhood and wanted to grab a drink.

"Am I a secret?" I asked her later that night, the humiliation hot in my chest. "Are you ashamed of me?"

Her fingertips had felt so cold as she wiped a stray tear from the corner of my eye. She whispered that she wasn't.

After that night, she finally took me to meet her inner circle. That was the night I found out about Brooks Harrington. Her childhood best friend. Old money, devastatingly arrogant, and looking at Catherine like he owned her.

Dinner was agonizingly quiet. I was a ghost at the table. Just before we left, I accidentally glanced down and saw Brookss phone light up with a text in their group chat.

Must be tough for you, having to rent out the entire restaurant just to hide him. Lets not do this again.

A drop of hot tea spilled onto my fingers. I flinched, snapping back to the present.

Back then, Catherine swore she was just keeping a low profile because the board of directors was watching her personal life closely.

But after that dinner, we didn't go out together for a long time.

A few days before my birthday, I noticed a new dress hanging in her closet. It was a striking, unmistakable emerald green.

On the night of my birthday, she never came home.

I sat curled up on the sofa, a movie playing on mute, watching my phone screen stay dark. She wasn't answering.

Instead, I got an unexpected text from Brooks Harrington, asking me to come down to the lobby of my building.

When I walked out, the first thing I noticed was his tie. It was an unmistakable, striking emerald green. Perfectly matched to the dress Id seen in her closet.

My brain short-circuited for a second.

Brooks and I weren't friends. I had no idea how he even knew it was my birthday, but he held out a beautifully wrapped, obscenely expensive watch box.

"I didn't have anything prepared when we met last time," Brooks said, his smile perfectly polite, perfectly cruel. "Happy birthday."

I didn't take it.

He didn't push. He casually lowered his hand and looked around. "Is she not keeping you company tonight?"

I shook my head. "She's working late."

Brooks just smiled. He didn't say another word.

Our brief, agonizing exchange ended. When I stepped out of the awning, it had started to snow. I checked my phone. Two notifications: a news alert and a spam email. Nothing from her.

The snow was coming down harder, the Chicago streets slick and quiet. I looked up just in time to see Brooks crossing the avenue and climbing into the back of an idling black Bentley.

The car roared to life, disappearing into the flurry of white.

I stood in the freezing wind, blinking slowly.

I recognized that Bentley. It sat in Catherines private garage. She strictly used it for VIPs. In three years, she had never once let me sit in it.

I stood in the snow until my limbs went completely numb.

Catherine didn't come home until the next morning. She told me there had been an emergency at the firm.

"But I saw Brooks getting into your car last night," I said quietly.

Catherine smiled smoothly. "You saw Brooks?"

I didn't answer. Her smile widened just a fraction. "I was tied up with work, Cam. I just drove back into the city this morning."

She even pulled out her phone, swiping through timestamped photos of a corporate retreat in the suburbs. The times and locations lined up perfectly with her story.

But I just looked at her.

I couldn't tell what was real anymore. She gave me so little of her actual life. Everything I knew about her was strictly what she allowed me to know. If she wanted to hide something, she had the resources to bury it so deep Id never find it.

For my birthday, she gave me a vintage Rolex. She fastened it around my wrist, kissed me softly, and murmured that I should stay away from Brooks.

A month later, I found out why.

I was forced to attend a charity gala as her "plus one"though we arrived separately. Halfway through the night, Brooks stood in the center of the ballroom and loudly accused me of stealing his watch.

That was the night I fully grasped who Brooks Harrington was. Heir to a real estate empire, worth hundreds of millions. When he spoke, the room listened. And everyone immediately took his side.

"Funny how you both went to the coat check at the same time, and right after his goes missing, you suddenly have the exact same model?" one of his friends sneered.

"Yours? Where's the receipt, Camden? With your salary, you couldn't afford the clasp on that watch if you worked for a decade."

The judgmental stares of Chicago's elite pinned me to the floor. I stood in the center of the hostile circle, looking at Brooks like I was seeing a monster for the first time.

It took me a long time to find my voice.

"I didn't buy it. My girlfriend gave it to me," I said, my voice trembling but loud enough for the room to hear. I looked dead at Brooks. "You know exactly who she is, Brooks."

Brooks tilted his head, feigning innocence. "Do I? What's her name?"

"Tori," I said. "Tori Ellis."

Brookss eyes lit up. He had laid the trap, and I had walked right into it. He repeated the name slowly, tasting it, before letting out a loud, echoing laugh.

"Tori Ellis," he chuckled, looking around at the wealthy crowd. "I know a lot of people in this city, Camden. I have never, in my entire life, met a Tori Ellis."

I froze. A physical blow to the chest wouldn't have hurt more. The blood drained from my face.

A coworker who had sneaked me a plus-one ticket rushed over, whispering frantically for me to call her. To prove I wasn't crazy. To prove I wasn't a thief.

My fingers were ice-cold as I fumbled with my phone and dialed her number.

It rang. And rang. And rang.

The hollow tone echoed from my phone speaker into the silent, waiting ballroom. She didn't pick up.

My coworker panicked, asking if I knew where she lived, if we could drive there right now to get her. Her frantic voice mixed with the relentless ringing of the phone, piercing my eardrums.

I was so cold. A deep, bone-rattling chill was spreading through my veins.

Standing in the middle of that glittering, hostile room, the horrifying truth crashed over me.

I knew nothing about her.

Other than that apartment and this phone number, I had absolutely no way to reach the woman I loved.

I stood there like a ghost as one of Brookss security men stepped forward and forcibly unlatched the Rolex from my wrist.

"Mr. Harrington is a generous man. He's not going to press charges," the man said smoothly. "But next time you want to invent a sugar mommy to cover your tracks, pick a better fake name. The Griffiths are close friends of the Harringtons. They have two daughters. Neither of them is named Tori Ellis."

I was shoved backward, my hip slamming hard into the corner of a cocktail table.

Through the haze of pain and humiliation, a memory surfaced.

All those times I had sat quietly at dinners with her friends. Not a single one of them had ever called her "Tori."

She didn't call me back until I had left the gala and was walking numbly down an empty street.

"I want to see you," I whispered into the receiver.

She was silent for a few seconds. Then, she sent a black car to pick me up. It didn't take me to our apartment. It took me to a sprawling, glass-walled penthouse downtown that I had never seen before.

That was when I realized she owned dozens of properties like this. The apartment I cherished as our "home" was just one of her many empty boxes.

When I arrived, a team of assistants and executives were filtering out of the penthouse. She looked like she had just wrapped up a boardroom meeting.

We stood in the cavernous, hyper-modern living room, just looking at each other.

Catherine was endlessly patient. When I didn't speak, she just watched me, perfectly composed.

Finally, my voice cracked the silence. "Aren't you going to introduce yourself? What's your real name?"

Her brow twitched. A microscopic frown.

And in that moment, my heart plummeted into my stomach.

On the ride over, I had a hundred burning questions. I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask why she lied. Why she approached me just to keep me in the dark. I wanted to ask when this "right time to go public" she always talked about was actually going to happen. I wanted to know if, in three years of lying to my face, she ever felt an ounce of guilt.

But looking at her cold, perfect face, only one question clawed its way out of my throat.

"Was it a lie from the very beginning? When you said wed get married... you never meant it, did you?"

She looked genuinely surprised that I was asking. She let the silence stretch out, heavy and suffocating.

Then she said, "I thought you understood."

I stared at her. "Understood what?"

"Do I really have to spell it out?"

She looked at me, the silence in her eyes shifting into a quiet, crushing pity. "This is how my world works, Cam. Your background, your financial standing... you were never going to be my husband on paper."

The penthouse was dead silent. Then, a broken sound tore out of me. A laugh that choked on a sob before it could fully form.

I closed my eyes. A single, heavy tear broke free, splashing hot against the back of my hand.

...

When I walked out of the lobby of her building, Brooks was waiting.

He leaned against the marble pillar, taking in my shattered, hollow expression with the grace of a king looking at a peasant. He offered me the truth like it was charity.

He filled in the blanks. The text message that ruined our dinner months ago? That was him. The only reason she finally introduced me to her friends wasn't because she felt bad about my tears; it was because Brooks had found out about me and demanded to see her little pet.

On my birthday, she really was in the Bentley with him. And tonight, at the gala? She ignored my calls on purpose. Because she was never going to walk into a ballroom filled with her peers to claim a charity case.

Every little detail wove together into a suffocating net, pulling tighter and tighter until I couldn't breathe. My entire body ached.

"She didn't even give you her real name," Brooks said softly, buttoning his cashmere coat. "But that's the price of being a secret, Camden. You have to swallow the indignity and keep your mouth shut."

I went back to the apartment that I thought was ours.

It took me exactly one hour to pack three years of my life into a single suitcase. When I opened the front door to leave, Catherine was standing on the other side.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

I didn't answer. I gripped the handle of my suitcase and tried to push past her, but she slammed her hand against the doorframe, blocking me.

"Cam, this is your home. The lease is in your name," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "Where do you think you're going to go?"

A wave of pure, visceral nausea hit me.

I violently shoved her shoulder, trying to break free, but she caught my wrist in a vice grip.

"The only reason you have a career right now is because I made a phone call," she said, her tone dripping with dark authority. "I gave you that life, Cam. And I can take it away just as easily."

She yanked me closer, her fingers digging painfully into my skin.

"You will never find anyone better than me. And you can't survive without me."

...

The memories flashed through my mind like a fever dream. I pulled myself back to the present, standing in the opulent hallway of the Griffith estate. All that was left echoing in my skull were the final, venomous words she had thrown at me the night I left:

You'll come begging back to me, Camden.

"You look like hell. What's wrong?"

When I made it back to the living room, the crowd had thinned out. Crystal was looking at me, her arms crossed. "Don't let my sister get into your head. Shes been acting like a rabid dog for the last few months."

She paused, then muttered, "I'm adding an emotional distress bonus to your paycheck."

The tension in my chest eased slightly.

By nightfall, the sky broke open, and heavy rain began to batter the windows. Most of the extended family had gone home.

Catherine picked up her trench coat, preparing to leave.

"Oh, by the way, Mom," Crystal called out casually from the sofa. "I forgot to tell you. Cam is staying in my wing tonight."

Catherine froze halfway to the door.

She turned around, her dark eyes drifting slowly over to Crystal.

"Crystal," she said, a tight, terrifying smile playing on her lips. "I told you, he is beneath you. Stop playing these childish games."

Crystal stared back, momentarily taken aback by the sheer hostility. She clearly wanted to say something sharp, but settled for a defiant, "Mind your own business, Cathy."

Catherines smile vanished.

Without a word, she dropped her coat onto a chair and sat back down in the parlor.

Crystal blinked. "Didn't you have a board meeting tonight?"

"I canceled it," Catherine said softly, her eyes locked on me.

It was Crystal's turn to go quiet. She looked at her sister, her eyes narrowing slightly, gears turning in her head.

Late that night, the storm worsened. The rain lashed violently against the glass of my guest bedroom. I was lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, when I heard the footsteps.

Soft. Deliberate. Moving down the hallway.

They got closer and closer, until they stopped dead outside my door.

I held my breath, every muscle in my body tensing.

I watched the brass handle of the door begin to slowly, agonizingly turn.

Suddenly, a voice echoed from down the hall.

"Cathy?"

It was Crystal.

"What the hell are you doing standing outside my boyfriends door?"