The Price of Perfection

It was my birthday, marking ten silent years I' d lived inside Marcus Thorne' s gilded mansion.

I was his late wife' s eerie look-alike, tasked with raising his son, Leo, in a life of unimaginable luxury and suffocating expectation.

Then, a seemingly innocent smoothie led to a violent miscarriage, a tiny, unformed hope extinguished.

The boy I' d nurtured for a decade delivered the first cruel blow, his voice devoid of warmth: "You' ll never be her. Stop trying."

Marcus, the industrial titan who' d bought my resemblance, casually dismissed my profound loss, already planning his next merger…