I'm Just a Replacement

Chapter 1 Her return

Setting: A soft-lit gallery evening in London, where Aidan’s architecture firm is being honored. Clara stands beside him—quiet, proud, his elegant wife. The crowd clinks champagne glasses. And then—

She walks in.

The soft murmur of voices and jazz faded into static as Aidan’s body went still.

Clara noticed it first—the way his hand on her back tensed, the slight hitch in his breath.

And then she turned.

A woman stood at the entrance.

Tall. Striking. A white silk dress clinging like memory. Her waves of chestnut hair spilled down one shoulder, red lips curved into a smile that once unraveled him.

Siena Calloway.

The woman who left him at the altar.

The woman Clara had heard about in murmurs, in fading photographs and awkward silences.

The woman she had tried not to hate, but always feared.

"Aidan." Her voice was smoke and sunlight. Still the same. Still deadly.

Clara felt it—that invisible thread snap back into place between them like it had never broken. And suddenly, three years of marriage felt like glass beneath her skin.

Aidan swallowed hard. "Siena…?"

She walked toward them like the room belonged to her. "I heard about your award. I had to come." Her eyes drifted to Clara, assessing. Polite. Dangerous. “And you must be... his wife.”

Clara smiled softly. "Clara Winslow-Hart."

Siena tilted her head. “He always said he’d never hyphenate.”

There it was—barely veiled. A jab. A reminder. A claim.

Clara’s heart thudded quietly. But she wouldn’t falter.

“Aidan changed, after you,” she said gently. “We both did.”

Aidan’s eyes flicked to Clara. And for a second, his guilt was louder than the room.

Siena stepped closer. “Did he really change… or just settle?”

The silence that followed cut deeper than any insult.

Clara couldn’t breathe. Aidan didn’t speak.

And in that moment, she knew—

Siena wasn’t just back.

She was here to take him.

From Clara’s POV

The ballroom pulsed with champagne and ambition.

Everywhere Clara looked, people whispered Aidan Hart’s name with reverence. The CEO of Hart Dominion. The man who rebuilt his empire after scandal. The man who married a stranger three years ago and never once held her hand in public.

She stood beside him in a sapphire gown he hadn’t noticed. Like always.

They weren’t truly husband and wife. Not in the way that mattered.

They shared a last name.

They shared a home.

But not a life.

And yet Clara had loved him long before the world did.

He just never saw her.

Until the day Siena Calloway ran away.

Clara still remembered how quiet the hall had been. How Aidan, humiliated before hundreds of guests, stood at the altar and turned to the crowd. His voice steady. Dead.

“Anyone who still wants to marry me… step forward now.”

Everyone thought it was a joke.

Clara stepped forward.

Not because she was brave.

But because she couldn’t bear to see him alone.

And he said yes.

Just like that.

Tonight, three years later, he barely spoke to her. He never really did.

But when the doors of the ballroom opened and Siena Calloway walked in—

She saw him look at someone for the first time in years.

Not her.

Her.