I was starving, and that is not a metaphor. I survived those brutal early months solely because my face happened to share an uncanny seventy-percent likeness with the girl who broke Eli Dupont’s heart.
Eli was endlessly generous with his money, but he possessed a vile temper and an inability to sleep alone. While keeping me on his arm as his so-called girlfriend, he cheated constantly. Afterward, he would recount the encounters to me in excruciating detail, demanding my critique.
Every time I gave him an honest review, he wired ten thousand dollars to my account.
It was a transaction. Pure and simple.
Until the afternoon I walked into his penthouse and caught him tangled up with the original blueprint—the girl who had finally returned from abroad. A sharp, icy panic seized my chest.
"Damn it," I thought. "I’m about to be laid off."
Eli glanced up from the sofa, his posture loose, completely unbothered. "Get out," he said casually. "And fix us some dinner while you’re at it."
For the first time since I met him, I didn't obey. I packed my bags, took the small fortune I’d accumulated, and caught the first flight back to my hometown.
His circle of friends laughed, telling him I was just throwing a tantrum and would come crawling back on my knees within a week.
They were wrong. The next time Eli heard my name, it was attached to a wedding announcement.
…
During the absolute leanest year of my life, I was picked up by the police for scavenging municipal landscaping.
A concerned citizen had reported a vagrant stripping the decorative crabapple and pear trees planted along the boulevard's public median. I sat in a hard metal chair at the precinct, listening to an officer lecture me for two solid hours about civic property and petty vandalism. My stomach was twisting into agonizing knots. I hadn't even had the chance to wipe the street dust off the sour, unripened fruit in my coat pockets; I hadn't eaten a single bite of food in thirty-six hours.
It wasn't that I lacked an appetite. It was that my checking account sat at an even zero.
When the officer finally finished his speech, he slid a piece of paper across the scarred laminate table, making me sign a pledge promising I would never pick through the town's ornamental greenery again.
I signed it neatly.
As I walked out into the chilly afternoon air, a man in an ill-fitting designer suit grabbed my elbow. His eyes flicked over my jawline, wide and assessing, like a pawnbroker who had just found an heirloom brooch in a box of plastic junk.
"Hey, kid," he said, breathing peppermint and stale black coffee. "Name’s Mack. You looking for work? Even if it doesn’t pan out, I’ll hand you five hundred bucks right now just for five minutes of your time."
My throat clicked as I swallowed dryly. "I’ll do it."
He peeled off five crisp hundred-dollar bills on the spot. I marched straight into the greasy diner across the street and ordered a massive platter of biscuits smothered in sausage gravy, a stack of buttermilk pancakes, and a triple order of buttered hash browns, wolfing down every single scrap until my ribs ached.
Only after I was full did I follow him to an upscale private lounge downtown.
It didn't take long to realize Mack was an upscale fixer. A procurer.
My spine stiffened, survival instincts urging my heels to turn around. But Mack placed a heavy palm against my shoulder blade, steering me toward the double doors. "Look, I’m not forcing you into anything. The guy in there is heir to more old money than you can comprehend. Play your cards right, and you’ll never go hungry another day in your life."
I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted copper. Nothing, absolutely nothing, hurt worse than poverty. Pride doesn't put calories in your blood.
I gathered what was left of my nerve and pushed open the heavy mahogany door.
Sitting in the dim glow of the corner booth was Eli Dupont. The moment his gaze found my face, the heavy tumbler in his hand tilted, single-malt scotch splashing over his fingers. He froze. The casual cruelty in his posture vanished, replaced by an unsettling, hungry fixation.
He hired me on the spot.
Beside me, Mack beamed, whispering under his breath that I was the luckiest girl alive.
The truth came out the following afternoon: I looked roughly seventy percent like Camille. Camille was his untouchable muse, the girl who had walked away, leaving him hollowed out and furious. My presence was simply an exercise in visual grief.
I felt an immediate, profound sense of relief.
A high-paying job with zero physical expectations from my employer? Eli had zero desire to touch me in the dark. It was the cleanest business deal I could have dreamed of. We both got exactly what we wanted.
By four o’clock, I was moved into an airy, high-rise apartment he leased for me. Before I could even unpack my spare sweaters, his driver picked me up and brought me to another private club.
He wanted me to play the part of arm candy.
The lounge was loud, thick with the scent of expensive cigars and heavy colognes. Eli was slouched against a leather banquette, his arm draped over a girl in a silk slip dress, their arms linked as they took synchronized shots of tequila amid the cheers of his friends.
When Eli finally set down his glass, he pointed an indifferent finger at me. "Anna," he announced over the bass line. "My new girlfriend. Be nice to her."
The room quieted, eyes darting between me and Eli with open disdain and veiled amusement.
Brett, his closest friend, let out a loud snort. "Damn, man. She looks familiar. Who does she remind me of again?"
Eli kicked Brett's shin under the low table, his mouth tightening. Then he crooked a finger at me. "Over here."
I walked over and sat beside him. He looped an arm heavily around my shoulders, pulling me into his chest. The stench of smoke and rye whiskey was overwhelming, turning my stomach. I hated tobacco; no matter how expensive the cigar, to me it smelled like burning rot.
Eli poured a tumbler of bourbon and slid it across the glass table toward me. "Drink a round with everyone. You don't leave until it's empty."
I nodded without hesitation. The moment I chose to take his money, I had accepted the terms of the contract. There was no such thing as a free meal in this world.
The people around the table exchanged smirks.
Brett leaned back, shaking his head. "Look at you, Eli. You wouldn't dare rough up Camille like this, but you sure know how to put the help through the wringer."
"She isn't Camille," Eli said, his voice flat and cutting. "She doesn't deserve the soft touch."
A faint shudder ran through my ribs, but I kept my face blank.
I took the drinks, one by one. By the fifth shot, my throat felt raw and my stomach was an open furnace. Finally, I reached the last person at the end of the banquette—the girl who had been sitting closest to Eli earlier.
I raised my glass politely to toast her.
Instead of lifting hers, she picked up an open bottle of pinot noir and tipped it directly over my head.
I closed my eyes. The cold, sticky wine cascaded down my temples, soaking into my scalp, staining my cheap cotton blouse.
Laughter erupted around the room. "Look at that," someone mocked. "Girl will take literally anything for a paycheck."
Eli didn't tell them off. His mouth curved into an amused, cruel smirk. He unclasped the heavy platinum watch from his wrist and tossed it into my lap.
"That’s enough," he said. "Take it and get out."
I picked up the watch, feeling the cold weight of the metal against my sticky fingers. My pulse pounded in my ears.
"Goodnight, Mr. Dupont," I said evenly.
Eli watched me walk toward the exit, his gaze dark, heavy with a mixture of contempt and the faint, pathetic longing of a man staring at a ghost.
I walked straight out of the club, caught a cab, and went directly to a late-night luxury consignment boutique downtown.
The appraiser turned the watch under a loupe, looked up at me, and said, "I can wire you three hundred and fifty thousand dollars right now. Are you selling?"
My knees nearly gave out. "Yes. Wire it."
Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. In an instant, the crushing fifty-thousand-dollar medical debt that had been suffocating my family was wiped off the earth.
Standing on the sidewalk with my banking app open, watching the balance update under the streetlight, tears finally spilled over my lashes.
Money wasn't just paper. Money was oxygen.
After that night, I treated my role as Eli's companion with the discipline of an executive assistant. Whatever he asked, I delivered without complaint.
If he wanted me to kneel on the carpet and rub his calves while he made out with some model on the leather sofa, I knelt. At first, witnessing his casual infidelities had unsettled me, but once I framed it as a corporate duty, my mind went blissfully numb.
Where else was I going to find an entry-level position that cleared six figures?
When the model eventually gathered her purse and left, Eli snapped his fingers for me. He reached out, his thumb dragging across my cheekbone, his eyes scanning my features.
"What did you think of her?" he asked.
"She was lovely," I answered calmly.
Eli’s mouth twisted into a sneer. "You really have no self-respect, do you?"
I kept my gaze lowered. "No, sir."
He scowled, irritated by my lack of jealousy. "Don't flatter yourself into thinking I keep you around for anything real. You’re a knockoff. You aren't qualified to be anything more."
"Understood," I murmured.
When he finally dismissed me, he pulled out a black card, swiped a ten-thousand-dollar transfer onto my debit account, and tossed the phone onto the coffee table. "Your performance bonus."
A small, involuntary smile tugged at the corner of my lips. "Thank you, Eli."
His eyebrows drew together in immediate disgust. "Don't smile like that. Don't use her face to make that pathetic, greedy expression."
My face instantly went smooth, terrified he might rescind the payment.
He didn't.
That night sparked my curiosity about Camille. If I was going to be an understudy, I needed to understand the lead actress. Counterfeits have tiers of quality, after all, and I wanted to keep this contract for as long as humanly possible.
Brett was the easiest source of information. He looked down on me, but he was inherently gossipy. Whenever Eli stepped away, Brett would drop breadcrumbs just to emphasize the chasm between me and the original.
"Camille was a soloist at the American Ballet Theatre," Brett told me over club sodas one night. "Eli was obsessed with her. But the Dupont family didn't want their golden boy marrying a dancer without a pedigree. They pushed her out. Camille had too much pride to beg, so she packed her bags and took a contract in Paris."
I listened quietly, absorbing the keywords: "pride, prima ballerina, unreachable elegance."
Pride was a luxury I couldn't afford, but elegance could be practiced.
That weekend, I spent a substantial sum enrolling in intensive dance classes. Classical ballet was out of reach for my twenty-something joints, but contemporary movement and posture training were entirely achievable. I practiced daily in the apartment living room, working on line, extension, and poise.
One Tuesday afternoon, Eli let himself in unannounced.
He leaned against the archway of the kitchen, watching me quietly for several minutes before I noticed him in the mirror.
I stumbled, catching my balance awkwardly. "Eli. Sorry. I was just messing around."
He sat on the sofa, unbuttoning his cuffs. "Keep going."
I tried to execute a turn across the hardwood, but my center was off, and I wobbled within seconds.
Surprisingly, he didn't mock me.
"Brett’s executive assistant told me this morning that she’s in love with me," Eli said, staring down at his loafers. "So Brett fired her and sent her to my hotel room."
He unlocked his phone and handed it to me. On the screen was a clip of the encounter.
My stomach plummeted. I nearly dropped the phone from pure mortification.
Eli watched my pupils contract, his gaze burning. "Everyone bends over backward trying to please me. Only you act like some pristine nun."
I realized then that he wasn't talking to me. He was talking to the ghost of Camille.
"I know my place, Eli," I whispered.
His jaw hardened. "Say my name like you mean it."
"Eli."
A strange, humorless laugh escaped him. My obedience seemed to soothe whatever wound was festering in his chest. He reached out, hauling me onto the cushion next to him, burying his face against my neck.
"She has a fiancé," he muttered into my skin, referring to the woman in the video. "Cheated on him without blinking an eye. Isn't that disgusting?"
I hesitated. "A little, yes."
He pulled back, his eyes flashing with irritation at my lukewarm response. "Anna, did no one teach you how to speak? She's shameless. Say it."
"She’s shameless," I repeated evenly. "Utterly disgraceful."
Satisfaction smoothed the lines around his eyes. "Exactly. Women will do anything for money. There's nothing they won't sell."
"Right," I thought dryly. "And if you hate money so much, feel free to wire me the rest of your trust fund."
He held me for an hour, demanding more critiques, forcing me to dissect the morals of his conquests until my jaw felt stiff and my voice grew raspy. Finally, he shoved me away with sudden revulsion.
"Cheap," he muttered, standing up. "A pretty wrapper with nothing inside."
I looked at the floor, silent.
His phone chimed as he typed out a transfer. A ping sounded on mine: "+$10,000."
The second the notification hit my screen, any residual disgust vanished into thin air. Internal fireworks went off. Ten grand for an hour of bad television? Best job in the world.
He left. Over the following months, the pattern held. Every few weeks, he would share the details of some fleeting affair, and I would rack my brain to deliver scathing, moralizing reviews that stroked his ego without implicating him in the cruelty.
He paid me reliably. Occasionally, if he was in an expansive mood, he bought me Cartier bangles or Chanel bags. I held onto the gifts for a couple of months before quietly consigning them, terrified he might ask where they went.
He never asked. To him, they were just scraps tossed from the table.
One Saturday, while I was stretching after dance class, my phone buzzed.
"Come to the estate tonight," Eli ordered. "Wear something refined."
I didn't argue. I pulled out a minimalist, ivory silk slip dress—the exact silhouette Camille favored in the archival ABT photos I’d studied—and took an Uber to his family’s private country club.
The banquet hall was packed. Dozens of people from his social sphere were gathered around the terrace, people I recognized from magazine covers and society pages.
When I stepped into the warm ambient light, Eli’s gaze caught on the drape of my dress. A flash of intense hunger flickered in his eyes.
"Anna," he said, holding out a hand. "Come here."
The room fell dead silent as I crossed the floor. Every pair of eyes tracked my footsteps, and a knot of anxiety tightened in my throat. What cruel game was he playing tonight?
Eli took my hand, his mouth curving into an unfamiliar, gentle smile. "Happy birthday. You didn't think I’d forget, did you?"
My breath caught.
I hadn't celebrated a birthday since I was eight years old, back when my mother was still alive.
Before I could process the words, he slipped a heavy jade and diamond cuff onto my wrist. It was antique, breathtakingly delicate, and clearly worth more than a suburban house.
"Make a wish, Anna," he said softly, staring down at me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. "Anything you want. I’ll make it happen."
My heart hammered against my ribs. The kindness felt wrong. It felt toxic.
"Anything?" I asked, my voice barely audible.
"Anything."
"I want—"
"Five million dollars," I was about to say.
The words never left my mouth.
A woman broke through the French doors of the terrace, her heels clicking sharp and fast against the marble.
"Eli! Are you out of your mind?!"
My thoughts short-circuited.
It was Camille. She was back.
She stood there, luminous, breathless, trembling with rage.
Eli’s expression instantly curdled into a cold, mocking smirk. "I’m celebrating my girlfriend’s birthday. What does that have to do with you?"
Camille’s eyes welled with furious tears. "Brett told me everything. You don't have to hire an escort just to punish me, Eli. It's pathetic!"
Eli stepped closer to me, sliding an arm firmly around my waist. For once, he didn't smell like cigars.
"She isn't an escort," he said, loud enough for the entire terrace to hear. "She’s the woman I’m going to marry."
Camille went pale, her gaze finally dropping to me. Her lip curled in raw disbelief. "Her? You’re settling for "that"? You're lying to yourself!"
Without a second of hesitation, Eli pulled my face toward his and pressed his mouth hard against mine.
The second his lips touched mine, a wave of violent, visceral nausea hit me like a physical punch. My brain instantly replayed the hotel videos, the casual infidelities, the sheer rot beneath his manicured exterior.
I shoved him away with all my strength, turned to the terrace railing, and dry-heaved.
I couldn't help it. My body physically rejected him.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Camille stared at me, her chest heaving. "You... you make me sick, Eli."
Behind us, Brett dropped his highball glass. It shattered against the flagstones. "Holy shit," Brett gasped, eyes glued to my stomach. "Is she pregnant?"
A dozen gasps rippled through the crowd. I opened my mouth to frantically deny it, but Eli cut me off, stepping in front of me to shield my frame.
He looked directly at Camille. "I never owed you anything. You walked away from this table. If you didn't want it, someone else did."
A single tear spilled over Camille’s cheek. Humiliated by the stares of fifty socialites, she turned and fled into the night.
Brett yelled her name, jogging after her, before turning back to glare at Eli. "Are you happy now? You chased her off!" He cast a venomous look at my midsection.
Eli ignored him completely. He grabbed my wrist, his grip bruising. "Your wish," he demanded, his voice dangerously low. "Finish it."
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, shaking. "I want five million dollars."
Eli’s eyes went dead. "Greedy to the bitter end."
Twenty minutes later, my phone chimed. He had wired eight million.
Seeing the string of zeros, my breath seized in my throat.
Over the next week, Eli’s demeanor changed. He stopped insulting me in public. He forbade his friends from speaking down to me. But the softer he acted, the more terrified I became.
High-paying jobs never stay easy for long. The crash was coming.
On Sunday morning, I was kneeling beside his armchair, working through the knots in his shoulders, when the front door chimed.
I started to get up, but Eli rested a hand on my knee. "Don't bother."
A moment later, Camille burst through the foyer, her hair disheveled, her coat askew. She strode across the Persian rug and slapped him across the face with everything she had.
"Crack."
"Eli Dupont! What did you do to my father's firm? You froze our credit lines! You destroyed us!"
Eli touched his reddened cheek, a slow, dark smile spreading across his mouth. "And?"
Camille’s breathing was ragged. Her porcelain composure was completely shattered. "Stop this. It isn't funny anymore. Please."
Eli leaned back into the leather. "Get on your knees and beg me."
Camille froze. He was trying to snap her spine, piece by piece.
She turned her furious, tear-streaked face toward me. "I am not Anna, Eli! I won't sell my soul to you for pocket change!"
I blinked. "Why am I catching strays in this argument?"
"Well," Eli said smoothly, "then you’re out of options. You won't even be able to cover your mother's rent by the end of the month."
Camille swayed on her feet, looking like an exquisite piece of glass on the verge of shattering. Even I felt a pang of pity for her. Beauty has a way of commanding sympathy, whether we want it to or not.
"Anna," Eli commanded quietly. "Leave the room."
I nodded, got to my feet, and slipped out into the hallway, closing the heavy doors behind me. I wasn't panicked; I assumed they had hours of dramatic screaming ahead of them.
Ten minutes later, the door swung open. Eli called out down the corridor: "Bring in a fresh set of clothes. Something for her."
My brain went numb.
I walked into the master suite on wooden legs. The bathroom door was cracked open, steam curling into the bedroom air, and through the frosted glass, I could see the silhouette of Camille standing beneath the showerhead.
I stared at Eli, my face dead white.
Seeing the shock in my eyes, something shifted in Eli's expression—a brief flicker of guilt, followed by cold entitlement.
"Leave them on the vanity," he instructed, his tone dismissive. "Then fix us some lunch. I’m craving something homemade."
My breath caught in my throat.
"This is it," I thought. "My severance package has arrived."
If the original was back in his bed, the counterfeit had no business lingering in the hallway. Why wait around to be fired when I could tender my resignation first?
I had more than enough money. Eight million dollars was plenty of emotional damages.
I packed my life into a single carry-on duffel within fifteen minutes.
As the Uber sped toward the airport, my phone began vibrating relentlessly. Missed calls, voicemail alerts, rapid-fire texts from Eli:
"Where are you? Call me back right now!"
I stared at the screen for three seconds, swallowed hard, and powered the phone off.