The Substitute Bride

Prologue: The Substitute

There is simply no substitute for hard work when it comes to achieving success.

-Heather Bresch

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THE TABLOID:

The Sicilian Royalty

They said that some people need to find their destiny. Some were born into it, and the Fiorenza sisters were one of them. If Sicily has a royal family, it will be them.

Since Laila Fiorenza was still young, her father groomed her to be the perfect daughter a Sicilian father could be proud of. While her twin sister, Leila Fiorenza, refused to grow up as her powerful father had wanted. She rebelled being a good Sicilian girl and spent years as the Sicilian tabloid's favorite darling with her wild ways.

But she could not escape her destiny at all. The powerful patriarch had arranged her wedding to a man of his choosing. Now the time had arrived for Leila Fiorenza to honor the agreement and marry the man she had never even laid eyes on before.

However, once again, the rebel daughter had run away, refusing to do her father's bidding. Leila's whereabouts are unknown to everyone including her dutiful twin sister. It is a common knowledge that a Sicilian never breaks his promise. So when his vagabond daughter had run off again, Cesare Fiorenza told his other daughter to step into the role of her twin to meet Leila's intended groom and pretend to be her twin until she is located.

Just how far this obedient daughter will do just to please her father...?

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Laila Fiorenza's POV

It's not every day that my father, Cesare Fiorenza, called me into the most formal library of our century-old palatial home for a chat. What does he want to summon me here? I knocked on the thick wooden door to find out.

"Come in," said the commanding voice in the old Sicilian dialect.

I straightened my chaste black dress before I let myself enter the chamber where my father had been entertaining his visitors either to impress them with our family's wealth—or to intimidate them. I was not really sure which of the two. "You wish to talk to me, Patri?" I asked in the same dialect.

"Sit down, me fighia."

I took one of the leather seats directly opposite to my father's desk and looked into the infamous cold green eyes that have marked the Fiorenza family for many centuries, the same color as mine and my twin sister's. I sat regally as if there was a fireplace poker stick inserted into my spine, the proper way for a woman to sit according to my etiquette teacher.

"I want you to come to New York and pretend to be your sister," my father announced without preamble as if it was the most logical thing in the world.

To pretend as my twin sister.

What's going on here?

"Pardon, Patri?" I would not be more surprised if my father had said that I could travel to the moon.

Pretend to be Leila?

"Why would I need to pretend to be Leila, Patri?"

My father leaned back in his chair—or his throne as my twin and I privately call it—and studied me, probably thinking whether he would tell the truth or not. I think he decided for the truth. "You see, your vagabond sister had run away again after I told her that now is the time to honor the promise I made with an old friend of mine for Leila and his son to marry."