Paper Promise: The Substitute Bride - Chapter 16: Chapter 16

I was having tea in the kitchen of the mansion late at night, one of the few moments of peace I had during the day. A servant passed me with a small pile of carefully folded clothes.
“Are those James’ suits?” I asked.
“Yes, the dry cleaners delivered them this afternoon, and I forgot to put them in the closet,” she replied, adjusting the weight in her arms.
She was a gray-haired lady with kind eyes who had treated me with courtesy ever since I arrived at the house.
“Let me help you with that,” I offered, already holding out my hands to share the burden. “I’m feeling very idle. In my father’s house, I was responsible for all the cleaning and organizing.”
“That’s not necessary, ma’am. I’ve been doing it for years.” She replied with a slight smile.
“How long have you been working here?” I asked, ignoring her refusal as I gently took a few pieces from her aged hands.
“Thirty years.”
Her eyes carried the weight of decades dedicated to that house. I saw an opportunity there that I couldn’t miss-I needed to find out more about James’ past.
“Thirty years is a long time...” I commented, watching her more closely. “So you know him very well.”
She nodded, a small nostalgic smile appearing on her lips.
“I watched Mr. James grow up.”
I took a step closer, lowering my voice like someone sharing a forbidden secret.
“What was he like? I know almost nothing about his past.”
The maid sighed, her gaze lost for a moment, as if she were retrieving long-held memories.
“Oh, James... He was a lovely child.”
A nostalgic gleam appeared in her eyes.
I let out a short laugh, without disguising my disbelief. “Hard to imagine.”
His expression hardened subtly, as if my words had minimized something important.
“Yes, he was,” he insisted, his voice carrying an unexpected firmness. “Kind, intelligent... always smiling.”
Then, as if an invisible weight fell on her shoulders, her voice dropped to a near-whisper.
“But everything has changed.”
Silence.
I took one suit and hung it on the hanger, feeling the invisible weight that his words left in the air.
“What caused such a dramatic shift in his behavior? It must have been something serious ”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she continued organizing the ties with firm but slightly trembling fingers.
“He’s unpredictable,” I muttered, more to myself than to her. “His mood changes all the time. Some moments he’s affectionate, and the next minute he’s a cruel tyrant.”
The maid hesitated for a moment. Then she took out her cell phone from inside her clothes and showed a gallery of photos, two children on her lap.
“They’re my grandchildren.”
“So beautiful.”
“The eldest was born healthy, but the youngest had a heart condition and the health insurance wouldn’t cover treatment. We’re poor and don’t have any money in banks. Mr. James paid for the surgery and all the treatment, which lasted months.”
“He did that?” I asked incredulously.
She sighed and put her hand over mine.
“He may have a rough exterior, but inside, he’s a good person.”
There was sincerity in her voice, but I couldn’t believe that he was a good man.
I took a step closer, watching her intently.
“This change in him has to do with Veronica, doesn’t it?”
“Miss Spencer?”
“What happened to her?”
She froze. Her face paled slightly, and for a brief second, she looked like she’d seen a ghost.
“Miss Laura, I need to go; it’s getting late. Excuse me.”
“Please tell me. I need to know.”
Without another word, she turned and went on her way, leaving behind a silence laden with answers she refused to give.
I should have waited for a more opportune moment to ask a delicate question, but time was running against me.
From the corridor I watched the door of the room that was forbidden to me, Veronica’s sanctuary.
I returned to the kitchen and finished my now lukewarm tea, thinking about what I had just discovered. The change in James’ behavior, Veronica Spencer’s name that seemed to cause so much discomfort... There was something there that everyone was trying hard to hide.
Determined, I went upstairs to my room and locked the door. I picked up my laptop and sat on the bed, the maid’s words still echoing in my mind. “Everything has changed.” What could have turned a smiling child into the unpredictable and cruel man I married?
I opened my browser and typed in the name: “Veronica Spencer”. The results page loaded quickly, and my heart raced when I saw the face of a very pretty young woman in one of the first images. It was her - a university student, according to the caption. I continued browsing and felt a shiver run down my spine when I found a death notice. Suicide.
My fingers froze on the keyboard. Could it be possible? Had Veronica taken her own life... because of James?
I continued my search, clicking on more images, when one photograph in particular captured my attention. I moved my face closer to the screen to be sure of what I was seeing. It was Veronica in ballerina clothes, in front of a dance school. The same school where my mother had studied ballet.
My heart skipped a beat when I noticed her hair - light brown, almost blonde... like mine. In the photos from my teenage years, her hair was dark.
A noise in the hallway snapped me out of my disturbing discovery. I closed my laptop in one swift movement, as if I’d been caught doing something forbidden. From the shape of the footsteps, it must have been James, probably with some woman.
James’ voice is so clear, although low, as if he’s trying not to be heard.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said to someone.
A feminine laugh, light as silk, answered him. “Oh James, you’re so seductive.”
I felt a lump forming in my throat. I took a deep breath, trying to control the mixture of anger and humiliation that threatened to consume me.
“Darling, don’t make a sound,” he whispered, his voice now even lower. “We don’t want to wake my beautiful wife.”
“Bastard,” I said to myself, the words escaping between clenched teeth.