Lies We Tell

Chapter 1

Aurora

I looked at the woman in the mirror with her fingers in her hair. She looked so different from what I remembered. The lightened highlights in the hair didn't seem to be like her.

I had hated highlights. I loved the straight brown hair but not the ones I saw right now. The ones with too many blonde highlights and wavy. They were longer now going down to my waist rather than being up to shoulder length.

"Aurora," I heard my name being called pulling me out of my thoughts. I looked at my reflection one last time making sure everything was in place from my makeup, hair, and dress everything. It wasn't the real me but now it was.

"Yes," I asked reaching to the living area where I had already set the breakfast on the table for both of us. He stood there in an Armani suit busy putting in cufflinks as he moved towards the table. Always perfect was what he looked like. Not even a hair out of place.

"Let's have breakfast." He told me sitting down on his chair at the head of the table. Moving around I served him breakfast. Picking something of each and putting it on his plate. The newspaper was placed on his right side because he was a lefty. He liked to read it every morning with his breakfast. Pouring the juice for him I settled down on his left. Filling my plate with bits of everything we ate silently together.

His eyes were glued to his newspaper and mine to him. He was devilishly handsome for being thirty and a perfectionist but he had flaws too. I was one of them too and another on his face. It had been a year since our marriage. I had been quick to understand where my position was in this marriage.

This big house might have been too big for just the two of us but he liked to have parties and business dinners here. I had to be the perfect host and perfect wife for him. Sometimes when I looked at him for too long, I thought maybe I could have loved him truly but I couldn't.

It wasn't because of our beginning but because I had already loved another.

Our beginning was nothing but an arranged deal between his father and my father. I had kneeled down in front of his father to let go of my sister. Begged him not to marry my barely eighteen-year sister to his twenty-eight-year son.

Mom had sobbed into the phone telling me that my father was getting Elena married to his boss's son just because he couldn't pay back the amount, he had embezzled from the firm I had rushed back to my hometown in Ohio. I could never forget the bruises on my mother's face as she wept alone. Dad had taken Eleanor with her to his boss's office. She had begged me to save her reciting me the office address where they had gone.

Taking a cab, I had gone to the office, fought with security, and barged inside the room where he stood in the corner looking at my sister, who stood beside my father who was sitting in front of his father. I had caused a commotion and could see his father's anger because of it. He had ordered for me to be taken out but Elena had come running to me sobbing. She hadn't let go of me and that was when he had asked the guards to leave.

Right then with five of us in the room, I had told him how wrong this was. It was immoral and unethical. Everyone knew what it was but either it was this or pay back the money. Hearing the amount had the world pulled down from my feet. I knew it wasn't payable. I knew it was a done deal and no one was backing out. They wanted my sister because she was pretty with her blonde hair and green eyes. Looking at her tears I realized I couldn't let this happen. She was barely a child as compared to my twenty-two and as an instinct to help my loved ones, I had put myself on the pedestal. I had begged them to let her go and choose me. Kneeled down on the floor and pleaded that I would do everything they ask just let me take the place of my sister. His father hadn't agreed to it but he was the one who had come forward.