His Dangerous Love On Ice (Olivia and Zane) novel Chapter 60

OLIVE’s POV

There was this one time, about a year ago, when Cole had filmene in the kitchen.

I was making pancakes, flour dusted across the counter and somehow in my hair, laughing at something stupid he’d said about burning water He’d pulled out his phone without warning told me I looked beautiful when I wasn’t trying so hard. I’d blushed like some lovesick idiot-and told him to stop, but he’d ept filming anyway. Just a few seconds. Nothing that seemed important at the time.

I’d completely forgotten about it.

Until today, as I stared at myself on this screen.

The room had gone quiet. The kind of silence that made your ears ring and your chest compress like someone was sitting on your ribs, squeezing all the air out slowly.

I looked up at the massive display mounted on the wall-the one that had been cycling through photos of Sophia all night, birthday memories and childhood pictures and all that sentimental bullshit people pretended to care about at engagement parties.

But now it was showing something else entirely.

A video.

It took my brain a second to process what I was actually seeing because my mind kept rejecting it, kept trying to make sense of images that didn’t make sense. A woman with dark hair. Similar build to mine. Same height, same frame. On a bed I didn’t recognize in a room I’d never been in with a man I’d never seen before in my entire life.

Having sex.

A NUDE SEX.

My stomach dropped so fast I thought I might actually throw up right there on the expensive marble floor.

The woman’s face turned toward the camera and my heart stopped beating entirely, just froze in my chest like someone had reached in and squeezed it until it couldn’t pump anymore.

Because it looked like me.

Same exact hair length and color. Same body type down to the curve of my hips and the shape of my shoulders. The angle was just right-or just horrifically wrong-enough that anyone who didn’t know me intimately would think it was me without question.

But it wasn’t.

I knew it wasn’t because I’d never been in that room, never been with that man, never done any of this, but my brain was screaming at me that nobody else would believe that, nobody else would see past the resemblance.

Then the audio started and everything got so much worse.

“God, this is so easy.” The woman’s voice came through the speakers, breathy and satisfied, and it sounded like mine except it wasn’t, couldn’t be, but it was close enough that my own voice felt foreign in my throat. “Zane Mercer actually thinks I care about him.”

No

No no no no-

I turned to look at him and my vision was already blurry with tears I was desperately trying to hold back. “No. It’s not me. Hunter, that’s not me, you have to believe me—”

But he was staring at the screen with his face pale and his mouth slightly open, and I could see it written all over his expression-the doubt creeping in, the confusion taking root, the terrible possibility that maybe his stepsister really was capable of this.

He didn’t believe me.

My own stepbrother didn’t believe me.

I looked around the room desperately, frantically searching for someone-anyone-who would see through this, who would recognize that this was fake, that someone had gone to incredible lengths to destroy me.

But then my eyes caught on a figure standing near the stage, and everything else faded into background noise.

Sophia.

The newly engaged birthday girl in her exquisite designer dress hat probably cost much, her blonde hair falling like silk over her shoulders, eyes sharp and gleaming with something that looked like victory, like she’d just won some game I didn’t even know we were playing.

She was standing perfectly still while chaos erupted around her, and for just one second-one brief, devastating second-I saw something flicker across her face.

Not shock. Not confusion. Not the horror and sympathy you’d expect from someone watching another woman get publicly destroyed.

A smile.