My Boyfriend's Brother Calls Me Baby

Lila lost her sight in a crash. Dominic, her boyfriend, was driving when he took a call and hit the guardrail. The call came from Beatrice, his childhood sweetheart, who had flown overseas after Dominic skipped her birthday party to stay with Lila during a fever.

Earlier, Lila had overheard Dominic in the hall. He had asked his older brother Hubert—the chosen don of the Russo family, one of the four ruling mafia families on the East Coast—to pose as him and look after Lila for a few days. She was too clingy, he said, and he wanted to breathe. Hubert agreed, and Dominic owed him a favor with no stated terms.

After the crash, the man beside Lila was Hubert, not Dominic. He cooked for her himself, carried her, held her until she slept, and called her baby. Lila barely knew Hubert before. He had always sat alone in dark corners, but she had caught him watching her. She thought he looked down on her. She began to think she was wrong.

At a jewelry store, Lila overheard Beatrice telling Dominic that Lila would never stand a chance against their history. The salesclerk handed Lila her custom promise rings. She walked out without a word.

Hubert stayed in the role. Lila's sight began returning in blurred shapes, and she lied about how much she could see. When she heard Hubert on a call with Dominic—two more days and they could switch back—she swiped a glass diffuser to the floor and let him comfort her. Dominic's voice came through the phone, asking what they were doing. Hubert called him nobody important.

The next day Beatrice arrived to invite Lila to a party Dominic was throwing for Beatrice. Three days later, at Beatrice's birthday party at a private club, Hubert led Lila in and fed her fruit. The room went silent. When Hubert left to get her medication, the guests surrounded Lila and tested her blindness. Then Hubert and Dominic appeared on opposite sides of the entrance, and a game was proposed: guess which man is your boyfriend. Lila followed Dominic's voice, and his smug grin widened with every step.

The fraud, the family opposition, and the rivals' revenge are still ahead. Lila will have to publicly choose Hubert over Dominic.