My Fiancé Swapped Places With His Twin At The Altar Chapter 22
I suddenly thought of the wedding day.
He had helped me up and quietly asked if I still wanted to go through with it.
Now I understood.
The way he had looked at me then—it was because he had seen himself in me.
We were the ones who hadn’t been chosen.
That wedding had pushed us together.
“So that’s why you went to Europe?”
“Mm.”
He said lightly, “When I was seventeen, I applied to study abroad. The family thought I was being cast out.”
“So I used that time to build something for myself, piece by piece.”
He said it so casually.
But I knew it couldn’t have been easy.
A boy who had always been overlooked, studying alone in a foreign country, slowly building his own network and career.
Back then, he had no one.
The car stopped in front of the hotel.
Before getting out, I asked, “Why did you help me?”
Alessio was silent for a moment.
“At first, it was guilt.”
I looked at him.
He met my gaze without flinching.
“I agreed to stand in for Matteo at the ceremony. That was my mistake.”
“I thought you didn’t know, and I thought we would switch back after the wedding.”
“I didn’t expect it to truly hurt you.”
“Later, I watched them humiliate you. I watched them accuse you. And I saw that even after learning the truth, you still chose to stand back up.”
“And I felt I couldn’t just leave you there alone.”
I had always thought I no longer needed explanations, no longer needed anyone to answer for what happened at that wedding.
But hearing Alessio say so seriously that he had been wrong—
I suddenly realized that having someone acknowledge the truth really did help.
I said softly, “You’ve already done so much for me.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not compensation.”
He looked at me and said, one word at a time, “Bianca, I’m doing this now because I want to be good to you.”
I lowered my head. I held it in for a long time, but a smile broke through anyway.
“Alessio.”
“Mm?”
“Could you maybe not say things so seriously?”
He paused.
I looked up at him, my eyes still a little red around the edges.
“When you say things like that, I might actually believe you.”
He looked at me for a long time.
Then, unexpectedly, he smiled too.
“Then believe me.”