After Daughter's Loss, Divorce

The doorbell rang as I was preparing dinner—Brandon's favorite pasta, the one I'd perfected over years of marriage. I wiped my hands on a kitchen towel and headed for the door, expecting the organic produce delivery I'd scheduled. "Mrs. Shaw?" The delivery man balanced a small box in one hand and a tablet in the other. "Special delivery for this address." I frowned. "I didn't order anything." "It's addressed to this residence, ma'am." He handed me the elegantly wrapped box with a cream-colored envelope attached. "Just need your signature." After signing, I examined the package. The wrapping paper was from Cartier—Brandon must have ordered something. Perhaps he remembered our anniversary after all? A flicker of hope warmed my chest.

I spent three years being the perfect wife to tech mogul Cash Ferguson, a forensic accountant playing the role of a low-risk asset to stabilize his public image. My world shattered when I saw a live CNBC broadcast from Sundance showing Cash tenderly hoisting a two-year-old boy onto his hip—a secret son born to a socialite mistress while he was supposedly at a business roadshow. When I confronted him with divorce papers, Cash didn't apologize; he laughed, calling me a "liability" and weaponizing my mother’s history of mental illness to claim I was genetically unfit to carry his heir. He didn't just reject the split; he locked the penthouse elevator and froze every one of my accounts, reclassifying me from a wife to a piece of disputed company property. "You came from nothing, Isidora," he sneered, tossing a credit card at me like a leash. "Stop being dramatic. I can afford a pet, but don't think you can survive a day in the real world without my name." The betrayal turned lethal when I discovered Cash had tracked down my mother’s stolen emerald brooch—my only connection to my past—and bought it as a gift for his mistress. He was using my trauma and my heritage to decorate the woman who had replaced me in his secret life. I realized then that Cash had made a fatal accounting error: he forgot that I was the one who built his shadow accounts and knew exactly where the fraud was buried. He wanted to treat our marriage like a hostile takeover, so I decided to give him a market correction he would never forget. I escaped down forty flights of stairs with nothing but a burner laptop and a plan to burn his empire to the ground. If he wanted to play dirty, I’d show him what happens when a forensic accountant initiates a liquidation protocol. I’m not just leaving; I’m going to make him crawl.

"Still playing dirty, Huntress?" he taunted, pinning me with those piercing grey-blue eyes. "Still hiding behind your daddy's money, Reaper?" I shot back, my blood boiling. Lanaya Roux and Maverick Hayden are college hockey royalty-and bitter rivals. As the captains of competing university teams, their hatred on the ice is matched only by the legendary feud between their billionaire families' empires. But when their ruthless fathers force them into a fake engagement to secure an $18 billion corporate merger, Lanaya and Maverick are thrown into the ultimate game of survival. The rules are simple: Live together in the same penthouse. Smile for the cameras. Pretend to be madly in love for six months. It was supposed to be strictly business. But behind closed doors, the venom they spit at each other quickly morphs into a scorching, undeniable addiction. Maverick is an arrogant, aggressively protective alpha who refuses to let her go, and Lanaya is the fiercely independent captain who refuses to submit. Beneath their explosive chemistry lies a devastating secret: a shared tragedy from eight years ago that claimed the life of Lanaya's brother and shattered their innocent childhood bond. With the national hockey championship on the line, scandalous secrets surfacing, and unseen enemies sabotaging their every move, the line between love and hate has never been so dangerous. What happens when the fake engagement to your worst enemy becomes the only real thing in your life?

I didn't hear it from my mother or from family... I saw it online, just like everyone else. A headline, a picture, a ring on her finger. And the man standing beside her? Philip Davenport. Billionaire. CEO. Untouchable. The kind of man who takes what he wants and keeps it. Including my mother. I was supposed to hate him-the man who replaced my father, the man I swore I'd destroy. So I made a plan: get close, get under his skin, make him want me... then watch everything fall apart. It was simple. Until he looked at me like I was the only woman in the room. Until his touch lingered longer than it should. Until every glance, every word, every moment started to feel like something I couldn't control. Now I'm caught in a dangerous game of desire and deception, where the lines I drew are slowly disappearing. The closer I get to him, the harder it is to remember why I started. My mother trusts me, my boyfriend loves me, and the man I was supposed to ruin is becoming the one I can't resist, and every step I take only pulls me deeper into something I was never meant to feel. I wanted revenge. What I got instead was something far more dangerous. And now? I might lose everything. Because falling for my mom's fiancé was never the plan. And if I'm not careful, I won't just lose the game... I'll lose myself.

To save my dying father, I made a deal with the billionaire Christopher Kirkland. I became his secret, a bird in a gilded cage he paraded around when it suited him. But I was just a pawn in his twisted game to win back his ex-girlfriend. He proved it when he publicly outbid me for my own mother's heirloom necklace, only to gift it to her right in front of me. Then he threw me out of the penthouse. My few cherished belongings-my books, a photo of my parents-were tossed out. "Chaney doesn't like clutter," he told me, erasing my entire existence for her. A text on his phone confirmed the brutal truth. "Our little game is working perfectly," she'd written. "She's completely fooled." Years later, after she betrayed him and his empire nearly crumbled, he came back begging. He thought he could buy my forgiveness. He was about to learn that my freedom had no price tag.

I stood outside Cassian's office, my hand poised to knock on the mahogany door. The wedding planner's portfolio was tucked under my arm, filled with seating charts and floral arrangements for our ceremony—just one month away. Ten years of devotion had led to this moment. Ten years of molding myself into the woman I thought he wanted. The door was slightly ajar. Strange. Cassian hated interruptions. "Mr. Edwards, I've finished reviewing the quarterly reports," came a woman's voice from inside. Jolie Ramos.