Discarded Fiancée: The Tech King's True Queen
I returned to New York for my welcome-home party, expecting a warm embrace from Edwin, my devoted fiancé of twenty years.
Instead, his first words to me were a cold, public warning to stay away from his new girlfriend, Kacy.
He stood in my family's hotel, shielding a girl I had never even met, and painted me as a vicious, jealous bully.
"She is very sensitive, Kaitlyn. Her background is tough. Please, be gentle with her. Don't upset her."
He humiliated me in front of our entire elite circle, allowing them to mock me as the aggressive, discarded ex while he carried her away like a fragile princess.
For twenty years, I had been his loyal shadow, fixing his mistakes and loving him unconditionally.
I couldn't understand how decades of deep devotion could be instantly erased by a few crocodile tears and a manipulative damsel act.
He was absolutely certain I would throw a tantrum, cry, and eventually crawl back to beg for his attention.
But he was wrong.
He didn't know that Everett Rowe, a billionaire tech mogul, had been patiently waiting five years to marry me.
He also didn't know that during my three years abroad, I wasn't just studying art—I became "K.B.", the ruthless Wall Street predator who could swallow his family's empire whole.
I calmly pulled out my phone, ignored the mocking whispers around me, and typed a single message to Everett.
"Yes. I'll marry you."
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Chapter 5
Kaitlyn Barton POV:
The word "Yes" burned on the screen of my phone, a final, damning brand on the ashes of my twenty-year history with him. My fingertip was ice-cold as I pressed send. It felt like pulling a trigger, ending a life. Mine. The one I’d been living, anyway.
I forced myself to take a breath, to lift my head and face the banquet hall. A hundred pairs of eyes were fixed on me, a swirling vortex of shock, contempt, and gleeful pity. I was a gladiator in the center of the arena, and they were the bloodthirsty crowd. The weight of their judgment pressed down on my shoulders, a familiar pressure. It was the same feeling I’d had as a child, the constant, suffocating need to be the perfect Barton daughter, to never show a crack in the flawless facade.
Edwin’s face was a twisted mask of fury and humiliation. He took a step forward, his voice a low growl that vibrated with menace. "Kaitlyn, who are you texting? Give me the phone."
Kacy, ever the picture of concern, hid behind his arm. A flicker of triumph flashed in her eyes before being replaced by a soft, worried expression. "Edwin, don't," she pleaded softly. "Kaitlyn's probably just confused."
My best friend, Bettie, rushed to my side, her fingers digging into my arm. "Are you insane?" she hissed, her voice a frantic whisper. "We need to go. Now!"
I didn't move. A tremor ran through my body, a cocktail of delayed fear and reckless courage. But my gaze, fixed on Edwin, was unwavering.
Just as his hand shot out to snatch my phone, the screen lit up. The name displayed was one I knew by heart, one that had been a silent presence in my life for years. *Everett Rowe*.
The ringtone was quiet, a simple, unobtrusive chime, but in the sudden lull of whispers, it sounded like a thunderclap. It split the chaos around me, creating a small pocket of silence just for me.
Ignoring Edwin's outstretched hand and Bettie’s desperate tugging, I answered.
The whispers erupted again, louder this time. Necks craned. Everyone wanted to know who could possibly be calling at this exact moment.
I pressed the phone to my ear, and the world went quiet.
He didn't speak right away. There was only the sound of his breathing, steady and calm, a rhythm that seemed to seep through the phone and into my own frantic heart. Miraculously, the tension in my shoulders eased a fraction.
Edwin saw the change in my posture, the way I held the phone as if it were a lifeline. Jealousy contorted his features, stripping away his handsome veneer and revealing the ugly entitlement beneath. He lunged for the phone again.
Bettie threw herself in his path, a loyal bulldog protecting her charge, buying me precious seconds.
Then, his voice came, deep and resonant, a calm anchor in my storm. "Are you okay?"
Just three words. And my eyes, dry until this moment, burned with unshed tears. Twenty years of biting my tongue, of swallowing my hurt, of making myself smaller to accommodate his ego—it all came crashing down in that one, simple question.
I couldn't speak. I managed a small, choked sound, a strangled noise from the back of my throat.
The flash of cameras began to strobe around me. The reporters, smelling a scandal far juicier than a simple broken engagement, descended like sharks.
"Who is that man?" I heard someone whisper loudly. "Has Kaitlyn been cheating all along?"
Kacy’s lips curved into a faint, satisfied smile as she heard the venomous speculation. The words were like tiny needles against my skin, but my grip on the phone tightened.
As if he could see it all, as if he were standing right beside me, Everett’s voice remained impossibly calm. "Don't listen. Don't look. Don't think."
His words were a shield, deflecting the poison. I closed my eyes, and the dizzying panic was replaced by a profound, grounding sense of security.
I finally found my voice, a weak but clear thread of sound. "Okay."
Edwin was struggling against Bettie and two hotel security guards who had materialized, his roars of fury just meaningless background noise. I didn't even look at him.
I could feel the entire room turning against me, but with this phone pressed to my ear, I had the strength to stand against it. I had an ally.
Then, Everett spoke one last time, his tone shifting. The calm was still there, but underneath it was an unshakeable, protective authority that left no room for argument.
"I see you. Don't move. I'm coming over."
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9.5
The disgraced daughter of the Patton family is back from the countryside.At the news, everyone spurned her with contempt!
A good-for-nothing young lady, a crude village wench, a vicious devil...
Until one day--The world-famous life-saving medical sovereign is her.The enigmatic top forensic specialist is her.The grandmaster hacker hunted across the globe is also her.
One hidden identity of the young miss came to light after another.Shocked and dumbfounded, the crowd fell to their knees to beg for forgiveness.
In an instant, Evie was cornered by the mysterious powerhouse.Hartwell's voice lured and mesmerized:"Darling, you have countless secret identities. Would you mind taking on one more, being my wife!"
7.9
I woke up in a sterile hospital room, my head split open from a horrific car crash.
But the pain in my skull was nothing compared to the memory burned into my retinas just before the impact: my billionaire husband, Dawson, walking into a luxury hotel with a woman who looked exactly like his dead first love.
When Dawson finally arrived at the ward, there was no panic or relief in his eyes. He just coldly looked at my bloody bandages.
"Your reckless driving just forced me to postpone the quarterly board meeting."
Even our seven-year-old son, who I almost died giving birth to, didn't spare me a single glance. He kicked my hospital bed in annoyance.
"The Wi-Fi here is garbage. You're a bad mom! Dad said Aunt Angelita should be the one living with us!"
My blood turned to ice. For five years, I had bent over backward, wearing the hideous pale dresses he picked, starving myself to maintain a fragile figure, all to be a perfect, obedient substitute for a ghost.
And this was what I got. An unfaithful husband who would rather bury me in debt than grant me a divorce, and a son who wished I was dead.
The weak, subservient Charlene died on that wet asphalt.
When the doctor pointed to Dawson and asked for his name, I looked at my husband with a hollow, defensive stare.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
Using retrograde amnesia as my shield, I was going to tear their perfect world apart.
9.3
He was supposed to be my brother. The cold CEO everyone feared. The man who controlled the entire country's business world.
But one night, he looked at me and calmly destroyed everything I thought I knew.
"We're getting married."
I laughed, but he didn't.
Now every door in my life is closing, every choice is disappearing, and the one man I'm not supposed to love refuses to let me go.
Because to Lucien Hale, this was never forbidden. It was inevitable.
And the most terrifying part? The closer I get to him, the harder it becomes to run.
7.5
I was tied to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, the heavy stench of gasoline suffocating me.
Ten steps away, a masked kidnapper slammed a loaded Glock onto a metal barrel and forced my husband, Alvie, to make a sick choice.
"The wife or the mistress. You only get to walk out of here with one."
Alvie didn't even blink.
He walked straight toward the dark corner where his mistress, Gail, was crying. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, shielding her, and guided her toward the exit.
He never looked back. He didn't cast a single glance over his shoulder. To him, I was already a corpse, just trash left on the pavement.
The kidnapper laughed and tossed a lighter onto the soaked concrete floor.
A wall of ghostly blue fire erupted instantly, swallowing me whole. The absolute agony of my skin blistering and melting shattered my sanity.
In my last moments, consumed by the inferno, I couldn't understand how the man I had loved and served so submissively could leave me to burn alive. My heartbreak quickly morphed into a hatred far deeper than the flames.
Then, I violently jerked awake.
I shot up from the bed, gasping for cold air, my hands frantically checking my perfectly smooth, unburned skin.
I looked at the desk clock. I had returned to exactly four years ago, the morning of the annual Gallagher family gathering.
The fragile, naive wife died in that warehouse. This time, I am going to destroy them both.
7.1
For six years, I played the pathetic, wolfless Omega to honor the dying wish of the late Alpha who protected me.
But on our sixth anniversary, my fated mate, Alpha Kian, was photographed looking tenderly at his mistress.
When he finally stormed into our penthouse, he didn't apologize. Instead, he threw a fifty-million-dollar check onto the bed.
"Take the money and accept my rejection obediently, or I'll show you what happens when you defy an Alpha."
To force my compliance, he terminated all trade agreements with my best friend's pack, pushing them to the brink of bankruptcy. He accused me of blackmailing his grandfather into our marriage, entirely blind to the fact that his beloved mistress was actually a banished, feral Rogue.
I had spent six years swallowing my pride, drinking toxic herbs to suppress my true White Wolf scent, and enduring his absolute disgust just to keep his pack safe.
Why did I bleed for a man who despised my very existence?
I looked at the blood money, and the suffocating sorrow in my chest was instantly replaced by white-hot fury.
I didn't take a single cent. Instead, I submitted the rejection papers myself, dropped my pathetic disguise, and walked out into the freezing rain.
A towering warrior with a black umbrella dropped to one knee before me in the mud.
It was time to stop hiding and return home as the billionaire heir of the legendary Silvermoon Pack.
9.2
I was a broke freelance copywriter, tortured for three sleepless nights by an impossible corporate client.
Needing to vent, I typed out a wild, highly inappropriate rant mocking the brand's stiff heritage.
But in my exhausted, sleep-deprived blur, I accidentally sent the massive block of text to the wrong chat.
The recipient wasn't my friend. It was Emerson Beard, the elite, ruthless brand consultant I was supposed to desperately network with.
I waited for the professional execution, terrified of the massive five-figure penalty fee hanging over my head.
Instead, he didn't block me. He critiqued my unhinged draft.
He saved my career through late-night, encrypted phone calls, his deep, commanding voice becoming my only lifeline.
But when I heard a woman with a sultry French accent knocking on his hotel door during our call, my ugly jealousy flared.
I yelled at him and hung up, completely humiliating myself.
I thought I was just a pathetic, annoying workaholic interrupting his romantic getaway.
But he texted back to clarify he was entirely single, and in the process, realized I was actually twenty-five, not a fresh-out-of-school teenager like he had assumed.
The cold, distant mentor instantly vanished.
In his place was a man radiating a raw, aggressive, and predatory energy that bled right through the screen.
"Texting is too inefficient. The full integration requires face-to-face communication."
He dropped a location pin for an ultra-exclusive Manhattan club, demanding I meet him to save my contract.
Wearing a desperately bought emerald silk dress, I pushed open the heavy oak door, stepping right into the trap of a man who had just taken off his leash.