He's The Last To Know Her Power
"I want a divorce."
I was eight months pregnant. He didn't know.
For three years, I fixed every SEC filing he signed. Caught every error. Kept his billion-dollar firm clean. He never once asked what I did all day.
When he said those three words over dinner, I didn't cry. I didn't beg. I just smiled and said, "Okay."
Then I went upstairs, unlocked my study—the room he never entered—and pulled out a lease for a Brooklyn apartment. Incorporation papers for my own firm. And a folder full of evidence that could send his company up in flames.
He thought he was divorcing a wife.
He was actually firing the only person keeping him out of federal prison.
Now his partners want to sue me. His mother is panicking. And he's been sitting in a hospital waiting room for seven hours—just for a chance to hold our daughter.
He spent three years not seeing me.
Now? He can't look away.
My name is Nora Kidd. And I'm just getting started.
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Chapter 3
Nora POV:
The phone rang at 7:42 a.m.
I knew who it was before I looked. Ernestina Farmer had three rules: never call after nine, never call before eight, and never call unless she wanted something. 7:42 meant she was rattled.
I let it ring twice more.
"Nora, darling."
Honeyed condescension. I could picture her—sun-drenched conservatory, Earl Grey cooling beside her, silk caftan that cost more than my first apartment.
"Ernestina."
"I heard about the mediation. Gerald called. He said your lawyer mentioned compliance documents."
I waited.
"Nora, I've always been fond of you." Lie. "I want this divorce to be painless for everyone." Lie. "But Gerald seems to think you're implying there are... irregularities in the firm's filings."
"No. I'm stating that I corrected irregularities. For three years. Without compensation or credit."
Silence. Then a small, brittle laugh. "That's quite a claim, dear."
"It's quite a paper trail."
More silence. The clink of porcelain—she'd reached for her teacup. Ernestina always grabbed props when recalibrating.
"Colton built that firm from nothing. Everyone knows that. You were a wife, Nora. A lovely wife, I'm sure. But let's not pretend you were running compliance for a billion-dollar fund."
"I'm not pretending. I have the emails. The document histories. The time-stamped revisions. Every filing I corrected has my digital fingerprint. Every error I caught is documented. And every regulator who reviewed those filings believed Colton Farmer was the genius behind them." I paused. "Including the SEC."
The magic words.
When Ernestina spoke again, the honey was gone. "What do you want?"
"Nothing from you."
"I find that hard to believe."
"Believe what you want. I'm not asking for your money or your approval. I'm asking for what I earned."
"And what do you think you earned?"
I looked out the window. Brooklyn waking up. Bodegas opening. A woman in scrubs walking a golden retriever. Ordinary life. My life now.
"The truth. On the record. That I built what he took credit for. That I fixed what he broke. That I was the invisible hand keeping his firm clean."
She laughed. A real one, sharp and disbelieving. "You think anyone will believe Colton Farmer—Wharton graduate, featured in Barron's—was secretly dependent on his wife to do his job?"
"I think Gerald Rothschild asked for a recess. Not a dismissal. A recess. He knows what I have. And he knows what it means."
The line went quiet.
"Goodbye, Ernestina."
I hung up before she could respond.
My hands were shaking. Three years of swallowing words. Three years of pretending I didn't notice when she "forgot" to include me in family photos.
Three years. And I'd just told her the truth.
The baby kicked. Hard. Right under my ribs.
"I know," I murmured. "But she needed to hear it."
My phone buzzed. Amira.
"Ernestina just called Gerald. He called my office. She wants to settle."
"Already?"
"She's scared, Nora. Not of the divorce—of discovery. Whatever you have on those Wakeman filings, she doesn't want it in a court record."
"Good."
"There's more." Amira's voice shifted. "Gerald let something slip. The family trust—the one Ernestina's been restructuring with Brittney's help—has a valuation review coming up. If there's any public record of compliance issues at Farmer Capital, it triggers a clause. The trustees can freeze distributions."
I closed my eyes.
So that was it. Ernestina wasn't protecting Colton. She was protecting the trust. The sacred Farmer family money.
"She's not afraid of me," I said. "She's afraid of the trustees finding out her son's firm was held together by someone she treated like the help."
"Exactly. Which means you have leverage. Real leverage."
I thought about the file I'd left on Colton's desk. The one he'd find this morning. The one that proved Ernestina's trust restructuring was built on the very compliance record I had created—and that I could dismantle.
"Let her sweat. Let her call Gerald ten more times. She's spent three years making me feel small. She can spend a few days feeling scared."
Amira laughed. "Remind me never to get on your bad side."
After I hung up, I pulled out the bottom drawer of my desk. The locked one.
Inside: the files I'd brought from the brownstone.
FARMER FAMILY TRUST — VALUATION HISTORY
FARMER CAPITAL — COMPLIANCE CORRECTIONS
ERRATA — UNDISCLOSED POSITIONS
I pulled out the trust file. Opened it to the first page.
Three years ago, when Ernestina had casually mentioned the trust at a family dinner—"Of course, Nora, you understand why the assets must stay within the bloodline"—I'd smiled and nodded. Then I'd gone home and started digging.
What I found was a masterclass in Old Money preservation. Shell companies. Offshore accounts. Valuation discounts that stretched tax law. None of it strictly illegal. But all of it dependent on Farmer Capital maintaining its reputation.
If the SEC ever looked too closely. If the trustees ever had reason to question compliance. The whole structure could unravel.
My phone buzzed again. A text from a number I didn't recognize.
"Ms. Kidd. My name is Brittney Sterling. I'd like to meet. Not about Colton. About his mother. I have information you'll want. And I have a proposal."
I stared at the screen.
Brittney Sterling. The woman Ernestina had been grooming to replace me. The trust lawyer. The Yale graduate. The daughter of a federal judge.
What did she want?
And why did she want to meet me?
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9.1
"Someone will hear," I whispered, the words breaking into a tremor.
His family and the entire Castillo group were gathered just down the hall.
Smack.
My gasp tangled in my throat.
"No, they won't." His palm landed again, sharp and claiming. Smack. "Do you want to know why?"
All I could manage was a desperate, breathless sound.
"Because you'll stay quiet." His voice dropped, low and dangerous. "Won't you, Abigail?"
He rubbed the spot where he'd struck, the heat of his touch spreading like fire under my skin. Pins and needles rushed through me, making my breath hitch. I bit down hard on my lip, fighting the sound clawing its way up my throat.
"Good girl." His praise slid over me like sin, a command and a reward all at once.
*****
Abigail swore off love the night she caught her boyfriend tangled up with the neighbor's daughter. Relationships were nothing but heartbreak-until he came along.
One touch from her new employer's grandson, Christian Castillo, awakens a hunger she thought she'd buried forever. She knows it's forbidden. She knows it can't last. But desire has a way of burning through reason, and with Christian, surrender feels inevitable.
Then her world shatters. Her employer is murdered, and the blame lands squarely on her shoulders. With prison looming and her only lifeline being a man who refuses to forgive her, Abigail is trapped between ruin and a marriage she never chose.
But she won't go down quietly. Someone is pulling the strings, and she's determined to expose the truth-even if it costs her freedom, her heart, and the man she can't stop craving.
A story of love, betrayal, and the courage to fight for forgiveness-and for the truth.
*****
A steamy, suspenseful billionaire romance about love, betrayal, and redemption.
8.3
For three years, my billionaire husband Bronson treated me like a fragile glass doll. The media said he worshipped me, but his love felt more like a suffocating collar as we struggled with infertility.
The day I finally got a positive pregnancy test, I wanted to surprise him. Instead, I opened his hidden safe and found a commercial surrogacy contract.
He had secretly bought another woman to carry his child, and she was already seven weeks pregnant.
When I confronted him and threw my wedding ring on his desk, his perfect husband mask shattered. He claimed he did it to "protect" my weak body. When I demanded a divorce and walked out, he systematically cut off my air supply. He froze my credit cards, drained my personal trust fund, and blacklisted me across the entire entertainment industry.
"She'll last forty-eight hours before she's crying on her knees."
Standing penniless in the freezing rain, I pressed a hand to my flat stomach. If he found out about the baby inside me, he would use it as an unbreakable chain to lock me in his cage forever. I couldn't let him win.
With nowhere left to run, I called an old co-star who had mysteriously vanished from Hollywood years ago.
Gardner Whitfield wasn't an actor anymore; he was a ruthless corporate predator. He slid a contract across his desk, offering to forge me steel wings to tear Bronson apart.
"Sign this, and you become my exclusive property for five years."
Without hesitating, I picked up the pen.
7.6
Due to my family's expectations and obligations, I married Colton in place of my half-sister, Shirley.
Eight years later, Shirley, who avoided an arranged marriage, returned to the country, and my husband Colton asked for a divorce.
Coincidentally, as my mother was critically ill, I rushed to the hospital, only to unexpectedly collide with my secret admirer.
Upon learning about my divorce, he began courting me with genuine determination.
After the divorce, I restarted my career and worked diligently to achieve my career goals with newfound support. He offered unwavering support and encouragement, helping me steadily progress.
Meanwhile, Colton, who had once insisted on divorcing me, began to regret his decision.
8.3
Imogen Montgomery was the perfect billionaire heiress, deeply in love and ready to marry her fiancé, Clark Ellis.
That all ended the night her cousin Kathleen ripped the sapphire pendant from her neck and pushed her into a pool of toxic chemicals to die.
Two years later, Imogen's eyes snapped open. But she didn't wake up in a hospital. She woke up tied to a stained mattress, trapped in the battered body of Briana, a teenage girl from the slums who had just been sold to a local trafficker.
After violently fighting her way out of a cheap motel, she discovered the horrifying truth. Kathleen had taken over the Montgomery Group. She had locked Imogen's grieving parents away in a psychiatric facility as prisoners.
And worst of all, Kathleen was now flaunting her stolen wealth online, preparing to marry Clark.
A wave of pure, white-hot rage boiled in her blood. Kathleen had murdered her, stolen her family, and was playing the perfect grieving cousin. How was she supposed to fight back? She was just a runaway nobody now. If she tried to expose the truth, Kathleen's security would shoot her dead in the street.
She needed a weapon. She needed a shield. She needed the one man Kathleen feared.
Covered in mud and blood, Briana intercepted Clark's car in the freezing rain. She was going to infiltrate his home as his vulgar, unhinged fake mistress, and she would drag Kathleen straight down to hell.
8.8
My fiancé, Knox, was the man I’d spent ten years building a life with, the one I’d poured my family’s fortune into. But then I found the lockbox. Inside, a photo of him smiling, his arm around a heavily pregnant woman, marked: *To my only wife Deana.*
I’d been looking for a charger in our Boston penthouse closet when I stumbled upon it. The faded Polaroid showed Knox, younger, beaming, with a heavily pregnant stranger. Its timestamp: "Ten years ago"—the exact year I funded his Ivy League PhD.
Flipping the photo, I saw Knox’s familiar handwriting: *To my only wife Deana and our upcoming miracle.* My world crumbled. The man I’d loved had a wife, making me the unwitting mistress. My opulent life was built on his lies.
His text, "Baby, I'm coming home to *our house*," twisted into a cruel joke. My tears froze. A decade of sacrifices, of family alienation—all for a man who used my money and trust—shredded in my mind. The fragile woman in me vanished; my eyes turned cold and clear. I relocked the box, smoothed the rug, and applied crimson lipstick. Practicing a flawless smile, I whispered, "Welcome home, my sweet liar."
7.4
My husband, Rodger Hayes, was a renowned chief negotiator, famous for his integrity and firmness within the circle.
When my son and I were kidnapped, with three hostages at the scene, the kidnappers agreed to release only one.
Among the women and the boy, Rodger should have chosen to save the boy first.
Yet, I heard him saying in Spanish fluently, "Release the woman in white."
His first love, Jolene Chapman, was freed, while my son, Jacob Hayes, died from a gunfire.
Later, Rodger explained the situation flatly. "The kidnappers chose to release Jolene."
I cradled Jacob's ashes and smiled sadly.
Rodger didn't know that I was fluent in Spanish, as I had been a special forces member.
His lies crumbled before me.
My phone vibrated, and I confirmed the encrypted message.
"Falcon returns to base."