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 4
Nora POV:
The office wasn't much. Three rooms on the fourth floor of a converted warehouse in Dumbo. Exposed brick. Uneven floors. A window facing the Manhattan Bridge instead of the skyline—which meant the rent was half what it would've been two blocks over.
I loved it.
"This is depressing," Amira announced, setting a box of office supplies on the only desk. "We have a view of a bridge. Not the pretty one. The one with subway cars."
"The Brooklyn Bridge is overrated."
"The Brooklyn Bridge is iconic. This is the Manhattan Bridge. It has trains. We're going to hear trains all day."
"White noise." I ran my hand over the exposed brick. "Good for concentration."
Amira stared at me. "You're insane. I've partnered with an insane person."
But she was smiling.
We spent the morning setting up. Two desks—one for me, one for her. A whiteboard covering most of one wall. Filing cabinets salvaged from her old firm's renovation. A coffee maker that cost more than my first car and was, according to Amira, "non-negotiable."
By noon, it looked like a real office. Small. Scrappy. Ours.
Amira hung the framed business license—KIDD FORENSIC CONSULTING, LLC—and stepped back.
"Looks official."
"It is official."
My phone buzzed. I glanced at the screen.
Brittney Sterling.
She'd texted three times since yesterday. Each message more insistent than the last. I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking for fifteen minutes. You'll want to hear what I have to say.
I still hadn't responded.
"You going to answer that?" Amira asked, not looking up from her laptop.
"I don't know yet."
"She's the one Ernestina was grooming to replace you. The trust lawyer."
"I know who she is."
"And she wants to meet. About Ernestina."
"I know, Amira."
Amira finally looked at me. "What are you afraid of?"
The question hung in the air. What was I afraid of? That Brittney was a spy sent by Ernestina? That she was trying to get close to me to gather information? That she was exactly what she appeared to be—a woman who'd realized she was being used as a pawn, just like I had been?
"I'm not afraid," I said. "I'm cautious. There's a difference."
"Cautious is smart. Paralyzed is not."
I looked out the window. The Manhattan Bridge glittered in the afternoon sun. A train rumbled across, shaking the floor.
"Fine." I picked up my phone.
"Tomorrow. 10 a.m. My office. Come alone."
Three dots appeared immediately.
"I'll be there."
Brittney Sterling arrived at exactly ten o'clock.
She was taller than I remembered from the photos. Blonde hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. Navy suit, cream blouse, pearls at her ears. She looked like she'd stepped out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement—the kind of woman Ernestina Farmer would handpick to be her son's wife.
But her eyes were different. Not calculating. Wary. Like she was walking into a room she wasn't sure she'd walk out of.
"Ms. Kidd."
"Ms. Sterling."
She sat across from me. Crossed her legs. Placed her bag on the floor with deliberate care.
"Thank you for meeting me."
"You said you had information about Ernestina."
"I do." She paused. "I also have a proposal."
I waited.
"I've been working with Ernestina for six months. Restructuring the family trust. She hired my firm because I specialize in asset protection and valuation methodologies." She paused again. "I thought I was doing legitimate work. Tax optimization. Estate planning. The usual."
"And then?"
"And then I found the discrepancies." She pulled a folder from her bag. Slid it across the desk. "Valuation discounts that don't align with the underlying assets. Offshore accounts that aren't properly disclosed. And a series of transactions between the trust and Farmer Capital that look a lot like self-dealing."
I opened the folder. Scanned the first page.
It was worse than I'd thought.
"You're a trust lawyer," I said. "Why bring this to me instead of handling it internally?"
Brittney's composure flickered. Just for a moment.
"Because I asked Ernestina about the discrepancies three weeks ago. She smiled. Told me not to worry. Said she'd have her 'people' look into it." Her jaw tightened. "The next day, my firm received an anonymous complaint about my work. A complaint that could jeopardize my partnership track. Filed by someone with enough detail to know things only Ernestina would know."
"She's setting you up."
"She's protecting herself. The same way she protected Colton for years. The same way she tried to erase you." Brittney leaned forward. "I'm not here to be Colton's wife, Ms. Kidd. I'm not here to be Ernestina's pawn. I'm here because I've spent six months untangling a web of financial manipulation that makes your compliance files look like a parking ticket. And I need someone who understands the numbers the way I understand the law."
I looked at her—really looked. The perfect posture. The expensive suit. The pearls that probably cost more than my monthly rent.
And underneath all of it, the same exhaustion I recognized. The exhaustion of being used.
"What's your proposal?"
"We combine what we know. Your compliance records. My trust documentation. Together, we have enough to trigger not just an SEC review—but an IRS audit, a trustee investigation, and possibly a criminal referral." She paused. "I don't want to destroy Ernestina Farmer. I want to make sure she can never do to anyone else what she did to you. And what she tried to do to me."
I closed the folder. Thought about the file I'd left on Colton's desk. The one that had been sitting there for three days now, waiting for him to find it.
"I have something you haven't seen yet. A file that ties the trust's valuation directly to the compliance record I maintained at Farmer Capital. If Ernestina claims the trust is worth what she says it is, she's relying on the firm's clean record. A record I created."
Brittney's eyes widened. "You have proof?"
"I have everything. Time-stamped. Documented. Cross-referenced."
She exhaled. For the first time since she'd walked in, her shoulders dropped. Just slightly.
"Then we have leverage. Real leverage."
"We do."
"What do you want to do with it?"
I looked out the window. The Manhattan Bridge. The trains. The city that had no idea what was happening in this small office.
"I want Ernestina to know what it feels like to be afraid. Not of losing money—of losing control. Of being exposed. Of having everything she's built turn out to be hollow."
Brittney was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded.
"I can help with that."
She stood. Smoothed her skirt. Paused at the door.
"One more thing."
"What?"
"Colton doesn't know about any of this. Not the trust irregularities. Not my meeting with you. Not what his mother tried to do to me." She looked at me. "I thought you should know. He's not part of this. Whatever he did to you—he's not his mother. I've worked with enough family dynasties to know the difference."
She walked out.
I sat alone in my office, the folder still open on my desk, and thought about what she'd said.
Colton wasn't his mother.
Maybe. Maybe not.
But it didn't matter. This wasn't about him anymore.
This was about me. And Iris. And the life I was building that had nothing to do with the Farmer family.
My phone buzzed. Amira.
"Fernando Hooper's office called. They want to meet. Tuesday. His entire executive team."
I looked at the folder. At the trust documents. At the compliance files.
"Tell them I'll be there."
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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."