Seven Years A Fool, One Day A Queen
Everyone knew Kristine loved Colton. Still, his heart clung to a woman overseas-someone he spent most days with, now pregnant with his baby-and Kristine still asked him to marry her.
On their registration day, however, he never came; his "true love" had flown back.
Seven years of loyalty later, Kristine walked away, blocked him, and left his city.
Colton didn't blink-until he saw her at the courthouse, arm-in-arm with another man, and the proud CEO went pale. He went after her, desperation overtaking him.
"I'm sorry. Please give me another chance."
She snapped, "Could you stop? I'm already married."
Chapters
Share
Chapter 3
"Miss Lloyd!" the dealership manager shouted when he saw Elyse collapse to the floor.
Before anyone else could react, Colton was already in motion. He rushed straight to her, lifted her into his arms, and carried her out without hesitation.
A trace of ridicule slowly spread across Kristine's lips.
After Colton drove away, she was left with no option except to find a cab on her own.
Unfortunately, getting a taxi near the dealership proved to be nearly impossible.
Wearing her high heels, Kristine walked for an entire hour before she flagged down a taxi.
Seated inside the car, she looked down at her sore, blistered feet and let out a quiet sigh of relief.
At least the pain stayed in her feet, because her heart remained untouched.
...
Since the incident at the dealership, several days passed without Kristine crossing paths with Colton.
There was no reason for her to reach out or ask about him.
Elyse took it upon herself to deliver every detail anyway.
"At 9:05 this morning, Colton sat with me and spoon-fed my soup. He was so careful."
"By 6:23 this evening, Colton peeled an orange just for me. It looks perfect. Do you want a bite? What a shame you will never get the chance."
Under the message, Elyse attached a photo of the neatly peeled orange.
"At 10:35 tonight, Colton is lying beside me and already asleep."
Beneath that text was a photo showing Colton resting on the bed next to Elyse, his arm supporting his weight as he leaned close.
Kristine skimmed through the messages before dropping her phone back into her bag.
Maybe she had already gone numb, because Elyse's constant updates about Colton now felt no different from watching a ridiculous drama.
After opening the car door, she stepped out and headed straight into K&C Entertainment.
K&C Entertainment had once been built by her and Colton side by side.
At the beginning, her reason for doing so was simple: she wanted something that would bind her closer to him.
She truly thought that creating a company together would make it harder for Colton to walk away from their relationship.
What she never expected was that it would eventually become the chain that trapped her instead.
"You're planning to leave for Peudon?" Vance Bailey, the VP, looked at Kristine with open disbelief. "Does Colton know anything about this?"
Without hesitation, Kristine answered, "I haven't told him yet. I need you to keep this confidential."
"Naturally." Vance nodded, though disbelief still lingered on his face. "Weren't you completely devoted to Colton? Are you really able to walk away from him like this?"
For seven long years, Kristine had stayed by Colton's side. She had handed over the most precious years of her life without holding anything back.
"I'm done with him," Kristine said calmly. "Once I leave, I will hand over the remaining work related to the company's equity division to you. I really hate to bring you trouble like this."
"There is no need to sound so distant," Vance replied, lowering his head as a faint look of satisfaction passed through his eyes. "We graduated from the same school, after all. I was able to join the company because you strongly recommended me."
A quiet sense of appreciation rose in Kristine as she faced Vance.
In truth, while the company was registered under her name, the burden of keeping it alive had fallen squarely on his shoulders.
Without his efforts holding everything together, the business would have fallen apart a long time ago.
After making one final round through the office space, Kristine made the decision to leave.
At the entrance of the building, Vance walked her out himself and stood there until her car disappeared from view, only then turning back upstairs with reluctance.
...
During the drive, Kristine unlocked her phone and marked off the second-to-last note on her list, which was the division of the company's equity.
Soon after, her attention shifted to the final task waiting beneath it, which was moving out of Colton's villa in Crestwood.
Once that step was completed, there would be nothing left tying her to Colton.
The drive continued without a single word spoken.
Inside the car, the air slowly became stifling and tense.
As soon as she arrived at his villa, Kristine went straight up to the second floor.
When Kristine stepped inside, the household staff behaved as though she did not exist, and no one came forward to acknowledge her presence.
Everyone in the house was aware that Colton did not love her.
Since the day she moved in, he had rarely returned home.
Instead of heading to the master bedroom, Kristine went straight to the guest room, because she and Colton had been sleeping in separate rooms.
Inside the closet were rows of clothes from well-known luxury brands. Every single piece had been given to her by Colton.
To Kristine, none of it carried any meaning.
Slowly, she crouched down and dragged her suitcase out from beneath the bed.
Just as she began placing items inside, a sharp car horn sounded from outside downstairs.
"Mr. Yates."
Polite voices floated upward from the front entrance.
Colton had come back.
At once, Kristine shoved the suitcase back to where it had been.
She had no intention of letting him find out that she was preparing to leave.
Once she finished what she was doing, Kristine raised her head and found him standing at the doorway, his tall frame filling the space.
Weariness lingered in his eyes, yet the soft glow of the hallway lights sharpened his features and made him undeniably striking.
For a moment, Kristine forgot to breathe.
"What are you doing?" Colton asked, fixing her with a penetrating look that felt impossible to hide from.
Blocking the suitcase with her body, Kristine answered, "I was trying to find something."
Without pressing further, Colton stepped inside the room.
"The past few days have been a mess," he said. "I spoke with Bobby earlier. I'm free on the nineteenth, so we will get married that day."
Once again, he spoke as though he were delivering a decision rather than opening a discussion.
With a slight tilt of her head, Kristine responded, "The nineteenth happens to be my birthday."
A flicker of surprise crossed his eyes before disappearing.
"I already made plans for that day," she continued.
"You usually do not celebrate your birthday, right?" he said.
He had simply never marked the occasion with her.
That realization stayed unspoken, yet it kept circling in her thoughts.
"Then we can choose a different date." After saying that, Colton adjusted his tie and walked toward the bathroom.
Roughly half an hour passed before he stepped back out, the warmth of the shower still clinging to him.
A towel was wrapped loosely around his waist.
Beads of water traced a slow path from his chest down over his defined abdomen.
Those contours had once stirred something fierce in Kristine, but now they left her unmoved.
From across the room, Colton watched her sit with her head lowered while she scrolled through her phone.
A faint crease appeared between his brows.
There was a time when showing off his physique would make Kristine hurry over, unable to resist touching him.
"We should sleep." With that, Colton reached over and turned off the lights.
Surrounded by darkness, Kristine rose to her feet. "I should get going."
A frown settled on Colton's face as he watched the door swing open and then shut.
Darkness filled the room once more.
For an instant, unease gripped him, yet he forced it down and convinced himself that everything would remain under control.
...
Over the following days, Kristine did not catch even a glimpse of Colton.
From what Vance told her, Colton had likely left town for a business trip.
Not even Vance had managed to get in touch with him during that time.
If this had happened before, the news would have crushed Kristine.
This time, however, it felt like a small mercy.
Because Colton was away, she finally had the opportunity to visit his villa and gather her things in peace.
Very little there actually belonged to her.
What remained were mostly items she had bought for Colton, including matching watches, clothes, a stuffed bear, and other things like that.
To Colton, all of it had seemed immature, so he had shoved everything into the farthest corner of the wardrobe.
One by one, Kristine pulled those items out and placed them carefully into her suitcase.
With the suitcase packed until it could hold no more, she walked out of the villa for the last time.
A member of the household staff noticed her departure but assumed she was leaving for work and did not stop to ask questions.
Before she realized it, the nineteenth had arrived.
By then, Kristine had already settled everything that needed her attention.
All she had left to do was wait for the twentieth and finally leave Gridron behind.
That night, Kristine went by herself to a cake shop in the city. She carried the small cake to a nearby park, chose a quiet corner, and ate it slowly on her own.
The sweetness lingered on her tongue.
This time, there was no need to worry about Colton leaving halfway through.
Leaning back, she lifted her gaze toward the darkened sky, and a faint smile appeared on her lips.
At that moment, a sharp explosion sounded above her as fireworks suddenly bloomed across the sky.
Colors exploded across the sky as fireworks bloomed in dazzling patterns above her.
Kristine remained there for so long that her neck began to ache before the final burst faded into silence.
A sudden vibration broke the stillness.
Reaching into her bag, Kristine pulled out her phone and checked the screen.
A message from Colton appeared. "Did you like the fireworks? Happy birthday."
Tears rushed up without warning, blurring Kristine's vision, because she had never received a birthday wish from Colton before.
She never imagined that the first one would arrive on what was meant to be her very last day in this city.
After opening the message, Kristine had barely finished typing the word "thanks" when a new alert appeared on her screen.
The notification turned out to be a photo sent by Elyse.
With a light tap, Kristine opened it and saw an image of a slice of cake.
"Colton baked this cake for me with his own hands. I heard today is your birthday, so I deliberately asked him to make one just for me. I get to eat birthday cake, and you do not. What a pity for the birthday girl!"
While reading the message, the tears that had filled Kristine's eyes slowly disappeared.
Switching to Colton's chat, she typed out a short reply. "I want you to make a cake for me."
You may also like
9.1
I was the orphaned "parasite" of the Tyler family, taken in only to be abused for fifteen years after my parents died in a tragic car crash.
To finally escape their control, I sold my first time to my ruthless billionaire boss, Ellsworth Mosley, for one million dollars.
I thought it was a clean transaction.
But the next morning, covered in severe bruises he left on me, I was handed a brutal contract with a fifty-million-dollar penalty.
He didn't just buy my silence; he bought me.
My nightmare only worsened when my adoptive family found out about my connection to the billionaire.
Instead of disgust, they invited me to a hypocritical family dinner.
"Talk to Mosley, convince him to invest in our failing business," my adoptive father demanded shamelessly.
His son, who had tormented me for years, even grabbed my hand.
"Do this, and we can be officially engaged. You'll finally be a real Tyler."
They wanted me to whore myself out to save the family that had treated me like a stray dog.
I shattered my wine glass, cursed them to go bankrupt, and walked out into the rain.
As I reached the door, my phone vibrated with a terrifying summons from Ellsworth.
But it was the panicked whisper behind me that froze my blood.
"She knows about the brakes on her parents' car. If anyone finds out what we did, we'll go to prison."
They murdered my parents.
I gripped my phone, accepting the devil's call.
Since I was already bound to a monster, I would use his power to drag them all to hell.
7.0
Eight years ago, Alaina forced herself to say the most vicious, heartless things to break up with her fiercely loyal college boyfriend, protecting him from his billionaire family's wrath.
Now, she is a top maxillofacial surgeon, and Jarred Mcknight has returned as the ruthless CEO of Wall Street's most powerful corporation.
Their worlds collide in the ER, but Jarred isn't alone. He is accompanying his rumored heiress fiancée.
His eyes are pure ice. He treats Alaina with a suffocating, clinical detachment, fiercely protecting the heiress from Alaina's medical examination. The professional slap in the face shatters Alaina's heart all over again.
Later, at an exclusive restaurant, Jarred catches Alaina on a miserable, forced blind date. Still believing she left him for money and status, he publicly mocks her for working herself to the bone just to climb the ladder.
Her sleazy date, humiliated by the billionaire's sheer dominance, turns his bruised ego on Alaina. On the dark street outside, the lawyer aggressively grabs her arm, trying to force himself on her.
Alaina thought Jarred despised her. She thought he had completely moved on, leaving her to drown in the memories of the future they never had.
But why did Jarred suddenly explode from the shadows like a lethal predator, brutally snapping the lawyer's wrist just for touching her?
Pinning her trapped against the cold brick wall, Jarred's dark eyes burn with a terrifying, unhinged possessiveness.
"Is this the kind of garbage you date now?"
The eight years of separation mean nothing. The billionaire hasn't let her go, and this time, there is no escape.
7.2
Azura Briggs was just a broke college student working freezing valet shifts to pay her adoptive mother's crushing medical debt.
Her desperate life shattered the night a bulletproof Maybach violently cornered her in an alley, and a ruthless billionaire kidnapped her by mistake.
After a harrowing escape, Azura was forced to take a humiliating "plus-one" gig at a high-end gala just to survive. But her date turned out to be the billionaire's arrogant nephew, who promptly abandoned her to the wolves. Cornered by a sleazy executive and his psychotic wife, Azura was publicly slapped, her dress torn, and left bleeding on the floor while hundreds of elites watched in disgust.
Just as she prepared to fight to the death, the crowd violently parted. Hunter Mcintosh, the terrifying man who had kidnapped her days ago, dropped to his knees in the broken glass and wrapped his bespoke jacket around her trembling shoulders.
Azura was completely paralyzed. Why was the monster who threatened her life now destroying billionaires just to protect her?
But the illusion of safety didn't last. Trapped in his Maybach hours later, Hunter threw a draconian employment contract at her feet.
"Sign it, and her care is covered. Forever."
He knew exactly how to break her. He was offering to pay off her mother's debt, but only if she signed her life away to become his personal assistant. With no other way out, Azura picked up the heavy pen.
8.3
For three years, I was the perfect, invisible wife to Bart Brown. On our third anniversary, I stood in the kitchen for four hours, preparing his favorite meal with imported truffles, only to receive a cold text command.
"Crysta fainted again. Get to the hospital. Now."
My rare Rh-negative blood was the only thing the Brown family valued. Bart didn't want a wife; he wanted a walking blood bank for his "sick" best friend, Crysta. While I was fainting from chronic anemia, Crysta was smirking in her hospital bed, clutching Bart's hand and mocking my "peasant" lifestyle.
Even his mother treated me like a servant, demanding I vacuum the floors after I'd already offered my veins for the hundredth time. When I finally reached my breaking point and signed the divorce papers, they didn't let me go quietly. They filed a false police report, accusing me of stealing a multi-million dollar diamond necklace just to watch me crawl.
I didn't understand how a family could be so heartless. I had cooked their meals, cleaned their house, and literally bled for them, yet they were determined to ruin my life the moment I stopped being useful. Did they really think I was a nobody with nowhere to go?
Standing outside the hospital with a bruised wrist and nothing to my name, I didn't cry. I simply took off my cheap wedding ring and dialed a secure line I hadn't touched since the day I married him.
"It's me, Dad," I whispered as a fleet of black Maybachs rounded the corner. "The extraction is a go. I'm coming home."
8.3
Zarelle Feymere-heiress to the most powerful werewolf dynasty in the world-made one mistake: she fell for an Alpha who saw her as nothing more than a rare blood bag.
For three years, she endured the humiliation of a loveless mating, her veins tapped like a commodity to sustain the woman Calden Ashmoor truly loved, Thessaly. His fated mate, who rejected him to marry his brother.
When a web of lies and betrayal is uncovered, Zarelle does the unthinkable: she walks away.
Now, stripped of her disguise as a docile omega, the true daughter of the Missatian Pack returns to claim her birthright-and her revenge.
Calden always thought he'd married a nobody.
He never expected his discarded mate to come back as a queen.
8.3
"I don't want your money, Elara. I want the five years you took from me."
Elara's world shatters when her father gambles away her freedom to the most dangerous man in the city. Silas Vane isn't just a ruthless billionaire; he's the Alpha of the Blackwood Pack, and he's been hunting Elara for years.
To Elara, he's a stranger holding a debt she can never pay. To Silas, she is the mate who vanished, leaving him with a scarred heart and a thirst for vengeance. Trapped in his obsidian estate, Elara must navigate a world of shifting shadows and primal instincts. As the line between captor and protector blurs, a dark secret begins to surface: Elara isn't as human as she thinks, and her "debt" was written in blood long before she was born.
Can she escape the Alpha's golden-eyed gaze, or will she finally remember why she ran in the first place?