The CEO's Ex-wife Has Multiple Identities
Anna Hendrick experienced the devastating loss of a pregnancy.
Her decade-long devotion to Ethan Smith led her to abandon her university studies in her second year to become his wife. For three years, she dedicated herself to their marriage, working tirelessly. Only the discovery of a clandestine document revealed the painful truth: she was simply a pawn in Ethan's elaborate game with his first love, his cherished Becca Drew.
In the sterile confines of a hospital room, after hearing of Ethan's romantic getaway with Becca, Anna initiated divorce proceedings.
The formerly underestimated housewife underwent a dramatic metamorphosis.
She blossomed into a sought-after designer for a prestigious jewelry house; the exclusive tutor of a globally renowned pianist; a formidable racing champion; the esteemed daughter of the Minister of Foreign Affairs; and the powerful CEO of a publicly traded company valued at billions...
As Anna's admirers multiplied, Ethan began to pursue her with persistent and unwanted attention.
Exasperated and seeking respite, Anna simply disappeared from his reach.
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Chapter 3
The sterile white walls of the hospital room became Anna's prison for a month, each night a torment of dreams.
In those fragile illusions, Ethan was a devoted figure, perpetually at her bedside, his face lit with a smile as he listened for the phantom stirrings of their unborn child.
Each awakening was a brutal return to reality, marked by the scalding tracks of tears.
The baby...
...was gone.
And Ethan? He remained conspicuously absent.
His excuse was a business trip, a convenient alibi. Instead, he dispatched Oscar Paul, his assistant, with two deliveries: pink roses, their fragrance a cruel mockery, and payment for her medical expenses.
Anna wrestled with the urge to gift the flowers to the nurses, but the words caught in her throat. She'd rather endure the constant sneezing.
The physical toll of the abortion, at only two months, was minimal. But the instinct to cradle her belly, a newly formed habit, persisted.
The thought of the extinguished life within sparked a familiar ache behind her eyes.
Her first child.
The union of her flesh and blood with the man she had poured a decade of love into.
Vanished...just like that.
Anna's nightly grief stalled her recovery, but the hospital, as hospitals do, needed the bed. The eviction notice was inevitable.
Amidst the sterile emptiness of her packing, a stranger materialized in the doorway.
A woman sculpted with delicate features and framed by meticulous makeup, adorned in a Barbie-pink velvet halter dress and a statement necklace –
A necklace Anna recognized all too well: the limited-edition pink diamond piece from FY, the one Riley Gilbert had so ostentatiously paraded on social media.
"Hello, I'm Becca Drew, Ethan's classmate from high school."
The woman's introduction hung in the air, prompting a bitter reflection on the name: Becca Drew...BD. An undeniable connection.
Seeing Becca extend a manicured hand, Anna forced herself to reciprocate the handshake.
"Hello, I'm Anna, Ethan Smith's wife. You can call me Mrs. Smith."
Becca's practiced smile flickered, betraying a momentary loss of composure.
But her poise was quickly regained, her expression smoothing back into place. "I came to offer my sincere apologies."
Becca lowered her gaze, striking a pose of contrived remorse that seemed almost rehearsed. "I had no idea you were in the hospital because... you were pregnant. If I had known, I would never have let Ethan accompany me to the FY press conference. And then I drank too much that night; it's really all Riley's fault, she insisted on calling Ethan. I certainly didn't expect him to actually come and get me...and that it would lead to...this. It's all my fault..."
Becca, oozing contrition, presented Anna with a fruit basket. "This is a small gesture of apology...please accept it. I'll feel awful if you don't."
Anna couldn't suppress a bitter laugh at the performance unfolding before her. "Why wouldn't I accept a five-hundred-dollar fruit basket? You're hardly offering me *the* necklace as compensation."
Becca's carefully constructed facade showed a hairline crack. She cleared her throat. "I heard you're being discharged today?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps...it would be better if you stayed a little longer. Seeing you will only upset Ethan, reminding him of our...your loss. He's been so distraught this past month, and I've been trying my best to support him. We even took a trip abroad...yachts, fishing, sunrises, sunsets..."
Watching Becca's carefully crafted display of elation, Anna couldn't care less whether the details were true or embellished.
"Yes, my husband is a generous man, devoted to his friends. He's always taken such good care of his high school acquaintances, treating them to yacht trips every week. He even gifted my best friend a ten-million-dollar diamond necklace once!" Anna hated lies, but if a few pointed words could shatter the composure of a mistress, she was more than willing to indulge.
Becca's fists clenched almost imperceptibly. "If you're so understanding, I'm relieved..."
She turned to leave, then paused at the doorway, pivoting back. "Oh, one more thing. Ethan won't be able to pick you up from the hospital. He's utterly exhausted and is catching up on sleep... at my place."
With that final, pointed barb, Becca vanished.
Anna felt a strange detachment, a hollowness devoid of anger, replaced by a profound sense of disillusionment.
She contacted Oscar, confirming that Ethan was, in fact, at the office.
Becca had lied.
Refusing to accept the mistress's warped narrative, Anna resolved to seek the truth from Ethan himself.
Before leaving the hospital, she made a detour to the Traditional Medicine Department, collecting a fresh supply of herbs.
Ethan suffered from a sensitive stomach, and his mother had a deep-seated distrust of tablets. Anna had always personally brewed his remedies, knowing the precise dosages, proportions, and simmering times by heart.
The family's stock was dwindling. If not for the recent tragedy, Anna would have replenished it long ago.
Clutching the heavy bag of the medicine, Anna arrived at the Smith Group headquarters.
The receptionist recognized her from previous meal deliveries to Ethan - a time when she was mistaken for a nanny.
"Miss Anna, President Smith is in a meeting. You can leave the medicine with Assistant Oscar; he's in the assistant's office."
"Okay."
Anna refrained from correcting the receptionist, from clarifying that she wasn't "Miss Anna," but "Mrs. Smith."
Reaching the executive floor, Anna bypassed Oscar's office, heading directly for the general manager's door.
The frosted glass wasn't fully closed. Through the narrow gap, Anna saw Ethan and Riley standing inside.
"Ethan, you claim you can't bear to let go of your wife, yet you had the heart to murder your own child..."
Anna, her hand raised to knock, froze, petrified in place.
"Becca had nothing to do with it..."
"Whether she returns or not, I can never have a child with Anna."
"Why?"
"Human energy is finite. A child would change her. Besides, right now, it's just Grandpa's appreciation and Mom's approval. Once a baby arrives, it won't be so simple." Ethan casually exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke, his calculated smile striking Anna with the force of a physical blow.
"And...I knew she was pregnant. So I deliberately...wasn't careful, damaging her uterus. The doctor says she can't have any more children."
His voice, coolly detached, made the admission with chilling ease.
On the other side of the door, Anna was already slick with cold sweat.
"Ethan, if you've treated that shrew so harshly, who will carry on the Smith family name? It will have to be my best friend!"
Ethan offered no response to Riley's suggestive remark.
Finishing his cigarette and his conversation with Riley, he began to leave the office. He spotted something Riley didn't notice.
A bag of herbs.
Emerald Nursing Home.
Anna had practically fled here, running from Ethan's office, from Ethan's company, unable to endure another moment.
She felt consumed by nausea.
His every word was a vile poison.
This was the man she had loved for a decade.
He'd pursued and married her out of spite, as revenge against another woman.
He'd murdered their child with his own hands, again, for another woman.
Ten years of devotion, three years of marriage-a complete and utter sham.
Anna furiously wiped away her tears and walked into the nursing home.
Since her marriage to Ethan, her mother had been moved here from the hospital.
Her mother, whose health had always been fragile, had succumbed to Alzheimer's during a global pandemic.
Even though she no longer recognized her, there were things she needed to confess.
Her mother's greatest wish was to see her happily married.
So Anna had to tell her mother...
...she was a failure as a daughter.
That evening, Anna left the nursing home and went to a nearby law firm.
As darkness descended, the lights of New York City flickered to life, illuminating the vibrant pulse of the city. When Ethan arrived home, he found
the lights were off. He flipped them on, illuminating the medicine and a bouquet of pink roses in his hands.
In the silent, empty house, there was no hot, fragrant meal.
And no Anna Hendrick.
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7.4
Helena woke up in a sheer silk slip, trapped inside the romance novel she had read the night before.
She was the doomed villainess.
And she had just executed the most pathetic plot in the book: hiding in the closet to seduce her cold, ruthless legal guardian, Hayward.
It was the exact move that got the original Helena thrown out on the street to die.
"Helena, your time is up. Get out."
Hayward's freezing voice came from the other side of the door.
He didn't just reject her. He threatened to strip her of her trust fund and permanently lock her in a psychiatric ward.
Everyone in the massive estate despised her, treating her like trash.
To force her to break, Hayward exiled her to the company's worst design department, a graveyard for corporate failures.
At the same time, her innocent step-sister, the novel's female lead, was being cornered and harassed by a predatory manager.
Helena was suffocating under the original owner's ruined reputation.
She was surrounded by hostile eyes, everyone just waiting for her to throw a tantrum and completely self-destruct.
Why should she be forced to pay the ultimate price for the original villain's deadly mistakes?
Instead of screaming or begging, Helena wrapped herself in an oversized coat and played the perfect, submissive lunatic to survive.
She completely flipped the script and took the terrified female lead under her wing.
When that manager tried to lay a hand on her new sister, Helena didn't hesitate to crush his foot with her stiletto.
7.2
Ade had sacrificed the life she loved, the things she liked doing to please James. But it was never enough for him. Somehow, the one woman he just couldn't get, was the price, she was the gem.
And so once the opportunity presented itself, Ade became a past chapter of his life. A reject.
Betrayed and scorned, Ade is on a quest to reclaim her life back and face off adversaries.
But now what is she to do with the two men in front of her. One of them her ex James who can't seem to forget her and keeps stepping in her way, and the other, a billionaire who wants her at all costs.
8.6
I met him on a rainy afternoon when we were both young, uncertain, and standing on the edge of adulthood.
Adrian Cole wasn't rich then. He wasn't powerful. But from the moment his eyes found mine, something inside me knew my life would never be the same.
We fell in love slowly... then all at once.
He was my first kiss under streetlights, my safest place, my greatest heartbreak.
And the man who walked away.
Years later, Adrian returns - no longer the struggling boy I once knew, but a billionaire CEO with power, dominance, and a dangerous intensity that still makes my heart tremble.
He says I've always belonged to him.
But love isn't that simple.
Not after betrayal.
Not after loss.
Not after the night that shattered us both.
Now he wants a second chance.
And this time... he refuses to let me go.
7.1
My father sold me to a monster to settle a debt. One minute I was a debutante at a gala, and the next, I was being hunted through the service corridors by my own stepmother’s security.
I scrambled into a dark penthouse to hide, only to be pinned against the wall by a man whose body felt like a wall of searing heat. He smelled of rain and expensive cedar, his voice a low, pained growl as he gripped my wrist so hard the bone nearly ground together.
The next morning, the "Wall Street Monster" arrived at our estate to collect his prize. My father signed the contract without reading a single page, trading me for a wire transfer while my sister laughed at my impending doom.
"I heard he uses knives in bed," Kacy whispered, "Hope you have thick skin, sis."
A balding, cruel man claimed to be my husband, but it was the silent bodyguard standing in the shadows who caught my tray when I stumbled. His touch sent a jolt of electricity through my veins, and his voice was the same gravelly baritone from the dark room the night before.
I was terrified, caught in a web of lies about a disfigured beast who supposedly broke women for sport. I didn't understand why this "bodyguard" was looking at me with such predatory intensity, or why he was the only one who stepped in when my father tried to shove me.
Then, inside the car, the bodyguard took off his sunglasses to reveal piercing blue eyes and a face that was devastatingly handsome.
"I am Gideon Blackburn," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous rumble. "And in this house, there is only one rule: Never lie to me."
The monster wasn't who they said he was, and he was about to show my family exactly what happens when you try to destroy something that belongs to him.
8.4
I was the pack's lowest Omega, scrubbing floors by day, but secretly waiting for the night my Fated Mate, the Alpha Heir Desmond, would finally claim me.
Instead, he brought home a billionaire heiress and looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"I choose power," he sneered, rejecting our soul-bond in front of everyone. "An Omega can never be my Luna."
To seal his business deal, he sold me off like cattle to Kennedy Simmons—the "Crippled Alpha" rumored to be a broken, rot-filled monster.
On my last night in the territory, his new fiancée pushed me off a yacht.
As I drowned in the freezing water, I watched Desmond dive in.
He swam right past me to save her.
That was the moment my heart finally stopped beating for him.
They thought sending me to Seattle was a punishment. They thought I would wither away and die in the hands of a beast.
But they didn't know two things.
First, Kennedy Simmons wasn't a monster; he was a King waiting to be healed.
Second, I wasn't a weak Omega. I was a White Wolf, a legend thought to be extinct, capable of miracles.
Three months later, Desmond stood outside my gates, bankrupt and desperate, begging for a second chance.
I looked down from my balcony, wrapped in the arms of my true Alpha, and smiled.
"Get off my property," I commanded, my eyes glowing white. "Or I'll finish what the ocean started."
8.8
"I've been through heartbreak, and I don't desire love. Even if I marry you, I won't give you love." Lisa stared pointedly at him, " Are you okay with this, President Joseph?"
"Then...Let's sign a one-year contract. If after one year we still don't find ourselves compatible, we break it off."
****
The Heiress, Lisa Morgan came back home after an ultimate betrayal from her husband of three years, but her father wouldn't let her into his home unless she agreed to his condition.
"Take over the company and marry Joseph Bronson, or leave and never come back again!"
As a woman who only cares about survival right now, her choice was obvious but she never expected the turbulence that came after.