The CEO's Runaway Pregnant Architect
For five years, I was the invisible force behind my charismatic architect boyfriend's empire, painstakingly designing the dream home we built together.
But for the eighteenth time, Jayson canceled adding my name to the deed, rushing out on our candlelit dinner for yet another "critical emergency" with his young, attractive mentee, Ciera.
He left me alone at our custom dining table, blindly prioritizing her manufactured crises over our future. Hours later, Ciera posted a photo on Instagram. She was sitting in his executive chair, wearing his unbuttoned dress shirt, with two empty wine glasses on the desk. When I finally confronted him the next morning, he didn't apologize. Instead, he looked at me with arrogant amusement.
"Where are you going to go, Allison? Without me? Without this firm? Don't forget, I made you!"
My love didn't die in a sudden explosion; it bled out drop by drop over eighteen broken promises. I had poured my soul into his success, only to be treated like a disposable asset in my own home. To make the irony even more suffocating, a plastic stick in my bathroom soon revealed two stark red lines. I was pregnant with his child.
I didn't cry, and I certainly didn't use the baby to beg for his love. Instead, I packed a single suitcase, accepted a senior role at his biggest rival firm in London, and left a resignation letter on his desk. This time, I am building an empire of my own.
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Chapter 6
Allison Knapp POV:
Inside the blue velvet box, nestled against the dark lining, was a leather-bound photo album.
A bitter, humorless smile touched my lips. Of all the things I might have imagined—incriminating documents, a hidden stash of cash, something that spoke of a secret life—this felt almost anticlimactic. So sentimental. So unlike the Jayson I now knew.
I picked it up. The leather was soft, expensive. I opened it to the first page. It was a candid shot from five years ago, at the university design competition where we’d first met. We were both caught mid-laugh, leaning over a model of a bridge, young and raw with ambition. It was a picture of two people who saw a kindred spirit in each other’s talent. A painful, ironic starting point.
My thumb flicked through the pages, the images blurring into a silent film of our shared history. Us, bleary-eyed and covered in drafting dust, in our first tiny studio. The celebratory toast after we won our first major contract. The ribbon-cutting ceremony for our firm. An embrace in front of the first building we ever designed, its glass facade reflecting our hopeful faces.
Each photo was a carefully curated memory, and each one now felt like a lie.
My finger stopped on the last page. It was from the company's annual gala last year. Jayson stood behind me, his arms wrapped around my waist, his smile radiating a possessive, triumphant pride for the cameras.
Opposite the photo, scrawled in his familiar, sharp handwriting, were the words: "To my forever partner, Allison." The date was exactly one year ago.
"Forever?" I whispered the word. It tasted like ash.
I remembered that just one month after he wrote that, he’d canceled our anniversary trip for the first time. Ciera had a "family emergency," and he needed to be there for her. It was the beginning of the end, and I had been too blind to see it.
I didn't rip the pages. That felt too dramatic, too much of a release. It would grant this album a power it no longer held. Instead, I closed the cover with a quiet click, walked over to a cardboard box filled with office supplies I was leaving behind, and dropped the album inside. It landed with a dull thud at the bottom, beneath old staplers and dried-up pens. I would have the movers trash this box along with everything else.
I stood up, taking one last look at the space I had poured my soul into. There was no lingering sadness, no final pang of regret. There was only silence.
I pulled out my phone. A message from Jayson, sent late last night, sat unread. "Babe, nailed the project. Wait for me to get back and we'll celebrate."
Celebrate. The word was a slap in the face. Celebrate his success, achieved while he was comforting another woman?
I pressed and held the message bubble until the option appeared. *Delete*. I didn't reply.
My thumb hovered over the "Block" button when the screen lit up with an incoming call. The name "Jessica" flashed across the screen. Jayson's sister. The only person in his family who I considered a true friend.
My expression softened for a fraction of a second before the cool mask slid back into place. I answered.
"Allie? Are you okay? You missed the family dinner last night. Jayson said you were sick, but I've been calling and you didn't pick up." Jessica's voice was laced with genuine concern.
I walked to the front door, pulling my suitcase behind me. "I'm fine, Jess," I said, my voice even. "Just tired. Needed to rest."
It wasn't a lie. I was tired. A deep, soul-crushing exhaustion that had been years in the making.
I slipped on my shoes and pulled the front door open. The cool morning air of the hallway rushed in.
Jessica was silent for a beat, clearly not buying it. "Did Jayson do something stupid again? Does this have to do with Ciera?"
I didn't answer her question. I couldn't. "I have to go out, Jessica. I'll talk to you later."
Before she could press further, I ended the call. I pulled my suitcase over the threshold, and with a final, quiet click, I pulled the door shut on my old life.
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8.0
I sat at a table for two in the center of Le Coucou, clutching a gift box that had cost me two months of savings. It was our three-year anniversary, and I was waiting for Gavin to finally ask the big question.
But when the heavy oak doors opened, Gavin didn't walk toward me with a ring. He walked in with a polished blonde heiress tucked under his arm, her hand resting protectively over a small baby bump.
"This is Tiffany Stone. My fiancée," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. He didn't apologize for being late or for the three years we'd spent together. Instead, he pulled out a checkbook, scribbled a number, and slid a ten-thousand-dollar check across the white tablecloth.
"Consider it severance for your time," he added, as Tiffany mocked my cheap drugstore dress. "Don't contact me again. Tiffany doesn't need the stress." I was the entertainment for the entire restaurant—the pathetic girl dumped for a better model. By the time I walked out into the rain, I had lost my boyfriend, my home, and the funding for my secret medical research project.
I was an orphan with no safety net, facing an eviction notice and a ruined career. I had given Gavin everything, and he had discarded me like a broken tool. The injustice burned in my chest, a hot, sharp rage that replaced my tears.
Desperate and freezing, I ducked into a coffee shop where I met Colton Bentley, a reclusive billionaire in a wheelchair. After I defended him from a cruel date, he offered me a contract: a marriage of convenience and a seven-figure payment to act as his shield. I signed the papers that night, ready to use his wealth to rebuild my life. But as I watched my new husband navigate his penthouse, I noticed his "paralyzed" legs tense with a strength that shouldn't exist.
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.
8.9
Seraphina, a broke single mother of triplets, snuck into a billionaire's charity gala just for the free food, desperate to fund her daughter's urgent heart surgery.
But her genius five-year-old son secretly hacked the gala's raffle system, thrusting them directly under the spotlight. The untouchable billionaire host, Donovan Vance, froze when he saw the star-shaped birthmark on her wrist—the exact same mark from a dark hotel room five years ago.
Cornered, Seraphina was forced into a five-million-dollar marriage contract to appease Donovan's dying father and secure his corporate empire. She swallowed her pride, took the money to save her daughter, and moved into the penthouse. But Donovan's obsessive childhood friend, Gwendolyn, immediately targeted her. She humiliated Seraphina for her poverty and violently grabbed her in the foyer.
"I dare you to get a DNA test. When the world finds out they're not his, he'll throw you into the street himself!"
Gwendolyn's vicious threat made Seraphina's blood run cold. She was suffocating in sheer panic. She didn't even know if Donovan was actually the father. If a test proved he wasn't, she would be destroyed, and her daughter would lose her only lifeline.
But to her absolute horror, Donovan's father overheard the threat and ordered a legally binding paternity test that very day to permanently silence all doubts. With the medical team arriving and nowhere left to run, the terrifying secret Seraphina had buried for five years was about to be dragged into the light.
8.0
Arletta Lee was dragged out of rural Pennsylvania to be a sacrificial bride for the comatose billionaire heir, Josue Mcconnell.
The moment she stepped into the massive estate, she became the prime target of a vicious, greedy family.
Josue's stepmother and half-brother viewed her as cheap trash. They didn't just want her gone; they wanted Josue dead.
Kyler broke into her room at night reeking of bourbon, and later sneaked into the medical wing with a lethal synthetic neurotoxin aimed right at Josue's IV line.
His jealous cousin even tried to permanently disfigure her face with a thermos of boiling water.
"She's just a cheap good-luck charm the old man bought. We can throw her out with the trash whenever we want."
They relentlessly bullied her, thinking she was just a helpless, terrified country girl who would quietly take the blame for their murder plot.
But what the arrogant Mcconnell family didn't know was that her pathetic, trembling demeanor was entirely manufactured.
They thought they had trapped a frightened rabbit in a den of wolves.
In reality, Arletta was a brilliant underground surgeon.
Using ancient neural acupuncture hidden in a simple wooden hairpin, she flawlessly turned their traps against them, locking Kyler away and winning the ruthless patriarch's absolute protection.
As the supposedly brain-dead billionaire finally twitched and locked his fingers in an iron grip around her hand, Arletta smiled coldly.
It was time to wake him up and let him tear this rotten family apart.
9.1
On our fourth wedding anniversary, I prepared a perfect home-cooked dinner for my husband, Carlisle.
But the moment he walked in, he threw a marital settlement agreement right onto the table.
"Sign it. Celine is back. There's no place for you here anymore."
His mother and sister immediately marched in to supervise my packing, calling me a barren gold-digger and trying to smash my late mother's only keepsake.
I signed the papers and walked out into the freezing night, thinking the nightmare was finally over.
But the next day, a heavily edited video of a childhood friend helping me into his car went viral online.
Carlisle's PR team released a public statement branding me a cheating wife, completely destroying my reputation.
He let the world tear me apart, using my ruined name to play the victim and justify bringing his first love home.
I had sacrificed my own dreams and endured his family's endless abuse for four years, only to be discarded like trash and framed for the exact emotional cheating he had been doing all along.
Watching the vile comments flood my screen, my heartbreak hardened into pure, unbreakable ice.
I calmly picked up my phone and dialed my father's number.
"Dad, it's time. I want to come home and take over Mcneil Industries."