His Cold Revenge, A Hidden Love

For three years, I made my husband, Kane Chandler's, life a living hell. The day my family went bankrupt, he became a billionaire and handed me divorce papers.

"My true love has returned," he said coldly. "I have no more use for you."

To save my desperate family, I was forced to accept his cruel offer: become his live-in mistress. I had to serve him and his perfect new girlfriend, Astrid, in the penthouse that was once my home, enduring his cold, calculated revenge every single day.

But then I stumbled upon a devastating secret. His "true love" Astrid was secretly plotting with his brother, Cade-the man I once adored-to destroy him from the inside.

Astrid begged me to steal a file from Kane's safe, claiming it was the only way to save him from blackmail. I agreed, ready to sacrifice myself to set him free. I never imagined this was the final move in a twisted, three-year-long test of love he had designed just for me.

Chapter 1

Callie Fry POV:

I was married to Kane Chandler for three years, and for one thousand and ninety-five days, I made his life a living hell. On the one thousand and ninety-sixth day, he became a billionaire, and handed me divorce papers.

He did it in the lobby of what used to be my father' s company headquarters, a sleek glass tower overlooking Central Park. He didn't even have the decency to take me to his new, sprawling office. He just stood there, flanked by lawyers in suits that probably cost more than my first car, and slid the papers across the marble concierge desk.

"Sign them, Callie," he said, his voice as cold and smooth as the polished stone between us. "My true love has returned. I have no more use for you."

My true love. The words were a punch to the gut, stealing the air from my lungs.

For three years, our marriage had been a transaction, a business deal signed in shame and sealed with mutual resentment. It was never about love. It started at a frat party during our senior year at Columbia. I was the queen of the New York socialite scene, the untouchable heiress of the Fry real estate empire. He was... Kane Chandler. The quiet, overlooked older brother of the man I actually wanted, Cade Chandler.

Cade was the sun-the golden boy, captain of the football team, the one every girl dreamed of. Kane was his shadow, a bookish introvert who spent more time in the library than at parties. But that night, fueled by too many shots of tequila and a fight with Cade, I ended up in the wrong brother' s room.

The next morning, the pictures were everywhere. Me, Callie Fry, stumbling out of Kane Chandler's dorm room, looking disheveled and ruined. My family's reputation, built on generations of pristine public images, was on the verge of collapsing.

My father, a man who valued perception above all else, was furious. "You will marry him," he'd commanded, his voice shaking with rage in his mahogany-paneled office. "You will marry him, and you will silence this scandal."

He summoned Kane and his father to our penthouse. The Chandlers, while wealthy, were new money, hungry for the social validation that came with an alliance with the Frys. My father laid out the terms with brutal clarity. A marriage, yes, but with the strictest prenup his lawyers could draft. Kane would get nothing. He would be a glorified accessory, a trophy husband kept on a tight leash, his only purpose to legitimize my "mistake."

Kane' s father, eager to see his son married into one of New York's most powerful families, didn't even hesitate. Kane, however, was a different story. He just stood there, silent and still, his dark eyes fixed on me. I couldn't read his expression then, and it infuriated me. He was the reason for my ruin, the obstacle between me and Cade, and he looked... indifferent.

So, we were married. A quiet ceremony at City Hall. I wore black.

In my mind, Kane had stolen the life I was supposed to have. The life with Cade. The life of a celebrated princess, not a shamed wife. And so, I decided to make him pay for it, every single day.

I turned him into a joke. I forced him to attend parties where my friends would openly mock his quiet nature and ill-fitting suits. "Look at Callie's little pet," they'd whisper, loud enough for him to hear. I' d just smile, a cold, vicious twist of my lips.

At home, in the sprawling penthouse that was mine, not ours, he was less than a servant. He slept on a cot at the foot of my bed. I treated him like he was invisible.

"Kane, my glass is empty," my father would say at dinner, not even looking at him. Kane would quietly rise and refill it.

"Kane, don't you have any ambition?" my mother would ask with a sigh, picking at her salad. "You can't just live off Callie forever."

He never said a word. He just absorbed the insults, his face a mask of placid endurance.

I remember one night, it was pouring rain. I had forgotten my umbrella, and I was standing under the awning of a designer boutique, fuming. Suddenly, he was there, holding an umbrella over my head. He must have run all the way from the apartment.

"You're pathetic," I hissed, snatching the umbrella from him. "Following me around like a lost dog. Don't you have any self-respect?"

I left him standing in the downpour, his shirt soaked through, his dark hair plastered to his forehead. He just watched me go, his expression unchanging.

His patience was the most infuriating thing about him. It was unnatural. No man could endure that level of humiliation without cracking. But Kane never did. He was always calm, always accommodating, always... there.

He wasn't unattractive. In fact, beneath the cheap glasses and the perpetually hunched shoulders of a man trying to make himself smaller, he was handsome in a severe, intellectual way. High cheekbones, a strong jaw, and eyes so dark they seemed to swallow the light. I knew he' d graduated top of his class in computer science, but my family had made sure he wouldn't get a job that would outshine me or my brother. He was supposed to be nothing.

And he wasn't Cade. Cade was charming, vibrant, alive. Kane was a black hole.

One night, I woke up thirsty. The memory of the party where it all went wrong was burning in my mind, the taste of cheap tequila and bitter regret. I saw his sleeping form on the cot and a wave of pure hatred washed over me.

I kicked the cot. "Get up."

He was awake instantly, no grogginess, just alert and sitting up. "Callie? Are you okay?"

"Get me some water," I snapped.

He didn't hesitate. He returned a moment later with a glass. The water was perfectly temperate, not too cold, just how I liked it. He always remembered things like that.

I looked at the glass, and then at his face. All I could see was the man who had ruined my life. I took the glass and threw the water in his face.

"Get out," I spat.

The water dripped from his chin onto the expensive rug. He didn't even flinch. He just gave me a long, unreadable look, then turned and walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. A flicker of guilt sparked in my chest, but I smothered it with the familiar, comforting burn of resentment. He deserved it. He deserved all of it.

For three years, that was our life. A cycle of my cruelty and his quiet endurance.

Then, everything changed.

The real estate market crashed. My father had overleveraged, made a series of bad bets, and the Fry empire crumbled overnight. We were bankrupt. Humiliated. We lost everything.

It was around that time that I started to see Kane differently. He was still quiet, still patient, but there was a new stillness to him. He started working late, disappearing into the small study he' d claimed as his own. When I asked what he was doing, he' d just say, "Working on a project."

I started to feel a strange sort of comfort in his presence. He was the one constant in my world of chaos. For the first time, I found myself watching him, really watching him. I started to think that maybe, just maybe, we could start over. That I could be a real wife to him.

Today was our third wedding anniversary. I' d spent my last few dollars on a gift for him-a first-edition copy of a book on coding I knew he wanted. I was going to apologize. I was going to tell him I was ready to try.

And then he' d shown up in my father' s old lobby, a stranger in a perfectly tailored suit, flanked by wolves. A tech startup he'd secretly built in our study had just been bought by a major corporation. He was a billionaire.

"Sign it, Callie."

His voice brought me back to the present. The cold, hard reality of the lobby.

I stared at the papers. Divorce. His "true love" was back. It was all a lie. His patience hadn' t been love. It had been a long, slow-burning revenge.

My hand trembled as I took the pen. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing me break. I signed my name with a flourish, the ink a black slash across the page, severing the last three years of my life.

"Done," I said, my voice brittle. "Now get out of my sight."

He actually smiled, a thin, humorless curve of his lips. "I'll have my driver take you home."

"Home?" I laughed, a harsh, broken sound. "I don't have a home, remember? The bank took the penthouse."

His smile widened. The look in his eyes was chilling. "Oh, I know. I bought it. All your things are still there. I thought it would be a fitting place for you to pack them up."

My God. He hadn't just won. He had set the board, played both sides, and checkmated me from a position of weakness I never even knew he had. Every humiliation I had ever dealt him, he was now returning a thousandfold. And he was doing it with the same quiet, devastating efficiency he did everything else.

I couldn't even be angry. He had done it all himself. While my family was squandering a legacy, he was building an empire from a laptop in a tiny study. He owed us nothing. He owed me nothing.

His quiet courtesy now felt like the cruelest mockery of all. The story I had been expecting-the triumphant rage, the vicious gloating-never came. He was just as calm and composed as he had been for the last three years.

"I don't need your charity," I choked out, pushing past his lawyers and stumbling out of the building into the sudden, cold rain.

"Callie," he called after me, his voice still infuriatingly gentle.

I didn't turn around. I couldn't.

The rain plastered my hair to my face, soaking my thin dress. In my hand, I was still clutching the small, gift-wrapped box. Our anniversary. What a joke.

I was Callie Fry. And I had just lost everything to the man I thought was nothing. I stood there on the pavement as the sky wept, letting the cold seep into my bones, because it was nothing compared to the ice in my heart.