Chapter 1

My fiancé of twenty years left me at the altar for another woman, a manipulative liar faking a terminal illness.

To grant her "dying wish," he not only demanded a divorce but personally injected me with a drug to ensure I could never have children.

On the day he tried to marry her, I entered a proxy marriage with a comatose billionaire to escape-and my new husband woke up.

Chapter 1

Estella Holloway POV:

The first time I saw my fiancé on our wedding day wasn't at the altar. It was on the hospital television, his arm wrapped around another woman.

A dull ache throbbed at the back of my head, a counterpoint to the sterile beeping of the heart monitor beside me. The last thing I remembered was the pristine white of my Vera Wang gown pooling on the floor of the bridal suite, the scent of lilies and impending joy thick in the air.

Then, Jasper' s phone had buzzed.

I remembered the tight line of his jaw as he looked at the screen, the name 'Kimberley' flashing in stark, angry letters. He was the CEO of our tech company, a man used to putting out fires, but this was different. This was a five-alarm blaze in his soul.

"I have to go," he' d said, his voice clipped.

"Jasper, no," I' d pleaded, a cold dread seeping into my bones. We' d been here before. This same emergency, this same woman, had postponed our wedding twice already. "Not today. Please."

Kimberley Riley. His trauma specialist. The woman he' d hired to help him cope with the PTSD from a business failure years ago-a failure I had pulled him out of, piece by painful piece. She was a master manipulator, a cuckoo in our nest, and she had diagnosed herself with a rare, stress-induced disorder that only Jasper, apparently, could soothe.

"Her condition is acting up, Estella," he' d said, his eyes avoiding mine. "It' s my fault. The stress of the wedding..."

"It' s not your fault," I' d insisted, grabbing his arm. My meticulously manicured nails dug into the fine fabric of his tuxedo. "She' s doing this on purpose. Can' t you see that?"

He saw only what she wanted him to see: a fragile victim he was duty-bound to save. He saw me as an obstacle.

"Don' t be so selfish," he' d snapped, his words a slap in the face. The charisma he showed the world had vanished, leaving only cold, hard resentment.

Tears welled in my eyes. "Just... give me ten minutes," I begged, my voice cracking. "Just ten minutes. Let' s say our vows. Let me be your wife. Then you can go. I won' t stop you."

It was the most pathetic plea I had ever made, a final, desperate grasp at the future we had spent a decade building.

He looked at me, not with love, but with impatience. Annoyance. He pried my fingers from his arm, one by one.

When he shoved me away, it wasn't with malice, but with the careless force of a man swatting away a fly. I stumbled backward, the heel of my Jimmy Choo catching on the edge of the plush rug. The world tilted, a dizzying spiral of white silk and shattering hope. My head connected with the sharp corner of the marble fireplace with a sickening crack.

Then, darkness.

Now, the television screen in my private hospital room was my window to the world. A news anchor was breathlessly reporting from the scene of a dramatic rooftop standoff.

"Tech CEO Jasper Sullivan hailed as a hero," the chyron read, "after successfully talking down a distraught woman from the edge of a skyscraper."

The camera zoomed in. There was Jasper, his tuxedo jacket now wrapped around the frail shoulders of Kimberley Riley. She was nestled against his chest, her face buried in his neck, her sobs wracking her tiny frame. He stroked her hair, his expression a mask of profound relief and tenderness.

He was her savior.

And I? I was the woman he' d left bleeding on the floor.

A memory, sharp and cruel, pierced through the fog of my concussion. Jasper, on one knee in the middle of Central Park, the diamond on my finger catching the afternoon sun. "Estella Holloway," he' d sworn, his voice thick with emotion, "I will never let anything or anyone hurt you. I will spend the rest of my life protecting you."

That promise was a bitter acid in my throat.

I remembered him at seventeen, a lanky boy with more ambition than sense, standing up to the bullies who tormented me for my braces and thick glasses. "She' s with me," he' d declared, and from that day on, she was.

I remembered him giving up a scholarship to Stanford to stay in New York with me, because my mother was sick and I couldn' t leave. "You' re my dream, Stel," he' d whispered, "not some campus in California."

When I had pneumonia so bad I couldn' t breathe, he' d stayed by my hospital bed for a week straight, reading to me, holding my hand, his touch a constant, warm anchor in a sea of pain.

Years later, during the catastrophic server crash that nearly bankrupted our first start-up, a falling rack of equipment had pinned me against a wall. He' d thrown himself over me, shielding me with his own body as metal and sparks rained down. He' d walked away with a gash on his back that required thirty stitches. I' d escaped with only a deep, permanent scar on the back of my right hand-a hand he used to kiss, calling it a testament to our survival.

For three years, I had been his rock after that failure sent him spiraling into depression. I held him through night terrors, managed our finances, and single-handedly kept our new company afloat while he healed. I was the architect of our success, both in business and in life.

The day our company, 'Aether,' went public, making us both billionaires, he had taken me to the rooftop of our new headquarters. "We did it, Stel," he' d said, his eyes shining with unshed tears. "I swear to you, from this day forward, nothing will ever come before you again. Our wedding will be the talk of the city. I' ll give you the world."

He had planned it all. The lilies, my favorite. The string quartet playing our song. The vows he' d written himself, which he' d read to me a hundred times, each time ending with, "My life began with you, Estella. It will end with you."

On the screen, Jasper gently tilted Kimberley' s face up to his. He wiped away her tears with his thumb, his gaze so full of adoration it made my stomach churn.

The reporter' s voiceover continued, "Sources say Ms. Riley, a life coach who has been helping Mr. Sullivan through personal struggles, suffers from a severe form of abandonment anxiety, triggered by high-stress situations. Her love for Mr. Sullivan is said to be so intense, it has caused this psychosomatic illness, leading to multiple suicide attempts in the past."

A choked gasp escaped my lips. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vise, each beat a spike of agony. I couldn' t breathe.

The door to my room swung open.

Jasper stood there, his hair disheveled, his tie loosened. He looked exhausted, but the relief on his face was palpable. He avoided my gaze, his eyes darting around the sterile room.

"Stel," he began, his voice raspy. "I' m sorry you got hurt."

The apology was an afterthought, a box to be checked.

"Kimberley," he said, finally forcing himself to look at me, and his expression was grim, laced with a terrible, misplaced guilt. "The doctors... they' ve given her a month. At most. The stress... it' s caused a total system collapse. There' s nothing they can do."

My mind reeled. A terminal illness? How convenient.

"Her last wish," he continued, his voice dropping to a near whisper, "is to be my wife."

The world tilted again, this time without any physical impact. The words hung in the air, grotesque and obscene.

"I need you to grant me a temporary divorce, Estella."

I stared at him, the man I had loved for twenty years, the man for whom I had sacrificed everything. The beeping of the heart monitor sped up, a frantic, panicked rhythm in the suffocating silence.

Was this fair? After everything? I remembered all the times Kimberley had made sly, possessive comments in front of me. "Jasper just can' t sleep unless I' m on the phone with him," she' d purr, her eyes glittering with malice. I' d told myself I was being paranoid. I' d believed Jasper when he' d sworn, "She' s a patient, Estella. I could never feel that way about her. It' s you. It' s always been you."

"After... after she' s gone," Jasper stammered, seeing the utter devastation on my face, "we' ll get married again. I swear. Nothing will change. My heart is still yours, Stel. It' s just... for a month. To give a dying woman some peace."

The words were meant to be reassuring, but they were hollow, meaningless echoes in the cavern of my shattered heart.

I felt nothing. The pain was so immense it had become a void, a black hole that had swallowed all emotion.

"Okay," I heard myself say, my voice a dead, flat monotone.

Jasper looked stunned. He' d expected a fight, tears, accusations. He hadn' t expected this... this utter capitulation. He didn' t understand that he had already destroyed the part of me that was capable of fighting for him.

He fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded document. A divorce agreement. Already drafted. Already prepared.

"I' ll... I' ll go tell her," he said, his relief making him seem small and selfish. "She' s been so worried."

He practically fled the room, leaving the papers on the bedside table, a final testament to his betrayal.

The moment the door clicked shut, my own phone buzzed. It was my father. I let it ring, but it immediately started again. I finally answered, my hand trembling.

"Estella!" His voice was a whip crack of fury. "What is this nonsense I' m hearing? You let that man publicly humiliate our family? I told you your only job was to secure him! You need to get pregnant, immediately! A child will solidify your position!"

To my father, I was not a daughter; I was a strategic asset. A tool for merging the Holloway family' s old money with Jasper' s new tech empire.

A strange calm washed over me. The fight I didn't have in me for Jasper suddenly materialized for this man who had never seen me as anything more than a pawn.

"It' s over, Dad," I said, my voice eerily steady. "We' re getting a divorce."

"You what?!" he roared. "You foolish girl, do you have any idea what you' re throwing away-"

I cut him off.

"In fact," I said, a wild, reckless idea taking root in the barren wasteland of my heart, "I' m getting married again. To Judd Noel."

I hung up, the silence of the hospital room swallowing his rage. And in that silence, I made a new vow. Not to a man I loved, but to a name that represented my only escape.

---