“Sign the divorce papers now! I’m sick of looking at your bloated, milk-stained body! I need a young trophy wife worthy of my CEO status, not a pathetic housewife like you!” My husband threw divorce papers in my face while I was still bleeding from an emergency C-section. He brought his mistress secretary to mock me. He didn’t know his CEO title was just a puppet role I created, and I was the real Chairman who owned everything.

I looked destroyed—hair stuck to my face with sweat, skin pale and swollen from fluids. I didn’t look like the woman behind the throne anymore. I looked like what I was: a mother, bleeding, exhausted, painfully human.

I shut my eyes and waited for footsteps.

Waited for the man I had shaped—crafted—built to step into the room and hold the family we’d created.

CHAPTER 2: THE ARRIVAL OF THE KING

7:00 A.M.

The door didn’t ease open.

It slammed inward, striking the stopper with a loud thud that made my whole body tense.

Mark stepped in.

He carried the outside with him—winter air, expensive cologne, that sterile electric smell of the city. He looked dressed for a boardroom battlefield. A navy Brioni suit cut perfectly to his body. A flawless Windsor knot. Hair slicked back like armor.

He didn’t look like a man who’d just become a father.

He looked like someone showing up to check a task off his list.

And then I saw who followed.

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