Revenge Of The Trillionaire Ex Wife

Light spilled thick as honey, catching on cut crystal, on diamond earrings, on the sharp edge of my collarbone. I shifted and the crowd moved with me—glasses tilting in my direction, conversations stuttering mid-word, hands finding excuses to brush my arm. The black silk dress didn't ask for permission. It took what it wanted. "To Catalina." Someone raised a glass. Then another. A ripple of expensive liquor and expensive people, all of them watching me like I might vanish if they blinked. "To the deal that changed the game." I smiled. The kind that gave away absolutely nothing. The government liaison appeared at my elbow, cologne announcing him three seconds before his handshake. He grinned like we'd known each other in college. "You did the impossible. The whole department won't shut up about you." "Talking is nice." I sipped champagne I had zero intention of finishing. "Signatures are better." He laughed too loud, too eager. "Ruthless as always." *Ruthless.* Like I'd bought it on sale at some boutique. Not scraped it together from sleeping on a borrowed couch, eating bread two days past its expiration, signing contracts with shaking hands because the electricity bill was overdue and my kids needed medicine. Across the room, my company logo glowed on a screen the size of a small building. Below it: my name. White. Clean. Permanent. Seven years ago, I didn't own a bed. The memory arrived uninvited—a man in a suit worth more than three months of my rent, dropping a check on my kitchen table like he was tipping a waitress. *Be smart, Catalina. Don't ruin us both.* My chest tightened. "Catalina." My assistant materialized, phone already in hand. "They want photos." "One minute." I took another step forward. My heels clicked sharp against marble—period, exclamation point, end of discussion. Cameras flashed. Someone yelled *Iron Queen* from the back of the room and I couldn't decide if I loved it or wanted to throw my champagne at them. Block by block. Dollar by dollar. Sleepless night by sleepless night. I'd built this empire with my own two hands and a credit score that made bankers physically wince. My phone buzzed once against my thigh. I ignored it. It buzzed again. Insistent, like it knew something I didn't. Unknown number. Something cold touched the base of my spine. I turned away from the cameras and answered. "Ms. Sterling?" Old voice. Tired. The kind of tired that comes from delivering bad news on a professional loop. "Speaking." "Saint Aurelius Hospital. Your father collapsed this afternoon. Heart failure." A pause. The specific pause doctors use when the answer's already written in permanent ink. "He's asking for you. You should come now." The golden room went quiet. Not around me. Inside me. "How much time?" Another pause. Longer this time. "I wouldn't wait." The line died. Music kept playing. Laughter rolled past me like I was furniture, like I was wallpaper, like I wasn't standing there with my entire world cracking down the center. I stood frozen—one breath, two—then turned. "Cancel everything." My assistant blinked. "But the minister is—" "*Everything.*" The word came out sharp enough to cut. "Get the car. Now." I was already walking, the party disappearing behind me like it had never existed at all. --- Twenty minutes later I burst through my apartment door. Leo was on the living room floor, building a tower with the kind of careful precision that made my chest ache. Blocks stacked neat and deliberate. Luna hummed beside him, half-asleep on the carpet, her stuffed rabbit clutched under one arm. "Pack," I said. "We're leaving." Leo's head snapped up. Six years old and already searching his memory for what he'd done wrong. "Did I—" "No." I dropped to my knees, cupped his small face in both hands. "You did nothing wrong. I promise." I threw clothes into bags while they watched with eyes too wide, too worried. At the airport, I carried Luna on my hip while Leo dragged his little suitcase behind him, jaw set, trying so damn hard to be brave. He got that from me. The trying. The flight stretched endless. Nobody slept. I stared at the black window and let the memories come whether I wanted them or not. --- *Rain hammering glass. A different night, a different window.* *Julian Vane standing by the door, anger wrapped in a tailored suit and a face I'd once thought I loved.* *"You think showing up pregnant fixes anything?"* *I'd whispered, "I didn't plan this."* *"Well, I did." His voice had been cold, surgical. "I planned for it not to exist."* *The check hit the table like a gavel.* *Thirty thousand dollars. The price of making a problem disappear.* *"Get rid of it, Catalina. Or get out."* --- Julian Vane. My boss. My lover. My spectacular, devastating mistake. The man who'd made me believe in something that turned out to be nothing but smoke and expensive cologne. He'd been forty-two to my twenty-seven. Powerful. Charismatic. The kind of man who made rooms quieter just by walking into them. For six months, I'd thought I was special. Thought what we had meant something. Then I got pregnant, and discovered exactly how much I'd meant. *Nothing.* Less than nothing. An inconvenience with a simple solution. I dug my thumbnail into my palm until the pain felt clean and the memory faded back where it belonged—locked in a box I only opened when I needed to remember why I'd become the kind of woman who didn't flinch. --- We landed as morning broke gray and cold over the city. The airport smelled like funeral flowers and recycled air. Wrong. All of it wrong. I stopped walking. A man in black approached, expression trained into something soft and professional. "Ms. Sterling. I'm so sorry." I looked past him. Banners. Wreaths. A photograph near the exit, draped in black silk. My father smiled at me from behind glass, frozen in time. Seventy-five years old. Silver hair. Strong jaw. The man who'd taught me contract law before bedtime stories, who'd believed in me when I was nobody. "You said *dying.*" The man nodded slowly. "He passed an hour before you landed. I'm very sorry." Luna's fingers dug into my coat. "Mama?" I bent down, kissed the top of her head. "It's okay, baby." The lie tasted like ash. --- The car ride to the estate took forty minutes. The twins dozed against me in the backseat while I watched the city blur into countryside, then into the long tree-lined drive I'd grown up on. The gates opened like a mouth ready to swallow me whole. People lined the driveway in black—dresses, suits, stares that felt like hands grabbing at my skin. I stepped out of the car like I owned the gravel beneath my feet. Wind caught my coat. Cameras clicked. Whispers spread like wildfire. *That's her. She came back. With children. Whose children? Where's the father?* My stepmother stood at the entrance. Beatrice. Posture like a ballet instructor. Grief worn like an accessory that matched her shoes. Her eyes slid to the twins and turned to ice. "So." She said it like an accusation, like a slap. "You finally showed up." "I was told my father was dying." I kept walking, kept my voice level. "I came." "You *abandoned* him." The words came clipped, sharp as scissors. "Broke his heart. Ran off to play businesswoman. All that stress—no wonder it killed him young." I stopped. Looked at her. Really looked. "He was seventy-five, Beatrice. That's not young. And if you're looking for someone to blame, I'd suggest trying a mirror." Gasps rippled through the gathered crowd like I'd thrown a stone into still water. Her mouth thinned to a blade. "And these?" She gestured at my children like they were stray cats someone had dragged in. "Your little *mistakes*?" Leo pressed closer to my side. Luna hid behind my leg, peeking out with frightened eyes. Something cold and sharp settled in my chest. Something that had kept me alive when the world wanted me dead. "They're my children." My voice dropped low. Quiet. The kind of quiet that makes smart people nervous. "Watch your mouth." More gasps. Louder this time. Beatrice smiled. All edges, no warmth, nothing human. "Still irresponsible, I see." I leaned in close enough to see the powder caked in her pores, close enough to smell her expensive perfume trying to cover something rotten underneath. "Say one more word about my children and I'll make sure you never set foot in this house again." She knew I could do it. Knew I had the lawyers, the money, the sheer spite to follow through. She stepped back. I moved past her into the entrance hall. --- The house smelled like lilies and old money and memories I'd tried to bury. People filled every corner, dressed in expensive grief, holding crystal glasses of wine like shields against actual emotion. I walked through them with my children flanking me like small soldiers. The great room opened before us—all marble and portraits and ghosts. And that's when I saw him. The air shifted first. I felt it before my eyes found him, that old pull, that unwanted gravity I'd spent seven years trying to escape. Julian Vane stood near the coffin at the far end of the room. Tall. Still broad-shouldered. Dark suit, no tie. Hair shorter than I remembered, threaded with gray at the temples. Face harder, like life had finally punched back and left marks. The same man. The exact same man who'd looked at me seven years ago and said, "Get rid of it." Our eyes met across fifty feet of polished floor. Shock flashed across his face. Then hunger. Then something that looked like regret but probably wasn't. All of it seven years too late. I didn't stop walking. Passed him like he was a potted plant, like he was wallpaper, like he was nothing. "Catalina." Kept walking. "Wait." I turned. Slow. Looked him up and down like I was pricing used furniture at a garage sale. "What." Not a question. A period. His jaw worked. "Those kids—" "Are none of your business." "They look—" His eyes flickered between Leo and Luna, doing math, seeing what everyone else would see eventually. "Finish that sentence." My voice went soft. Dangerous. "And I'll embarrass you in front of every person you've ever wanted to impress." Silence crashed down like a wave, drowning the entire room. Everyone stared. He swallowed. I watched his throat work, watched him recalculate, watched him remember who he was dealing with now. Not the twenty-seven-year-old girl who'd cried in his office. Someone else entirely. "You look..." He stopped. Started again. "You look well." I smiled. Slow. Sharp enough to draw blood. "And you look exactly like the man who told me to kill my children." His face drained white. The room collectively held its breath. I glanced at Leo and Luna—beautiful, healthy, *alive*—and felt something fierce and protective surge through my chest. Seven years ago, Julian had looked at my positive pregnancy test like it was a death sentence. His death sentence. His reputation, his carefully constructed life. *"This doesn't have to ruin everything, Catalina. Be reasonable."* *"Reasonable?"* *"You're young. You'll have other chances. But this—us—it was never going to be permanent. You knew that."* I hadn't known that. I'd been stupid enough to believe in other things. Love. Partnership. A future that didn't end with a check and a closed door. Now I looked at Leo's serious gray eyes—Julian's eyes, though he'd never know it—and Luna's dark curls, and I felt nothing but gratitude that I'd been too stubborn, too foolish, too *in love with the idea of them* to do what he'd asked. They were the best thing I'd ever done. The only thing Julian had ever contributed to my life worth keeping. And he'd wanted them erased. I turned back to the coffin, pressed my palm against polished wood, felt the cold seep through my skin. My father's face looked peaceful behind the glass. Peaceful and gone. "I came home, Dad," I whispered. "Just didn't make it in time." Behind me, Julian Vane stood frozen, a ghost haunting someone else's funeral. Seven years ago, he'd been everything. My boss, my lover, my future—or so I'd thought. Today he was just another stranger in an expensive suit, mourning a man he'd barely known, standing in a house where he'd never belonged. And I was done mourning people who were still breathing. I straightened my shoulders, took each of my children by the hand, and walked toward the chapel like I owned every inch of marble between here and there. Because I did. And Julian Vane could choke on it.