Rejected By My Ex, I Married A Hidden Billionaire

Chapter 3 The Marriage License

I woke up the next morning with a pounding headache, the faint smell of rain and whiskey still clinging to my dress. For a split second, I thought the night before had been a drunken dream—until my hand hit the cool, sleek black credit card on my nightstand.

It was real. I’d agreed to marry a billionaire I’d just met, to get revenge on the man who’d broken my heart.

My phone buzzed nonstop on the dresser, Jake’s name flashing across the screen over and over. 47 missed calls, 112 text messages, all of them panicked, desperate, begging me to call him back. I ignored them all, sliding out of bed and heading for the shower.

I’d just finished getting dressed when someone banged on my apartment door, hard. “Lila! Open the door! Please, we need to talk!”

Jake’s voice. I took a deep breath, and pulled the door open. He looked terrible—his hair was a mess, his eyes red and puffy, his shirt wrinkled. He grabbed my hands the second the door was open, his voice shaking. “Lila, baby, I’m so sorry. I made a mistake, a huge mistake. It meant nothing, I swear. Please, take me back. I love you more than anything.”

I pulled my hands away from him, my voice cold and steady. “You don’t love me. You loved that I paid your rent. You loved that I covered your tuition. You loved that I was a safety net while you f****d my best friend. And now that your precious career is gone, you’re crawling back to me.”

Before he could say anything, a black Rolls-Royce pulled up outside my apartment building. The back window rolled down, and Ethan Hale looked out at us, his expression unreadable. Jake’s face drained of color the second he saw him.

“Your ride is here, Miss Moore,” Ethan said, his voice carrying through the open door.

I stepped past Jake, not looking back. “We’re done, Jake. Don’t ever contact me again.”

I slid into the backseat of the car, the leather warm and soft beneath me. Ethan handed me a cup of coffee, black, exactly how I liked it. I raised an eyebrow. “How do you take your coffee?”

“I do my research,” he said simply, as the car pulled away from the curb. “The courthouse is ten minutes away. Everything is already arranged. All you have to do is sign the papers.”

The next hour passed in a blur. We walked into the courthouse, heads turning as everyone recognized the famous Ethan Hale on the arm of a girl in a simple dress. We signed the marriage license, the judge smiled and congratulated us, and just like that, I was Lila Hale. Married to a billionaire.

I stared at the marriage license in my hand as we got back into the car, my head spinning. Ethan looked over at me, his thumb brushing the back of my hand. “Welcome to the family, Mrs. Hale.”

The car pulled up to a massive, glass-walled mansion in the hills, overlooking the entire city. My mouth dropped open as we pulled through the gates.

“Home sweet home,” he said, opening the car door for me. “We have a family dinner tonight. Everyone’s going to be there. And they’re all going to meet the new Mrs. Hale.”