Chapter 1

For five years, I worked three jobs to support my husband's dream. I poured my inheritance into his "debt" and believed we were building a life together.

Today, I saw him on the news. My "struggling" husband, Jordan, is a billionaire heir, and our marriage was his five-year "Bootstrap Challenge."

His real fiancée, Isabell, stood beside him. When I got home, our five-year-old son, Leo, looked at me with cold eyes.

"You failed the test, Diana," he said flatly. "Daddy says you have a scarcity mindset."

Then came the final call from Jordan. Leo wasn't mine. He was his and Isabell's child, and I was just a "socialization caregiver." My accounts were frozen. I was left with nothing.

But they forgot about my father's last gift.

An old laptop with an unchangeable blockchain ledger app, holding the immutable record of every hour I worked and every dollar I gave them. They called me an asset. Now, I'm coming to collect.

Chapter 1

Diana Ware POV:

For five years, I was the wife of a struggling entrepreneur. Or so I believed. Today, I discovered my husband, Jordan Fernandez, is the sole heir to a multi-billion-dollar real estate empire, and our entire life was his five-year "Bootstrap Challenge" to prove his mettle to his family's board.

The last five years replayed in my mind, a montage of exhaustion and sacrifice. Eighteen hundred and twenty-five days. That' s how long I' d worked three jobs. My mornings started at 5 a.m., smelling of industrial-strength coffee and the faint scent of turpentine from my late-night graphic design gigs. My days were a blur of freelance projects, followed by an evening shift waiting tables at a diner where the regulars knew me by name and pitied my perpetually tired eyes. My nights were spent hunched over my laptop, chasing deadlines for logos and brochures, my vision blurring until the letters on the screen swam together.

All of it was for him. For Jordan. For his dream.

I believed in him with every fiber of my being. When he told me about the millions in student and business debt that crushed him, my heart ached for him. "We' ll get through this, Jordan," I had whispered, wrapping my arms around him in our tiny, cramped apartment. "Together."

And we did. Or rather, I did. I was the one who meticulously tracked every dollar, who chose the generic brand of cereal, who patched the holes in our son Leo' s jeans instead of buying new ones. I was the one who sold my own car, who cashed in the modest bonds my late father had left me, all to pour into the black hole of his supposed "debt."

My own career as a graphic designer, once promising, was now a collection of low-paying freelance gigs I took on in the dead of night. My portfolio was stale, my dreams were gathering dust in a folder on my desktop, all sacrificed at the altar of our future.

But I believed it was worth it. Every time I saw the hope in Jordan' s eyes, every time he' d kiss my forehead and whisper, "Just a little longer, Diana. I promise, I' ll make it all up to you," the exhaustion would melt away, replaced by a fierce, protective love. We were building something real. A family. A life forged in hardship, which would make the eventual success all the sweeter.

Last night, we had celebrated. Jordan came home, his face glowing, and lifted me off my feet. "We did it, baby! We' re finally in the clear!" he' d shouted, his laughter echoing in our small living room. He said a final investor had come through, clearing his last hurdle. The debt was gone. Our life was about to begin.

I cried tears of pure, unadulterated joy. We opened a cheap bottle of champagne I' d been saving for this very moment. We made plans. A small house with a backyard for Leo. A vacation, our first ever. Maybe I could finally quit my other jobs and focus on my design work again. The future, once a distant, hazy dream, was finally within reach.

Today, I was treating myself to a rare luxury: a coffee from a real café, not the instant sludge I usually drank. I was sketching a new design in my notebook, feeling a spark of creativity I hadn't felt in years, when my eyes drifted to the large television screen mounted on the wall.

A business news channel was on. And there he was. My Jordan.

But he wasn't my Jordan. He was wearing a suit so exquisitely tailored it probably cost more than our car. His hair was perfectly styled, not the charmingly messy look I was used to. He was standing on a stage, a confident, almost arrogant smile on his face that I had never seen before. Beside him, a stunning woman in a sleek white dress, her hand resting possessively on his arm. Her name, according to the chyron at the bottom of the screen, was Isabell Winters.

The headline blazed across the screen, searing itself into my brain: "BILLIONAIRE HEIR JORDAN FERNANDEZ CONQUERS THE ULTIMATE TEST: INSIDE THE FIVE-YEAR 'BOOTSTRAP CHALLENGE' ."

My hand froze, the pencil dropping from my fingers and clattering onto the floor. The world around me seemed to recede, the cheerful chatter of the café fading into a dull roar. The reporter' s voice cut through the haze, each word a sledgehammer blow.

"...sole heir to the Fernandez real estate empire... a five-year social experiment designed by the board to prove his business acumen... living on a simulated low income... a test of grit and character before taking the reins of the multi-billion-dollar corporation..."

My blood ran cold. The coffee in my stomach turned to acid.

I stumbled out of the café, the world tilting on its axis. The walk home was a blur. My key fumbled in the lock, my hands shaking so violently I could barely fit it in.

The first thing I saw when I opened the door was our five-year-old son, Leo. He wasn't playing with his usual worn-out wooden blocks. He was sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the packaging of a brand-new, obscenely expensive-looking robot. The kind I' d seen in toy store windows and knew we could never afford.

"Leo, baby? Where did you get that?" I asked, my voice a strained whisper.

He didn' t look up at me with his usual bright, adoring eyes. Instead, his gaze was cool, appraising. It was an expression I' d never seen on his sweet face.

"Daddy bought it for me. He said the test is over," he said, his small voice eerily flat.

My heart seized. "The test?"

He finally looked at me then, his eyes holding a coldness that shattered me. "You failed the test, Diana."

I could only stare, my mind refusing to process his words. "What... what are you talking about, sweetie?"

"Daddy says you have a scarcity mindset," Leo recited, his voice like a recording. "He says you' re obsessed with money. That' s why you couldn' t pass."

The words, coming from the mouth of the little boy I had rocked to sleep, whose fevers I had nursed, whose scraped knees I had kissed, were more brutal than any physical blow. My throat closed up, a strangled sound catching in my chest.

"No, baby, that' s not true," I choked out, stumbling towards him. "We had to save money... for Daddy' s business... for our future..."

He flinched away as I reached for him, his small face twisting in a look of disdain that was a terrifying mirror of the man on the television. "Daddy says real partners support dreams, not just count pennies. He and Isabell are going to take me to Paris. She doesn' t count pennies."

Isabell. The name was like poison on his tongue.

My mind flashed back through the years. The nights I' d stayed up, reworking my budget after an unexpected bill. The times I' d skipped meals to make sure he and Jordan had enough. The crushing guilt I felt every time Leo asked for a toy I couldn' t afford. All of it. All of my sacrifice, my love, my tireless effort, had been twisted into this ugly caricature: a woman obsessed with money.

"Leo," I whispered, my voice breaking. "That robot... I saw the receipt. It cost five hundred dollars. I could have paid our electricity bill for three months with that."

He just stared at me blankly. "See? You' re doing it again. You' re always talking about money."

My knees felt weak. I staggered back, my hand hitting the wall to steady myself. My eyes landed on the small coffee table.

Lying there, on top of a glossy magazine with Jordan' s face on the cover, were two documents.

One was a divorce agreement.

The other was a check made out to me for fifty thousand dollars. A severance package.

Jordan' s signature was scrawled at the bottom of the agreement, bold and flamboyant. It was the signature of a winner, a conqueror. The man who had held me last night and promised me the world.

My phone buzzed. It was him. I answered, my hand trembling.

"Diana," his voice was cool, distant. The warmth from last night was gone, as if it had never existed. "I assume you' ve seen the news. And the documents."

"Jordan... why?" The word was a raw wound in my throat.

He sighed, a sound of faint annoyance. "It was a test, Diana. The 'Bootstrap Challenge.' A five-year project to prove to my family' s board that I had the determination to build something from nothing. Isabell, my fiancée, designed the parameters."

Fiancée. The word hung in the air, thick and suffocating.

"The millions in debt?" I asked, my voice hollow.

A soft, condescending chuckle came through the phone. "That was my seed money, Diana. The board provided it. I just had to prove I could not only manage it, but grow it while living a 'struggling' lifestyle. Your income was a crucial part of the simulation. It demonstrated my ability to leverage all available assets."

My income. My three jobs. My father' s inheritance. I wasn' t his partner. I was an asset.

"You... you bastard," I spat, the rage finally cutting through the shock.

"Don' t be like that, Diana. You were compensated. Fifty thousand is more than generous for five years of... role-playing. Be smart. Sign the papers, take the money, and leave quietly. My real life is starting now."

The final piece of my world crumbled into dust. "Our son... Leo..."

"Ah, yes. That' s the other thing," he said, his voice dropping to a clinical, detached tone. "This is probably for the best, because you' ll need to understand this. Leo isn' t yours, Diana."

I remembered the lies. The story about a difficult birth, the reasons I couldn' t be in the delivery room, the documents I signed in a post-adoption haze, told they were just formalities.

"He' s mine and Isabell' s," Jordan continued, his voice utterly devoid of emotion. "We used a surrogate. You were legally designated as his 'socialization caregiver.' Part of the experiment was to see if a non-biological maternal figure, under financial duress, could provide a stable upbringing. The board was very impressed with your performance, for the most part. Though your scarcity mindset was a noted flaw."

The phone felt like a block of ice against my ear. My lungs refused to draw breath. The little boy in the living room, the one whose first steps I' d witnessed, whose first word was "Mama," was a stranger.

"Our lawyers will be there in an hour to finalize the transition," Jordan said briskly. "I' d appreciate it if you were gone by then."

The line went dead.

I stood there, the phone still pressed to my ear, listening to the silence.

I wasn' t just a failed wife.

I wasn' t even a mother.