Drugged, Jilted, Now A Billionaire's Wife

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 delivered the final, cruel blow that shattered our shared dream of a family forever.

On the day he tried to marry her, I entered a proxy marriage with a comose 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 made contact with the sharp corner of the marble hearth, and a bloom of darkness opened behind my eyes.

Then, nothing.

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 unconscious 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, I 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 incidents 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.

Estella Holloway POV:

I was discharged two days later. Jasper never came back to the hospital. Not once.

The taxi dropped me off at the gates of the sprawling villa Jasper and I had designed together. Our dream home. Every line, every window, every shade of white had been a joint decision, a testament to our shared future. Now, it felt like a monument to a life that had been stolen from me.

As I walked through the front door, the first thing I noticed was the smell. It wasn't the familiar scent of my vanilla and sandalwood candles. It was a cloying, sweet floral perfume. Kimberley's scent. It was everywhere, an invasive weed choking out everything that was once mine.

I followed the sound of soft humming to our master bedroom.

The door was ajar. Kimberley Riley was standing in front of my full-length mirror, draped in my favorite silk robe-the one Jasper had bought me for our anniversary. My jewelry box was open on the vanity, its contents spilled across the marble surface like a pirate's treasure.

She was holding my mother's pearl necklace, letting the delicate gems slide through her fingers.

"Oh, Estella! You're home," she said, her voice a perfect blend of surprise and feigned innocence. She didn't look ill. She looked vibrant, triumphant. "Jasper was so worried. He insisted I stay here where he could keep an eye on me."

She gestured vaguely around the room. "He said you wouldn't mind. Since, you know... you'll be leaving soon anyway."

Her eyes, sharp and calculating, landed on the nightstand. On the velvet box that held my engagement ring and wedding band. The ring was a custom piece I had designed myself, an intricate band of woven platinum meant to symbolize our intertwined lives.

Kimberley picked it up, her fingers closing around the platinum band. She tried to slip it onto her own finger. It was too small.

"He told me the story of this ring," she murmured, a smug little smile playing on her lips. "How he promised it would be the only one you'd ever wear."

A hot, white rage flared in my chest, burning away the numbness. "Put it down, Kimberley."

She feigned a startled gasp, her eyes welling with instant, crocodile tears. "I-I'm sorry. I was just admiring it. It's so beautiful. I didn't mean any harm."

"I said, put it down."

"What's going on?"

Jasper's voice came from the doorway. He was wearing an apron-my apron, the one with the silly 'Kiss the Architect' slogan I'd bought him as a joke. He was holding a spatula. He had been cooking for her.

He looked from Kimberley's tear-streaked face to my cold, hard expression. His brows furrowed in immediate disapproval.

"Estella, what are you doing?" he demanded. "Can't you see you're upsetting her? She's fragile. Be a little more generous."

The absurdity of his words struck me dumb. Generous? I was being asked to be generous to the woman who had systematically dismantled my life?

"That ring," I said, my voice dangerously low, "is mine. I want her to take her hands off it."

Jasper sighed, a long, weary sound of pure exasperation. He walked over to Kimberley, gently taking the ring from her grasp. For a heart-stopping second, I thought he was going to give it back to me.

Instead, he turned to her, his voice softening. "Don't worry, darling. I'll buy you a new one. Something bigger. Better."

Then, he turned and, without a second thought, tossed my ring-our ring, our promise, our entire history-into the open, half-packed suitcase on my bed as if it were a piece of trash.

"And Estella," he said, his voice hardening again as he looked at me. "Kimberley needs this room. It has the best light and the en-suite bathroom is more accessible for her. You can take the guest room downstairs."

I stood there, frozen, as he put a protective arm around Kimberley and led her out of the room, murmuring soothing words to her. I was an intruder in my own home. A guest in my own life.

Dinner was a silent, torturous affair. The table was laden with all of Kimberley's favorites: pan-seared scallops, lobster bisque, grilled asparagus. Every dish was a reminder of how well he knew her, and how thoroughly he had forgotten me.

The scallops glistened under a sheen of oil I recognized with a jolt of cold dread: peanut oil.

I have a severe peanut allergy. Jasper knew this. He had once rushed me to the emergency room in a panic after I'd accidentally eaten a cookie with peanut butter filling. He'd held my hand while the doctors administered the EpiPen, his face pale with fear, swearing he would never let anything like that happen again.

Now, he was carefully picking a tiny piece of shell from Kimberley's lobster, so absorbed he didn't even notice the dish placed before me.

My heart didn't just break. It turned to dust. The man who once memorized my every preference, my every fear, now served my potential death on a silver platter out of sheer neglect.

I watched him, my hand trembling as I picked up my chopsticks. I didn't eat a bite.

After dinner, Kimberley cooed that she wanted to see Jasper's childhood photo albums. He led her to the study, a place that had always been our private sanctuary, his hand resting possessively on the small of her back.

I went back upstairs to the guest room-the small, impersonal space I had been relegated to-and began to pack the few remaining belongings that he hadn't already discarded. There wasn't much left. My life with him had been so all-encompassing, I had very little that was just my own.

A sudden crash echoed from the study downstairs, followed by Kimberley's theatrical shriek.

I rushed down the hall.

On the floor of the study lay the shattered remains of a silver picture frame. And amidst the glittering shards of glass was the torn, crumpled photograph of my mother. It was the only picture I had of her from before she got sick, her smile radiant, her eyes full of life. It was my most treasured possession.

"Oh, my goodness!" Kimberley cried, pressing a hand to her chest. "I am so, so clumsy. I just wanted to get a closer look, and it just... slipped."

Jasper was already by her side, checking her hands for cuts. "It's just a picture, Kimberley, don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "We can get another one printed."

He couldn't. My mother was dead. The negative was lost years ago. This was it. This was all I had left.

Pain, sharper and more profound than any physical injury, ripped through me. I sank to my knees, my fingers numbly trying to piece together the fragments of my mother's smiling face. A sliver of glass sliced into my fingertip. I didn't even feel it. Blood welled up, a single, perfect red droplet that fell onto the torn image, staining her cheek like a tear.

My own tears fell, silent and hot, blurring the shattered memory before me.

I looked up, my vision swimming. Jasper was still fussing over Kimberley, completely oblivious to the utter devastation he had just allowed to happen.

My red-rimmed eyes met his across the room, and for the first time in twenty years, I didn't see the man I loved. I saw a stranger. A cruel, careless stranger who had just destroyed the last piece of my heart.

Estella Holloway POV:

"It's just a picture?" I whispered, my voice a raw, broken thing.

Jasper finally looked at me, really looked at me, kneeling amidst the wreckage of my most precious memory. A flicker of something-guilt, perhaps-crossed his face.

"She didn't do it on purpose, Estella," he said, his tone defensive.

"Didn't she?" I shot back, my gaze locking onto Kimberley. Her eyes, for a split second, held a triumphant gleam before she dissolved into pathetic sobs again.

That was it. The last thread of my control snapped.

I surged to my feet. My hand flew up, the impulse to strike white-hot and immediate. But it stopped, trembling, an inch from her skin. The unspent force of my rage hung in the air between us, more potent than any sound.

"Estella!" Jasper roared, moving instantly to shield her. He grabbed my shoulders, his grip like iron. "Have you lost your mind?"

He shoved me backward. Hard. The same careless, dismissive push from our wedding day. I stumbled, my ankle twisting, and fell heavily, my elbow cracking against the hardwood floor. A searing pain shot up my arm.

"Oh, Jasper, she's hurt!" Kimberley cried, her voice dripping with fake concern. "We should help her."

Jasper hesitated, his eyes fixed on my pained expression. For a moment, I saw the old Jasper, the protector. But it was just a ghost.

Kimberley tugged on his sleeve. "Let me clean her cut," she said softly. "It's the least I can do."

"No," I hissed, trying to scramble away from her. "Don't you touch me."

Kimberley's face crumpled. "I was only trying to help," she whimpered, turning her tear-filled eyes to Jasper.

That was all it took. His face hardened. "'Keep her still,' he commanded the two housemaids who had rushed in at the commotion.

"Sir?" one of them stammered, looking shocked.

"'Just keep her still,' he repeated, his voice leaving no room for argument.

The two women, their faces a mixture of pity and fear, took my arms, their grip firm but hesitant. I struggled, but I was weak, emotionally and physically drained.

"You're being hysterical, Estella," Jasper said, his voice cold. "Kimberley is being kind. You should be grateful."

Kimberley approached me, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball in her hand. She knelt down, her face close to mine, her sweet perfume making me gag. "This might sting a little," she whispered, a cruel smile playing on her lips that only I could see.

She didn't use the cotton ball. She simply pressed the alcohol-soaked cloth directly and firmly onto the raw scrape on my elbow.

A sharp, searing pain shot up my arm, a fire that stole my breath. It was a calculated, deliberate act of cruelty disguised as care. A scream was trapped in my throat, silent and agonizing. My vision blurred, black spots dancing at the edges.

Through a haze of agony, I looked up at Jasper, my eyes begging him for help, for a sliver of the compassion he once had for me.

He just stood there. Watching. His face was a remote, impassive mask.

I saw his jaw clench. He was wavering.

Kimberley saw it too. "Jasper," she choked out, her voice trembling. "It hurts... my chest... I can't breathe..."

Instantly, his attention snapped back to her. "Kimberley," he said, his voice thick with alarm. He scooped her up into his arms as if she were made of glass.

"I'm taking you upstairs," he murmured, carrying her from the room without a single backward glance at me, the woman he had just allowed to be tortured on his study floor.

The maids let go of my arms and scurried away, leaving me alone, collapsed in a heap. The sharp, sterile smell of alcohol filled my lungs, a scent I would now associate with the absolute death of my love for Jasper Sullivan.

My hand, the one with the old scar, lay on the floor near my mother's destroyed photograph. He had gotten that scar protecting me. Now, he stood by and watched as another woman inflicted a new one.

A laugh bubbled up in my throat, a hysterical, broken sound.

I had loved a monster. Or worse, I had loved a weak man who let a monster dictate his actions.

I carefully gathered the pieces of my mother's picture, my fingers still bleeding. "I'm sorry, Mom," I whispered to the smiling, shattered face. "I'm so sorry I chose him over everything."

A few days later, the Sullivan family's annual gala was held. It was a command performance; my attendance was not optional. Jasper insisted Kimberley come along, claiming she was too frightened to be left alone.

The moment we walked in, I felt the whispers start, the pitying and judgmental stares. I was yesterday's news, the jilted bride. Kimberley, clinging to Jasper's arm like a delicate vine, was the tragic, romantic heroine of the hour.

He was disgustingly attentive to her, fetching her champagne, adjusting her shawl, laughing at her vapid jokes. I was left to stand alone in a corner, an awkward ghost at a party that was once supposed to celebrate my place in this family.

A cousin of Jasper's, a woman who had always been jealous of me, sauntered over. "Well, well, Estella," she sneered, looking me up and down. "You're looking a little... discarded. I guess talent and brains aren't enough to keep a man like Jasper, are they?"

I gripped my wine glass, my knuckles white.

Jasper must have overheard. "That's enough, Clara," he said, his voice sharp. But then he immediately turned back to Kimberley. "Are you feeling alright, darling? You look a little pale."

His defense of me was a hollow gesture, immediately negated by his far greater concern for her.

Kimberley gave me a triumphant little smirk over Jasper's shoulder. Then, as she turned to walk towards the grand champagne tower, she took a deliberate, theatrical stumble.

It all happened in slow motion.

Her body arced backward, not away from the tower, but directly into it. Hundreds of crystal flutes, filled with golden champagne, cascaded down in a glittering, deadly waterfall.

Jasper didn't hesitate. He lunged, not towards me, but towards Kimberley, wrapping his body around hers to shield her from the falling glass.

I was left standing directly in the path of destruction.

The wave of champagne hit me first, cold and shocking, soaking my designer gown in an instant. Then came the glass. Shards pattered against me, and I felt the sharp sting of tiny cuts on my bare arms and shoulders. One of the heavier flute stems glanced off my temple, and the world dissolved into a cacophony of shattering glass and the shocked gasps of the crowd.

I stood there, frozen, dripping with champagne and blood, a spectacle of public humiliation. Jasper, having ensured Kimberley was perfectly unharmed, finally turned to look at me. His eyes widened in momentary shock at the pathetic, broken figure I had become.