Billionaire's Reborn Empress

The knife went into my chest and turned. My twin sister pulled it back out, grinning so wide it split her face. Last time around, a prompt had lit up in the air between us.

Just hanging there, bright enough to hurt. [One billion dollars, or your mother. Which do you choose?] She grabbed the billion. Didn't even blink.

Then she married up into the Ashfords, and every screen in the country carried the wedding. Then the Ashford Group went under. Her husband emptied the accounts and ran.

Somebody had to take the fall for it. The court picked her. And me, I went with our mother and the man she remarried. Everyone thought I'd landed soft.

Only I knew what that house really was. The day they opened the gate for my sister, she came straight to my door. Then I opened my eyes.

The prompt was back, burning a hole in the air. [One billion dollars, or your mother.

Which do you choose?] My sister grabbed our mother's arm and hung on with both hands. "I choose Mom!" She stared me down, daring me to break.

I looked at her and almost laughed out loud. Good. Somebody else can go walk into that hellmouth for me.

And I'll just have to suffer through marrying into that den of wolves and getting spoiled rotten.

Chapter 1 "I choose Mom." My twin sister, Serena Vale, said it with everything showing on her face. The exact look she wore the last time she picked.

Last time she picked the billion, and I watched where that got her. Which means she remembered.

She'd come back the same way I had, with the answer sheet already in her hand, and this time she was very sure she'd marked it right. Which left me.

I took the Ashfords' billiondollar prenup settlement and married the son of the richest man in America. Sebastian Ashford. Our wedding was an event.

Everyone who mattered in the country came. Everyone except the groom. That's exactly how it went for Rena last time. Here's the funny part. Sebastian is a child.

He skipped his own wedding to prove his heart still belonged to the one that got away. I knew the real reason he married me. Same reason he married my sister last time.

His family was breathing down his neck about it, and both of us happen to look like her.

His words. "Passable, I guess." So I stood up there next to the officiant by myself, while the room got quieter and quieter. I caught Rena's face in the crowd.

She wasn't even hiding it. Last time, when this happened at her wedding, she came apart. Cried in front of all of them and turned an awkward night into a disaster.

This time she'd come to watch me do it. She's always been like this. She cannot stand my life looking better than hers. When we were kids she skipped class and I studied.

I brought home the awards. It ate at her, so she got the worst boys in school to make my life hell. I should thank her. After years of that, nothing rattles me. I smiled.

I hit every mark the MC gave me. I didn't complain once.

When I went down to work the reception tables, the money wives couldn't get enough of me. "She's so poised." "Held her head up through all of that." Every one of them thought I was swallowing something enormous and holding the room together with my teeth.

Here's what they didn't know. I did not care. It's a wedding. Who cares if the groom shows. The billion cleared. That's the whole transaction. I didn't marry that idiot for him.

We got home that night and Mrs. Ashford tore into her son. Worthless. No sense of the bigger picture. Nearly made the family a laughingstock in one evening. "Do you understand me?

If Adri hadn't held that room together tonight, this family would be a punchline by morning." Sebastian stood there and took it from his own mother with his jaw locked.

She wasn't finished. "You could not have done better than Adri and I have no idea what you think you're missing. You think she married up?" "I'll tell you what happened.

We married up. Do you have any idea who Adri actually—" "Enough!" Sebastian cut her off. "I don't care who she is!" He came up off the couch.

Three steps and he was in my face, looking straight down at me. Nothing warm in it anywhere. "You're a standin. So know your place as the standin.

I am never touching you, and don't waste your time working on me." Chapter 2 God, the stupid coming off this man. You could smell it.

If his mother hadn't been standing right there I'd have asked him to back up. I'm allergic to stupid.

I gave him my very best fake smile. "That works out perfectly for me." Rena was in even more of a hurry than I gave her credit for.

I wasn't married a month before she needed to show me something.

And to make sure I couldn't turn her down, she came up with a beautiful excuse and had our mother deliver it. "Your sister's got herself a really nice boyfriend, and I'm worried she's being taken in.

Would you look him over for me, honey?" She picked the café. We'd barely sat down before she started telling me it was her favorite place in the city.

Then she wrapped both hands around Marcus Webb's arm and beamed. "Marc spoils me rotten.

He found out I love it here, so he bought me the annual foundingmember card on the spot." Right. Because on $2,800 a month, Rena is absolutely covering a place like this.

She was throwing someone else's money around to feel like somebody. I kept my face still and gave her a polite little smile. "Then I should thank Mr.

Webb for keeping my café in business." Because it is mine. A billion dollars gets boring sitting in a bank, so I put some of it to work.

Rena had been cradling her cup like a woman in a magazine. She put it down. "Money's nice. Don't go throwing it at things.

People go broke that way." She must have caught Marc giving her a look, because she picked the cup back up, took a delicate sip, and slowed her voice all the way down. "What I mean is, I've made my peace with all of that.

Money doesn't matter. What matters is whether the person beside you is real." Then she was off. Marc this, Marc that. So young to be doing so well. Gives her anything she asks for.

I watched her and felt sorry for her. What has gotten into this girl. She lived an entire life and learned nothing from it. Money matters less than a man's heart.

Listen to yourself. And anyway. Marcus Webb. Like I don't know exactly what he is. Last time around, I dated him too. We met at a party at Harold Prescott's house.

Marc was Prescott's star protégé. My mother was talking marriage with Prescott. Marc looked the part.

Thirty years old and already a top expert in his field, and he treated me like something breakable. A man like that comes at you hard, you don't really have grounds to say no.

But my mother took Prescott's advice and shut it down cold. So Marc floated a new plan. He'd get me pregnant first and we'd do the wedding after. I said no.

That no is what took the mask off. He went out and told everyone in town I'd slept my way around. It took me a long time to bury it. I found out later why he was in such a hurry.

The expert thing was invented. He was already finished at his company, and he wanted to ride Prescott's professorship into a tenuretrack spot at the university.

That's a man with a real heart? Even if he had one, it'd be trash. Next to what Prescott had going on in his head, though, everything Marc ever did was child's play.

Chapter 3 Marc got up to find the restroom. I decided to give Rena one warning. She's still my sister.

I didn't want to watch her walk into that man's hands. "Stop spending yourself on the Webb guy.

Prescott and Mom are never going to sign off on him." I drank some coffee. "Let me be precise. Whoever you pick, those two will never sign off." "Listen to yourself. You're jealous.

Your husband won't touch you, so you can't stand watching me and Marc be happy." "And Uncle Hal is wonderful to me, by the way.

You two never got along because you're not a likable person!" I laughed at her. One short, flat one. "Huh. So you think Harold Prescott is very fond of you.

Then I've got nothing else to say." You can't save someone who's dead set on drowning. I've been busy. Busy making money make money. The café is one of several things I own now.

With cash in hand, investing is a pleasure. I finally got the business I used to lie awake wanting. Back then I figured I'd save up and open one little storefront of my own.

Over those years I worked just about every job there is. Manufacturing. Sales. The complaint line after the sale. I learned all of it from the inside.

But some nobody punching a clock, saving up real startup money? I died before I ever got there. Here's the thing, though.

All that bottomrung work is exactly why I read a market better than the men across the table from me. I know the customers. Most of all, I know the workers.

Half a year in, my billion hasn't shrunk. It's grown. And I haven't told a soul.

So I was lying in bed, looking at my balance, having the time of my life, when Sebastian shoved the bedroom door open and glared at me. "Woman, don't think acting uninterested in me is going to get my attention." I looked up at him the way you look at a slow child.

Fucking moron. "If you're bored, go find something to do." I didn't bother sitting up. "Stop hovering. I'm counting money. I don't have time for you." Something set him off.

I still don't know what. He started in on me. "Money, money, money. You're like every other woman. All you know how to do is spend it." Please.

I know better than he ever will what happens to a woman who only knows how to spend. I've got Rena for a case study. Last time she was bottomless with it.

She burned through her billion in a little over two years. The moment it was gone, she suddenly remembered she had a marriage to maintain. Too late.

By then Sebastian was already gone on the one that got away. I'm not her. I never once thought about maintaining a marriage that doesn't exist. Why waste the hours.

Money's better company. And it won't be long now. The woman he's been pining over is about to walk in here herself. The one who took the Ashfords apart the last time around.

I'll be waiting. I want to know one thing. Second time around, does she still get to bring the whole house down?

Chapter 4 A month later I got on a plane to France with my motherinlaw. She was going for a vacation. I was going for two reasons. One, market research on the idol business.

Two, I could not stand another day near Sebastian.

He'd been turning up in front of me more and more, always doing the alphabillionaire thing. "Woman, you can keep pretending to be cold. It won't work.

I'm not going to spare you a second glance." I don't have the words for how far beneath me I find this man. And I mean that. A grown man with nothing to do all day.

A company can actually run with a CEO like that? Sebastian answered that one himself, with his own two hands. It cannot. A person in that chair has to be able to decide things.

That is the one thing he can't do. In our two weeks in France, Mrs. Ashford took company calls every single day. Most of them were from Sebastian.

A man pushing thirty, checking with his mother about everything, like a kid calling home from school. He can't make one call on his own.

He definitely can't handle a market turning under his feet.

She got a headache out of it and moved our flights up. "I took this trip to find out whether Sebastian could run that company without me. Well. I overestimated him." "You, though.

You're twice as grown as he is. Watching you work this week, I kept thinking about myself at your age, running things beside his father." "I'll say it again.

The Ashfords married up when we got you." I looked at this woman across the table. Warm face, meaning every word. I could not connect her to the monsterinlaw out of Rena's mouth.

Only, that warmth lands on me with a chill in it. Last time around, right about now, she was probably sitting just like this. Smiling just like this.

Working out the Ashford Group's next move. She doesn't know.

Everything she built, the thing that wrecked her body, the thing that nearly cost her the baby she was carrying, is about to come apart until there's nothing left to sweep up.

Then it clicked. Mrs. Ashford isn't out to get anybody. She just hates useless people. She's this disgusted by her own useless son.

Imagine what she'd have been like with Rena, that useless daughterinlaw who never accomplished a thing. Funny.

On the subject of hating useless people, she and I speak the same language. First thing I did back home was start an entertainment company and go hunting for trainees.

I'm taking a piece of this industry, and I'm taking a big one. When Mrs. Ashford found out, she got behind it hard. Poured money in.

Worked her contacts to get my trainees in front of the right rooms. I resisted at first. I didn't want to owe her something that size.

Then she said this, and I stopped worrying about it. "Don't get sentimental. This isn't me spoiling you, this is strictly business.

I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket, and the Ashford Group basket is looking flimsy from here." With her behind them, my trainees had a name fast.

A show called Make the Band happened to be casting. I entered them. And I took a seat on the judges' panel as a mentor, one of the show's title sponsors.

Trainees from every label came out and did their thing. Everybody in that building knew the truth.

All of it was set dressing, arranged to make one person look good when she finally walked out. "Hi, everyone. I'm Camille Renard." Camille Renard.

The favorite to win, and nobody pretended otherwise. The one that got away. The one Sebastian never stopped wanting.

And the place where the Ashford collapse started, last time around. Everything went down after this face showed up. The company gone. Her husband running with the money.

My sister taking somebody else's fall and walking into a cell. That road ran all the way to the knife in my chest, and it started right here. Good.

This time, the person in this seat is me. Up on the stage she gave the judges' panel a sweet little smile. It landed square on my face. Chapter 5 I'll give her this.

Camille Renard's face is worth every dollar somebody spent on it. You don't get tired of looking at it. No wonder that idiot Sebastian lost his mind over her.

And however pretty she is, that's how bad the performance was. A rap with no sense of rhythm. It made me queasy. "The look is fantastic.

The craft needs work." I thought I was being generous. Camille's team turned out to be exactly as twofaced as she is, and they ran a fullblown victim narrative.

Camille kept letting little things slip about her history with Sebastian.

Steered the whole internet into deciding I was the golddigging homewrecker who threw herself at a rich family and stole another woman's man.

One episode aired and the two of us buried every other trainee on the show. Which is exactly what her team wanted. Now the rubberneckers wanted one thing. Sebastian's position.

Anybody in the business could tell you that the CEO of a public company does not respond to tabloid noise. Ever. They overestimated Sebastian.

He called me. "All you have to do is admit you've been pretending to be cold. Then I'll do you the favor and step in." "Fucking moron!" I finally got to say it out loud.

Then I hung up on him. So half an hour later, the headline broke. Ashford Group's CEO, publicly, on the record, backing Camille Renard.

And showing off the keepsake from their old romance while he did it. "You idiot! Did somebody drop you on your head