Left to Die:Reborn Empire

My amniotic fluid mixed with fresh blood, spilling down my thighs in a desperate trail. Yet my husband had just kicked me out of his car on the highway.

He slammed the gas and peeled away, rushing off to celebrate Chloe's birthday.

He even made a bet with his bros in their VIP club group chat, betting I wouldn't last three days before crawling back to his penthouse like a dog to beg him.

He had no idea a massive semitruck was already hurtling right at me.

Chapter 1 At thirtyfive weeks pregnant, Tristan, the heir to the Gu financial empire, finally offered me a charity ride to my OBGYN appointment in his custom Maybach.

We were cruising down the interstate when his phone rang. "Tristan. I'm back in the States." The Bluetooth was connected to the car's speakers. I recognized Chloe's voice instantly.

My fingernails dug blindly into my palms as I snapped my head toward Tristan. His entire demeanor shifted.

The lazy slouch vanished, his spine snapping straight as his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. "It's my birthday today," Chloe's voice purred through the luxury audio system. "Can you come up to the penthouse suite at the Four Seasons?

I have a surprise for you." "Yeah. I'm on my way." The call dropped.

A lead weight plummeted straight into my stomach. "Don't go." Tears stung my eyes as I sat in the passenger seat. "Tristan, look at my stomach! I am your legal wife.

You swore you wouldn't see her again!" Tristan's jaw clenched. "I'm just going to her birthday party. Stop your damn crying." The baby delivered a sharp kick against my ribs.

I gasped, sucking in a harsh breath. "My stomach… it hurts." Tristan scoffed, not even glancing my way. "Drop the act." "I'm serious!

It hurts!" Tristan stared at me through the rearview mirror, his eyes icecold, looking at me like a bag of sickening trash.

He wrenched the steering wheel, throwing the Maybach onto the dangerous shoulder of the interstate. He delivered a chilling command. "Get the hell out of my car.

Now." I stared at his profile, my breath stalling in my throat. It felt like I was looking at a total stranger. "Wren. Get out.

Don't make me say it a third time." His tone left zero room for negotiation. It was an absolute alpha command. Growing up, whenever he used that exact pitch, I knew I had to obey.

Otherwise, the fallout would be something I couldn't survive. I pushed the heavy door open and stepped out. A sudden gush of warm liquid soaked my leggings. My water just broke.

He slammed the gas and peeled away, rushing off to celebrate his exgirlfriend's birthday. The screech of tires ripping against the pavement practically shattered my eardrums.

The Maybach's exhaust choked me, sending me tumbling onto the freezing asphalt. I clutched my agonizingly painful stomach, watching his taillights vanish into the night.

He didn't glance back once at his heavily pregnant wife left stranded in the roaring traffic. It took until this exact moment for the delusion to finally shatter.

Tristan didn't love me. He never did. I was an idiot. A pathetic, blind idiot. It took nearly dying on the side of a highway to swallow that bitter pill.

When we were kids, Tristan gave me a piece of candy. It was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted in my miserable little life. Looking back now?

It was just a rich boy throwing crumbs to a stray. To him, I was no different than a shivering mutt he found in an alley. I was a bastard child anyway. The classic unwanted mistake.

Even the grandparents who took me in couldn't stand the sight of me.

They tossed me scraps of food, but they always made sure to call me a little tramp, blaming my very existence for ruining my mother's life. Nobody loved me.

Tristan just handed me the dangerous illusion that maybe, just maybe, I could be loved. He used to be the only salvation in my dark world.

He claimed ownership of me like some tyrannical king, refusing to let anyone touch me.

He used his massive allowance to buy me pretty dresses, taking me out for fried chicken and burgers when I was starving.

Because of those little breadcrumbs of kindness, I willingly followed a step behind him. I played the loyal sidekick, the pathetic stagefive clinger, for twenty damn years.

Honestly, he treated me decently enough. Just like the frat bros in his inner circle, he made sure his loyal pets were fed. Until eight months ago. Tristan and Chloe broke up.

He got blackout drunk. He pinned me to the bed, kissed me, and crossed a line we could never uncross. The next morning, he walked out without a single word.

I swallowed the humiliation and went right back to being his invisible shadow. But a month later, two pink lines showed up on a plastic stick. I was pregnant.

Chapter 2 My pulse hammered in my throat, erratic and wild, when I finally cornered Tristan to tell him the news. It felt like someone had taken a meat cleaver to my chest.

Half of me was bracing for the inevitable—that Tristan would drag me to a clinic to terminate the pregnancy. The other, pathetic half secretly prayed he would let me keep the baby.

Tristan's rigid jawline tightened. Then, his thin lips parted, spitting out a few emotionless words. "Sign the prenup, and we get married." The breath left my lungs.

Tears blurred my vision. I threw my arms around his neck, burying my face into his shirt, sobbing until my makeup smeared everywhere.

He cupped my face, roughly wiping away my tears with his thumb. "You look hideous when you cry.

Like a stray mutt off the street." I just gripped his shoulders tighter, pressing deeper into his chest.

His chest vibrated with a deep chuckle. "Does marrying me make you that happy?" "Yes!

I've never been this happy in my entire life!" I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my lips against his. He didn't pull away. He just looked down at me with this soft, indulgent gaze.

My naive brain actually convinced me he loved me back. But reality isn't some cheesy romcom. The slap to the face came fast and hard. There was no extravagant wedding.

No luxury honeymoon. We didn't even get a forced blessing from the billionaire patriarchs. Tristan and I just signed a stack of legal papers at the courthouse, and that was it.

We were husband and wife. Married life wasn't the fairytale I painted in my head. Tristan never let go of Chloe. Not for a single second.

I'd catch him staring blankly at photos and videos of her on his phone. Whenever she posted a new update on Instagram, he would obsessively scroll through it for days.

I saw every single microexpression of his obsession. He didn't even bother hiding it from me. The cracks turned into fault lines, leading to explosive fights.

I had spent my entire life putting Tristan on a pedestal, and he had zero intention of stepping down to compromise.

During our final blowout, he shattered his whiskey glass against the wall. Shards of crystal rained down by my bare feet. He towered over me, a sneer twisting his features. "Enough!

Wren, did you honestly think that marriage certificate made you the actual lady of the Gu Group?" "You've been shadowing me like a pathetic pet for years.

You know exactly what Chloe means to me!" "Yeah, I love her. I can't get her out of my head. So what?" The oxygen instantly vanished from the room.

My chest caved in, a phantom blade sliding right between my ribs. He was right. No one knew the depths of his obsession with Chloe better than me.

Tristan was the untouchable crown prince of the Gu family. He ruled elite prep schools and Ivy League campuses.

As an adult, he practically controlled the city's entire highsociety circle. He was arrogant, blindingly powerful, and never bowed to a single soul. Until freshman year of college.

He took one look at Chloe and shredded every last one of his ironclad rules for her. Once, a rival heir kidnapped Chloe and demanded Tristan beg on his knees.

The untouchable billionaire heir didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second before hitting the concrete. I was hiding in the shadows that night, trembling as I dialed 911.

By the time the sirens wailed in the distance, Tristan was a bloody, mangled wreck on the warehouse floor. But Chloe? He had kept her shielded beneath his body.

She didn't have a single scratch.

Remembering all the psychotic, borderlineworshipping things he did for her over the years—things that made me burn with toxic jealousy and sickening inferiority—my whole body started to shake. "If you love her so damn much, why did you marry me?" "If you hadn't gotten yourself knocked up, do you seriously think I ever would have married you?" He scoffed, grinding the last pathetic remains of my dignity into dust beneath his tailored Oxford shoes.

He turned on his heel and slammed the door so hard the doorframe rattled. Chapter 3 It took forever for my lungs to remember how to pull in oxygen.

I stumbled out of that sprawling, sterile mansion without a second glance. I didn't grab a bag. I left my phone on the entryway table.

I wandered the grid of the city like a lost mutt with nowhere to go. Icy rain started to lash against my skin, soaking right through my clothes, but I didn't seek shelter.

What was the point of hiding from the storm? A highpitched ringing drowned out my thoughts. I couldn't find a single reason left to keep breathing.

My numb legs blindly carried me to the center of the suspension bridge over the river. I let gravity pull me over the edge.

The freezing, pitchblack water smashed into me, forcing its way down my windpipe in a brutal chokehold.

My survival instincts flared, limbs thrashing in the freezing currents, before I forced my muscles to go slack. Let it end, I thought, letting the darkness swallow me whole.

It was better this way. But the universe hated me. I didn't die. When my heavy eyelids fluttered open, the harsh glare of hospital fluorescents burned my retinas.

Tristan was gripping the edge of my mattress. His designer shirt was a wrinkled mess. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw, and his eyes were bloodshot.

He looked like he hadn't slept in days. The second he saw me blink, he lunged forward, his warm fingers wrapping like a vise around my freezing hand. "Wren?

You're finally awake?" The tight lines around his mouth vanished, replaced by a ragged exhale.

It looked like the sheer joy of a man getting back something he was terrified of losing. I tried to speak, but my throat felt like it was lined with crushed glass.

He scrambled to hold a plastic cup with a straw to my cracked lips, then unleashed a frantic flood of words. "Wren, I'm so damn sorry. I never should have said those things to you.

I shouldn't have walked out and left you alone." "I swear on my life I'll never do it again. Please don't ever pull a stunt like that again.

Just… for the baby's sake, forgive me." I lowered my gaze to the hospital blanket. My sixmonth baby bump was still there, a solid mound beneath the sheets.

The baby survived. "Tristan," I rasped, staring blankly at the wall. "I want a divorce." His hand flinched, pulling back slightly as if the word had burned him. "Stop talking nonsense.

You're just throwing a tantrum to punish me." "Go back to Chloe." "Don't bring her into this!" The volume of his voice spiked, echoing off the sterile walls.

He immediately lowered his tone, his Adam's apple bobbing. "We are never bringing her up again." I squeezed my eyes shut.

I tried to lock it all down, but a single tear slipped past my lashes, tracking hot down my cheek.

His thumb brushed the moisture away with a sickeningly gentle touch. "Little crybaby.

You're so obsessed with me you almost died over it, and now you have the nerve to throw around the word divorce?" "If I actually signed the papers, what would you do?

Go jump off another bridge?" "Get your hands off me." "If I don't handle you, who will?

I've been taking care of you since we were kids." I let my jaw click shut, swallowing the rest of the fight. For the next few days, it was like a switch had flipped in his brain.

He hovered, making sure I ate, hyperfixating on the baby's vitals, shifting into the role of a devoted husband.

The deep freeze in my chest started to thaw against my better judgment. A stupid, toxic voice in my head whispered that maybe the scare had snapped him out of it.

Maybe, deep down, he really did love me. Until I walked toward the VIP lounge and heard his voice bleeding through the cracked door.

Tristan took a hard drag of his cigar, puffing a cloud of gray smoke toward the ceiling. He sneered into the phone. "That stupid woman is already pacified.

Relax, I haven't even had to pull out my checkbook yet." The guy on the other end must have made a joke, because Tristan let out a low, dark chuckle.

He leaned against the leather sofa, dropping his voice into a lazy, arrogant drawl. "Look, man, even if you keep a stray dog around for twenty years, you're bound to develop some kind of attachment to it." "Besides, Wren is way more loyal than any dog.

She's pathologically obsessed with me. She couldn't leave me if she tried." The blood instantly drained from my face, rushing straight to my feet.

My fingers turned to ice against the doorframe. He crushed the cigar into the glass ashtray and tapped the screen of his phone to end the call.

When his eyes flicked up and caught me standing in the doorway, every muscle in his body locked up. I didn't scream. I didn't throw anything.

I just turned my back on him, walked back into my hospital room, and quietly shut the door. Chapter 4 A few minutes later, he walked in.

He wrapped his arms around me from behind, his voice sickeningly gentle against my ear. "Wren, I love you." It was the very first time those three words had ever left his mouth, but my brain was too numb to tell if it was a lie. "Stop overthinking.

I promise, I'll treat you right from now on." His breath fanned across my neck. "You're just hung up on Chloe, aren't you? I swear to you, I'll never think about her again.

From now on, it's just you and me, Wren. Okay?" I desperately wished I had the spine to shove him away.

But a moment later, I heard my own pathetic voice whisper, "Okay." Tristan's lips curved into a satisfied smirk. Just like that, we made up.

Looking back now, it was all a perfectly constructed illusion. I was just too greedy, too weak, too terrified to rip the bandaid off and face reality.

Tristan left on a business trip shortly after. He was gone for two entire months.

Once a week, he'd FaceTime me, just checking off a box to ensure his incubator and the baby were still alive, before hanging up to go back to ruling his empire.

The freezing distance between us was palpable again. That was his classic playbook.

Since childhood, whenever he broke me down to tears, he'd patiently string me along with sweet words.

The second I was pacified, the mask would slip, and he'd revert to his cold, toxic baseline. But my life was a barren wasteland. No one loved me.

No one had ever thrown me a lifeline. Even though the candy Tristan fed me was laced with arsenic, it was the only taste of sweetness I had ever known.

He knew exactly how to manipulate my trauma. He knew I wouldn't leave, which made him fearless. Two months later, Tristan flew back.

It lined up perfectly with my OBGYN appointment, so he drove me. And then the highway incident happened.

I don't know what was going through his head when he kicked me out of the Maybach. Maybe the withdrawal was hitting him hard, and he just desperately needed his Chloe fix.

Or maybe his arrogant brain assumed I would just do what I always did: swallow the abuse, find my own way back to the penthouse, and resume my post as his loyal lapdog.

But whatever delusion he was operating under, this time, I physically couldn't go back. Wait. Reality check. When my vision cleared, I was hovering right next to Tristan.

But his eyes slid right through me. He couldn't see me. I glanced at the Rolex on his wrist. It had been exactly fortyeight hours since he dumped me on the interstate shoulder.

Even though my soul screamed to run, some invisible tether dragged my consciousness right along with him. What the hell was going on?

Tristan tossed his keys to the valet and strolled into his usual spot.

Unlike his usual grand entrances, when he pushed open the heavy mahogany doors of the ultraexclusive private club restricted to billionaires and Alisters, the man who was always the center of the universe was met with dead, suffocating silence.

The faces of his elite circle drained of color. Their eyes darted between each other, communicating in silent microexpressions, but not a single person dared to speak a word.

Tristan's brow furrowed. "What's with the funeral vibe?

You all look like you've seen a ghost." He unbuttoned his suit jacket, dropping onto the custom leather sofa, and poured himself a glass of neat Macallan.

Wyatt, the guy who had been his absolute right hand since prep school, finally broke the agonizing tension. "Bro… what are you doing here?

What about… what about Wren…?" "Relax." Tristan took a slow sip of his scotch, his tone dripping with that same lazy, arrogant indifference that made my spectral hands itch to strangle him. "Give it three days tops.

She'll crawl right back to me." Normally, this was the cue for his fratbro entourage to shower him with praise.

They'd toast to his absolute dominance, laughing about how well he kept his wife perfectly trained on a tight leash.

And Tristan would sit back, soaking up their toxic flattery, basking in his own twisted ego. But this time, the heavy silence remained unbroken.

Two of the socialites at the end of the booth had gone physically pale, looking like they were about to be sick. Chapter 5 Tristan's brow furrowed. "Don't believe me?

Wanna put money on it?" Wyatt stared at him, his mouth falling open in silent pity. "We believe you… we believe you, man." "Bullshit!" One of the socialites couldn't take the suffocating tension anymore.

She launched out of her seat and hurled her glass of expensive liquor straight into Tristan's face. "Get out! Go crawl back to your precious Chloe! You're not welcome here!

The sight of a piece of trash like you makes me physically sick!" Tristan had never been publicly humiliated like this in his entire life.

Half a dozen guys instantly leaped up, forming a human wall in front of the girl, bracing for his notoriously explosive temper to detonate.

But weirdly, the alcohol dripping from his hair seemed to shortcircuit his brain. He didn't raise his fists. He didn't say a single word.

He stood up and stumbled out of the club, his perfectly tailored suit ruined. He left behind only one raspy sentence to the dead room. "Give it three days. She'll come back.

She's never left me. She wouldn't dare…" My consciousness was dragged right back to the penthouse with him. From that day on, Tristan completely ghosted his inner circle.

He didn't step foot inside the Gu Group headquarters. He didn't even go looking for Chloe. He only did two things every single day. He drank.

And he blew up my phone. "Wren, where the hell are you? Get your ass back home right now!" "Wren, you actually have the balls to ignore my calls now?

Have you lost your damn mind?" "Wren, if you don't walk through that door, I'm throwing out every single one of your pathetic plants!" He blasted hundreds of these toxic messages a day.

Every single one vanished into the void. Tristan refused to accept reality. His arrogant brain was still convinced I was just playing some twisted game of hard to get.

He started trashing the penthouse. He didn't just smash my potted plants; he took a baseball bat to the nursery I had spent months meticulously setting up.

He ripped the tiny onesies and soft toys to absolute shreds. Every time he destroyed something, he snapped a photo and texted it to me.

It was his sick way of trying to trigger me, to make my heart bleed so I would come rushing back to stop him. But it was useless.

Even as he reduced our massive penthouse to a literal war zone, he didn't get a single pixel of a response.

On the tenth day of my disappearance, he stumbled out of his drunken stupor with a brilliant new strategy.

He froze every single one of my credit cards and bank accounts. "Wren, if you want your allowance, drag your ass back here!

You think you can just swipe my platinum cards and act like you're single? Is this how a wife acts?" Still zero response.

It wasn't until the hundredth day of my disappearance that the manic energy abruptly flatlined. He got eerily calm. Then, he finally went to find Chloe.

Chloe's face lit up when she saw him, but taking in his reeking, alcoholsoaked state, she immediately shifted into the role of the heartbroken, caring angel.

She dragged him to an ultraexclusive men's spa. She had them give him a hot spring soak, a fresh fade, and a straightrazor shave.

She groomed him from head to toe until he looked like the untouchable billionaire heir again, a smug smile on her lips.

Tristan let her manipulate him like a numb, lifeless mannequin. He didn't speak. He just compulsively snapped photos and flooded his social media.

In less than twentyfour hours, he dragged Chloe through Rodeo Drive.

He swiped his black card on Cartier diamonds, a massive engagement ring, a new mansion, a sports car, and enough designer bags to fill a vault.

His Instagram feed became a sickening shrine to their toxic romance. Over a hundred posts in a single day.

Since his network consisted of the entire elite class, the notifications, likes, and comments flooded in.

But one comment stood out like a bleeding wound: [ Wishing you a lifetime of misery!

Toxic trash belongs in the same dumpster! ] The person who left that comment was my only rideordie, the hottempered socialite heiress, Zara.

I knew exactly what game Tristan was playing.

He was plastering this all over social media to trigger my jealousy, waiting for me to lose my mind and come clawing back to reclaim my territory.

It was a classic page from his playbook, and honestly, in the past, I would have fallen for it every single time. But this time was different.

Zara's vicious comment seemed to finally snap him out of his delusion. Chapter 6 He froze.

Then, completely abandoning a thrilled Chloe, he stormed straight to Zara's estate in a blind rage. "Zara! You're hiding Wren, aren't you?

Zara, open the damn door!" He pounded his fists against the heavy oak, looking ready to rip it off its hinges.

Zara yanked the door open. "What the hell is your problem, Tristan?" "Hand her over!

Or I'll tear this place apart piece by piece!" Tristan pushed past her, his eyes wild and manic as he tore through her mansion, kicking open doors and searching room by room.

Zara's face went icecold. She picked up a mug of steaming black coffee from the console table and hurled it across his custom bespoke suit.

Before he could react, she slammed her iPad directly into his chest. The screen was locked on a highdefinition, disgustingly bloody photograph of a catastrophic car crash.

In the center of the frame, a heavily pregnant woman lay twisted in an unnatural, horrific angle in a massive pool of crimson. Thick blood poured from her mouth and nose.

Her limbs were visibly shattered from the blunt force trauma. Beneath her massive, swollen belly, the asphalt was completely painted red.

It was physically nauseating to imagine the sheer agony she endured in her final seconds.

Her dilated, lifeless pupils were frozen wide open—still locked in absolute terror and helpless despair. A violent tremor ripped through my spectral form.

My phantom lungs stopped working. That woman… that shattered, bleeding corpse was me! A sleepdeprived semitruck driver had hit me headon. Instant death.

Two lives wiped out in a single second. Tristan looked like he had just taken a bullet to the chest. He froze entirely. His chest stopped rising and falling.

His bloodshot eyes locked onto the horrific crime scene photo, the whites of his eyes turning a violent, sickening shade of red. "Wake up!" Zara sneered, her voice laced with absolute venom. "Your wife has been dead for months.

You were the one who signed for her mangled corpse at the morgue, or did your alcoholic brain conveniently forget that?" Zara glared at him like he was a cockroach