The Billionaire's $5 Million Ex-Wife

After I completed Oracle's mission to win Zayne over, I pulled the plug on this world. He begged me to stay.

His voice cracked, raw and desperate, but I did not hesitate for a single second. Life back in the real world chewed me up and spit me out. Oracle found me.

It offered me five million dollars to dive back into the book and make him fall for me all over again. I opened my mouth to agree.

Then, a translucent comment floated across my vision. "Holy shit, Oona is back. The one who walked out on him." "LMAO.

Don't tell me she thinks Zayne is still obsessed with her?" "Celeste completely fixed him.

She chose to stay and gave him a real family." "They are practically walking down the aisle. Can Oona just take a hint and back off?" Chapter 1 The words sank in slowly.

A cold, physical weight settled behind my ribs. Oona. That was me.

Oracle kept buzzing in my ear, pitching the deal like a desperate car salesman. "Just make Zayne fall for you one more time. Five million flat.

Even if you bomb it, you walk away with fifty grand for your trouble. Good deal, right?" It was a good deal. I needed that cash like I needed oxygen.

But those floating comments burned my retinas. I kept my mouth shut. I told Oracle I needed a minute to think. Oracle dumped me straight back into the book.

Right back into the apartment Zayne and I used to share. A cramped little studio. Frayed around the edges but holding that same warm, livedin feel from three years ago.

Zayne had not touched a single thing. I found the dress I stained right before I left hanging perfectly in the closet. He had scrubbed it clean and pressed it flat.

I remembered that dress. Some viral designer label. Zayne bought it behind my back. I ripped into him for blowing that much money. He never argued back.

He just stood there, his dark lashes casting shadows over his cheekbones, waiting for my temper to burn out. Then he coaxed me into trying it on, his voice a low, rough murmur.

I ran my fingers over the cold silk. Air hitched in my throat. If Zayne truly moved on. Why did he keep our place exactly like this? I lifted my chin.

My eyes scanned the tight walls. A plain white sheet plastered against the window glass snagged my vision. Harsh, jagged black letters bled through the thin paper. FOR SALE.

PRICE NEGOTIABLE. MUST SELL ASAP. I knew that aggressive handwriting anywhere. Zayne wrote it. More translucent text flooded my vision, crowding the air. "LMAO. Look at Oona's face.

Zayne isn't clinging to the past. He just hasn't gotten around to dumping the property." "She totally thought he was still pining. Plot twist!

With Celeste around, he wouldn't even spit in her direction." "Oracle only brought her back to throw a wrench in Zayne and Celeste's relationship.

Oona is just setting herself up for public humiliation." I pressed my lips into a thin, hard line. So that was the play.

Chapter 2 Oracle dangled that five million because it knew I would fail. Its real endgame was turning me into the toxic ex.

The villain meant to sabotage the main couple's happy ending. It wanted to exploit my labor for a measly fifty grand. Fifty grand. A hollow laugh scraped up my throat.

Playing the clown for fifty grand was not a bad payout. It covered exactly one week of ICU bills back in the real world.

I summoned Oracle and took the deal without a second thought. It practically hummed with smug satisfaction, wiring a massive sum into my account for "expenses." The catch?

The money only worked inside the book. If Zayne was this desperate to offload the apartment, I might as well buy it. I gripped my phone.

My thumbs punched in his tendigit number purely from muscle memory. It rang for a grueling thirty seconds. A bright, sweet voice answered. "Who is this?" My lungs seized.

I pulled the phone away and stared at the screen.

It was definitely Zayne's number. "I was walking by," I forced the words out. "I saw the 'For Sale' sign in the window." "You want to buy the place?" The girl on the other end squealed. "Oh, thank god!

Someone finally wants this dump." My grip on the phone tightened. "Are you the owner?" "I'm his girlfriend. You can call me Celeste." So this was her.

The second one who took my place. Static buzzed in my ears. I caught the muffled sounds of a hushed argument through the receiver. Two voices overlapping.

Time seemed to stretch, pulling taut. Someone snatched the phone back. "Hello." Zayne's voice hit my ear.

Cold, crisp, and hollow. "Can we meet in person to discuss this?" I fidgeted in the corner booth of the coffee shop for over an hour.

A sleek, matteblack Porsche finally pulled up to the curb. The doors popped open. A pictureperfect couple stepped out. Three years. Zayne was still devastating to look at.

The raw, jagged edges of his youth were gone. Money and power had smoothed him out, wrapping him in an easy, lethal arrogance. He leaned lazily against the car door.

Celeste said something, and a genuine smile broke across his face. He reached out and ruffled her hair. Through the thick glass window, his gaze casually flicked toward my booth.

It landed on me for a fraction of a second before sliding right past. Empty. Unbothered. My chest caved in.

I was still staring at the empty space when Celeste slid into the booth across from me. She flashed an apologetic smile. "My boyfriend got caught up with business.

He just dropped me off. I'll be handling the sale." I managed a stiff nod. "I can tell.

You two look great together." Celeste beamed, soaking up the compliment. "He runs a massive tech firm.

Clears over a hundred million in pure profit every year." She leaned in, a hint of smugness lacing her tone. "We don't need the money from the apartment.

We just want to get rid of the baggage." I swallowed the lump in my throat and asked to schedule a viewing. Celeste froze. The smugness cracked. "I don't actually have the keys.

If you want a tour, my boyfriend has to take you himself." My brow furrowed. "He didn't give you the keys before he dropped you off?" You could not sell an apartment without a walkthrough.

Zayne knew that better than anyone. Chapter 3 Celeste let out a dry, bitter laugh. "I asked for the keys. He refused.

He has never even taken me there." She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Honestly? He lived there with his exwife back when he started his business.

It gives me the creeps. I just want it gone." "Oh." "In that case, skip the tour. Let's just sign the papers." Celeste lit up.

She whipped out the sale agreement before I could change my mind. But she lacked the actual deed. We could not finalize the transfer yet. We still had to wait for Zayne.

The silence dragged. I stared at the girl who shared my exact same mission. "How did you two get together?" I asked, pushing my luck.

What I really wanted to know involved her strategy to break Zayne. Oracle warned me. After I pulled the plug, Zayne plunged into a secondary dark phase. He slit his wrists.

Tried to end it all. His toxicity levels spiked so high it threatened the stability of the entire simulation. Celeste stepped into the picture right at that breaking point.

She did not just talk him off the ledge. She wiped my existence from his mind completely. Cracking Zayne felt like walking through fire. She must have suffered immensely.

Instead, Celeste offered a breezy smile. "His ex had just dumped him. He hit rock bottom. I just stuck around and comforted him. We made it official pretty quick." That easy?

My stomach twisted. A fresh wave of translucent text bombarded my vision. "LMAO Oona is spiraling.

Zayne holds zero defenses when it comes to our girl." "Remember how Oona spent ten whole years chasing him?

She threw herself at him endlessly before he finally caved." "Celeste literally just talked to the guy, and Oona's years of hard work vanished.

That is the power of true love." I stared blankly at the floating mockery. They nailed it. Breaking down Zayne's walls took everything I had.

The kind of trauma I never wanted to relive. Preston and Blanche despised him.

They dumped him in a psychiatric ward as a kid, leaving him to the mercy of Grover, a sadistic orderly. Violent psychopaths packed the halls.

The asylum operated like a maximumsecurity prison. Even with Oracle feeding me intel, breaking him out nearly cost me my life. I dragged him to a new state. Forced him into school.

Paid out of pocket for premium therapy sessions every single week. I bled myself dry just to earn a scrap of his trust. But Zayne possessed a terrifying intellect.

He saw right through the simulation. He figured out my identity and my mission without breaking a sweat. The day he got his acceptance letter to an Ivy League.

I threw him a massive celebration. He grabbed my wrist. His grip clamped down like a vice.

His dead eyes locked onto mine, masking a toxic, bitter edge. "You only did all this because it's your mission. Right?" Oxygen stalled in my lungs. My throat seized.

I choked back the rising bile, fighting for air. "I love you," I rasped, my vocal cords scraping together. "That is my purpose." Chapter 4 Zayne let out a low, rough scoff.

He did not buy a single word. My pulse spiked.

I pressed my cheek flat against the hard plane of his chest. "Zayne, let it go," I mumbled into his shirt. "I am so drained from these past few years.

You just need to hurry up and give me a good life." "I actually love you. Stop interrogating me. It hurts." After college, Zayne launched his startup.

We dragged our boxes into that cramped, beatup studio. The radiator broke every single winter. The freezing temperatures turned my toes to ice.

Every night, Zayne pulled my numb feet into his lap. He worked his thumbs deep into my arches. He kept his mouth shut, but the rims of his eyes always burned a raw, angry red.

We tied the knot right around then. His grand villain arc of building a tech empire to burn the world down shifted. It morphed into a painfully ordinary goal.

He just wanted to make enough cash to buy his wife a house. We hustled all day. At night, we tangled our limbs together on that tiny, sagging mattress.

I pitched to venture capitalists. Hayes, the lead investor, backed me into a corner and humiliated me. I swallowed the panic.

I paced the empty sidewalks alone, hot tears tracking down my face, too terrified to tell Zayne the truth. A rival company sent thugs to send a message.

I threw my body right in front of Zayne. I took the hit. I woke up under blinding surgical lights. I bled for him over and over again.

That was what it took to chisel through his armor. I spent a decade breaking him. Celeste needed exactly three weeks. She dragged his toxicity levels down to negative one hundred.

She maxed out his devotion. Celeste's voice pulled me back to the present. She kept rattling off their cute little couple moments. She claimed Zayne fell for her at first sight.

Acid clawed at the back of my throat. I shoved it down and took a slow drag of my milkshake. "Did he ever... mention his exwife to you?" Celeste tilted her head.

A smug, victorious smirk stretched across her lips. "Never. He definitely moved on ages ago." I offered a tight nod. Good. I possessed zero interest in wrecking their happy ending.

When Zayne finally showed his face, I planned to play the desperate, regretful ex. I would throw myself at him.

Knowing his explosive temper, he would look at me like garbage and shove me away. The second he rejected me, I could grab my fifty grand and permanently exit this simulation.

I mapped out the perfect exit strategy. Celeste's phone buzzed. She snatched it up, her eyes sparking with excitement. "My boyfriend just wrapped up his meeting.

He is picking me up for a date. Let's hammer out the apartment details tomorrow." My muscles locked up.

I forced a stiff, plastic smile. "I should get going..." Celeste clamped her hand around my forearm, tugging me close. "Where do you live?

I will have him drop you off." The smile cracked and died on my face. Her bubbly energy suffocated me.

I blinked, and the heavy thud of a car door sealing me inside snapped me to reality. Crisp, sharp pine cologne saturated the trapped air.

Celeste's sweet, cloying voice buzzed in my ear. She flashed her fresh manicure at Zayne, giggling. Zayne occupied the driver's seat right in front of me.

I stared directly at his knuckles gripping the leather steering wheel. He kept his eyes locked on the road. Yet, he murmured a soft response to every single word she said.

I caught his sharp, flawless profile in the rearview mirror. For one terrifying second, reality slipped away entirely. Chapter 5 Zayne never possessed this kind of patience with me.

Back then, paranoia consumed him. He knew my mission. He anticipated my disappearance every single second. He jerked awake in the dead of night, gasping for air.

His frantic hands scoured the mattress, searching for my body heat. I dragged myself out of sleep to soothe him. "I am right here. I love you.

This has nothing to do with Oracle." I fed him that lie right up until the second I pulled the plug. Tears tracked down his face.

His knuckles turned white as he crushed my fingers in his grip. He begged me to stay. Just a little longer. Just a few more years.

I exhaled a slow, heavy breath and rejected every plea. Blood drained from his face. Raw, feral panic fractured his gaze. "Why? You said you loved me. How can you just walk away?

You swore you would never leave me alone." A bitter laugh scraped my throat. "I have my own boyfriend back in the real world." Zayne felt my eyes on him. His brow furrowed.

He flicked his gaze up. Our eyes locked in the rearview mirror. Tires screeched. The Porsche jerked forward violently. Momentum threw me out of my seat.

My forehead slammed against the window glass. A dull ache bloomed across my skin. "My bad." His voice scraped out, low and rough.

He tilted his head a fraction. "We are at your place." My brain stalled. I blinked, forcing out a quick thanks. Celeste asked for my address earlier.

I threw out the name of a random gated community. I locked in our next meeting and pushed the car door open. Zayne kept his eyes glued to the dashboard. He refused to look back.

The engine roared. The taillights vanished down the street in a blur of speed. Pedestrians brushed past me at the complex gates.

I wrapped my arms around my ribs and sank to the concrete. Minutes dragged into oblivion. The sleek black Porsche rolled up, aggressive and entirely silent.

The tinted window glided down. Sharp, flawless features emerged from the shadows. Zayne stared at me, his expression a blank wall. "Get in." I figured he would corner me eventually.

I just never expected it this fast. My pulse hammered against my throat. I held zero preparation for this. The silence stretched tight. Zayne flicked a lighter.

A cigarette rested between his lips. My brow snapped into a frown. I hated the smell of tobacco on him.

Back then, I snatched them straight from his mouth and crushed them under my heel. He listened to me back then. I demanded he quit, and he never touched another pack.

Now, he dragged the smoke deep into his lungs. He exhaled a thick white cloud, his eyes raking over me with zero restraint. I bit the inside of my cheek. I opened my mouth to speak.

Translucent text suffocated my vision again. "Why is Oona playing hard to get? Does she seriously think Zayne wants her back? " "He totally knew it was her.

He just kept his mouth shut so Celeste wouldn't stress over it." "He only doubled back to threaten her into silence.

Otherwise, he wouldn't waste his breath." I froze on the concrete. Ice flooded my veins, dropping my core temperature to zero.

Every ounce of my impulsive anger evaporated into thin air. I lacked the right to dictate his habits anymore. His pale fingers dangled lazily out the window.

Zayne severed eye contact, his face entirely unreadable. A mocking smirk hitched the corner of his mouth.

He crushed the cigarette against the door frame. "I thought you wanted a house. Get in. I will give you the tour." Chapter 6 The drive suffocated me. Zayne kept his jaw locked.

He refused to waste a single syllable on me. Translucent text exploded across my vision, loud and relentless. "Oona knows her place. She took the backseat.

Passenger seat is strictly for the girlfriend." "Why is he dragging her to their old place? Isn't he supposed to be warning her off?" "Relax. He doesn't know her game yet.

Once she drops the mask, he will be totally disgusted." We stopped at the front door. "Don't you have anything to... ask me?" I pushed the words out. Zayne paused.

The keys jingled in his loose grip. He tilted his head, waiting for the punchline. I forced myself to hold his gaze. "Like why I came back. How long I am staying.

Why I am buying this apartment." "I don't care." His voice flatlined. "I don't care who buys it. Every trace of you is getting scrubbed." He shoved his hands into his pockets.

A harsh scoff ripped from his throat. "Don't tell me you are trying to make me fall for you again?" "What if I am?" "Be my guest." Zayne shoved the door open. The hinges groaned.

The apartment swallowed us whole. Dust motes danced in the fractured light. Zayne stood inches behind my left shoulder. The heavy fabric of his coat brushed against my sleeve.

Neither of us spoke. The silence dragged, pulling me down into a memory of an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. We just got back from the farmer's market.

Plastic bags dug into his fingers, packed tight with my favorite snacks. We were laughing, shoving each other playfully in the cramped hallway.

I launched myself at him the second the deadbolt clicked. My arms clamped around his neck. I giggled, blindly chasing his mouth. He stumbled back.

His spine hit the solid wood of the door. He dropped the bags. His hands gripped my waist, his thumbs pressing hot and hard into my skin.

He kissed me back, a low, helpless groan vibrating against my lips. Cold fingers clamped around my wrist. My spine snapped straight. The memory shattered.

Zayne dropped my arm like I burned him. His expression remained utterly dead. "Look around.

Selling it to you saves me the hassle of gutting the place." I gave the tiny room a hollow sweep. "It's fine. I am meeting Celeste tomorrow to finalize the paperwork.

You don't need to show up." "Done." He fired back instantly. He dragged out the silence. A lethal smirk crept up his face. "Drop the defense mechanisms.

If I had it my way, I would never look at your face again." "I only brought you here to shut you up." His eyes bored into my skull. "Don't go spouting garbage to Celeste." "I don't want her upset.

Are we clear?" I dragged a jagged breath into my lungs. "I won't breathe a word about us to Celeste." "Good." The air turned toxic. I knew my cue. I needed to walk away.

But that fifty grand anchored my boots to the floorboards. I forced a physical ache into my throat. My vocal cords rasped. "Zayne. I screwed up back then.

I never should have walked out on you." A violent storm fractured the dead black of his irises.

He narrowed his eyes, tracking my every microexpression. "Keep talking." "I came back to fix this.

To make it right." I pushed the desperation into my voice. "I realized I never stopped loving you.

Can you just..." I stared at him, letting my breath stutter. "Can you... give me another chance?" Chapter 7 The apartment flatlined into absolute silence.

After the words left my mouth, translucent mockery suffocated my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut. Heat crawled up my neck, burning my cheeks. Pure, raw humiliation.

Seconds bled out. A low, gravelly laugh vibrated through the room. "What?" Zayne mocked. "Did your comatose husband in the real world finally flatline?

Decided to come crawling back to your eternal backup plan?" My head snapped up. A muscle ticked violently under my eye. My lips parted, trembling with a sudden surge of heat.

Zayne tracked every microexpression with dead, pitchblack eyes. He cocked an eyebrow. "Sorry.

Didn't you notice?" "I have someone of my own now." He delivered the words with lethal indifference. But his pupils dilated, locked onto my face like a predator.

My corneas burned dry. I forced a hard blink. "I know." A ghost of a smirk twitched on his lips. Or maybe it was nothing at all.

He turned on his heel, shoved the door open, and walked out. "So satisfying! I waited forever for this exact moment." "LMAO.

Karma finally caught up with Oona." "She should just log out of the simulation.

She could save him a hundred times and he still wouldn't look twice at her." "He still went soft on her though. Left the keys so she wouldn't be homeless... Wait.

What is under the keys?" The breath hitched in my throat. I shifted my gaze to the glasstopped table. Zayne dropped the apartment keys before he crossed the threshold.

Beneath the dull brass metal sat a heavy, dark red document folder. "WTF! Am I hallucinating? That is the property deed!" "Why the hell did he leave the deed for Oona?

Shouldn't Celeste have that?" My fingers shook. I flipped the heavy cover open. The floating text vanished. Dead silence hit my vision. Only one name occupied the owner's line.

Mine. Memory slammed into me