The CEO's Ghost Wife Returns

On our seventh anniversary, I flatlined. Hayes swapped my imported, lifesaving meds. For Vitamin C pills. I clawed my way back from death in that freezing ICU bed.

But I lost the baby. And my arrogant husband? He wiped tears off his pickme childhood bestie's cheeks. He snapped his head toward me.

Annoyance hardened his jaw. "It’s a minor mistake. Stop making a scene!" Fine. No more scenes.

The second I stepped out of those hospital doors, I hit send on the signed divorce papers.

Chapter 1 The defibrillators dragged me back to the land of the living, but the hollow, tearing ache in my womb delivered the real verdict. The baby didn't make it.

The second the ICU nurses unhooked my IVs, I hit send on the PDF file I’d kept in my drafts for months. The divorce papers. My phone buzzed. He finally acknowledged my existence.

Not with a frantic apology. A video call. Bianca, his childhood best friend, dominated the screen.

Tears tracked through her delicate makeup. "Maeve, it’s my fault," she choked out, her voice filled with fake guilt. "I made a careless mistake.

Please don't blame Hayes." Hayes didn't even look at the camera. His thumb brushed a tissue over her cheek. A practiced, intimate gesture. Then his eyes flicked to the lens. Cold.

Annoyed. "It’s a minor mixup. Stop making a scene." I didn't see him again until my discharge day. "Why is this place a disaster?" His heavy footsteps echoed in the foyer.

The first time he’d stepped foot in our house all month. He forgot the hospital discharged me today. I’d only beaten him home by thirty minutes.

Hayes ran a finger along the entryway console. He stared at the faint smudge of dust on his skin.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. "You have ten minutes to fix this." The CEO barked orders in his own home. Always the untouchable dictator. I stared at the sterile, echoing walls.

This house felt like a mausoleum. I didn't move a single muscle to clean. Scrubbing the floors until they shined wouldn't change a damn thing.

It wouldn't make him come home more than once a month on the fifteenth. I collapsed onto the couch and scrolled through my unread emails. A door clicked open.

Hayes strode out of his office. His gaze dragged over my slumped posture.

Disgust flashed in his eyes before he dug a velvet box out of his suit pocket. "Forgot to give this to you." He tossed it onto the coffee table like a careless handout.

A pearl necklace gleamed inside. He expected me to smile, put it on, and sweep his red flags under the rug. Like always. I didn't touch the velvet. My stomach churned.

I knew exactly where that necklace came from. Bianca rejected it, so it trickled down to me. Years ago, he spent hours tracking down custom jewelry for me.

He used to whisper against my skin that his wife deserved the world. Now, I scavenged for Bianca's leftovers. "What is your problem now?" Hayes snapped. His patience evaporated.

I locked my phone screen and met his glare headon. "The lawyers' offices are still open.

Let's finalize the divorce." Ever since he took over the firm, getting ten minutes of his time required jumping through hoops with his secretary.

He stood right in front of me today.

Perfect timing to burn this marriage to the ground. "Maeve, grow up." He sighed, rubbing his temples. "What do you gain from throwing these tantrums?" "Bianca runs a million things a day.

She made an honest mistake with your pills." He yanked at his silk tie and dropped into the armchair opposite me. "You’re sitting right here. You’re fine." You're fine.

My lungs seized. The oxygen sucked right out of the room. A cold sweat broke out over my collarbones. My neardeath experience. The loss of our baby.

It all boiled down to Bianca's "honest mistake." During that video call, I spotted the exact prescription bottle I begged him to pick up. It sat right on his mahogany desk.

If he gave a single damn about me, he would have grabbed those pills and sprinted to the hospital. Everything shattered the second Bianca returned to the States.

She secured the board's votes. She cemented his position as CEO. And he slipped right through my fingers. They dominated the society pages. The perfect power couple.

Meanwhile, I played the secret wife hidden in the shadows. I offered zero corporate leverage. I brought him zero clout.

My fostercare background never matched his billionaire pedigree. Bianca checked all his boxes. Men gravitate toward power and perfection. I understood that.

But he had put a ring on my finger. He had put a child in my womb. My thumb traced the raised, jagged scar on my wrist. A bitter, ragged breath tore from my throat.

Chapter 2 He took my silence for submission. No screaming. No thrown vases.

Hayes assumed I finally learned my place. "Nolan took first place at his piano competition." He adjusted his platinum cufflinks. "Did you pick up his gift?" A recital.

I didn't even know the kid played the piano. The corners of my mouth twitched. "No." That single syllable ignited a flash of rage in his eyes.

He saw it as sheer defiance. "Maeve, enough! Cross this line and there's no going back." I looked at him, finding his righteous anger utterly ridiculous.

A harsh, grating laugh ripped out of my throat. They tore my son from my arms the second they cut the umbilical cord. Bianca took him.

A former foster kid like me didn't fit the billionaire aesthetic for an heir.

Bianca—his familyarranged match, the board's chosen golden girl—held the official title of Nolan's mother. I had carried Nolan for nine grueling months.

Now, he was calling another woman Mom. I had to skulk around like a criminal just to watch my own flesh and blood grow up.

I only caught glimpses of him during the mandatory holidays at the family estate. From a distance. Once, I parked outside his elite preschool just to see his face.

The family’s private security dragged me off the pavement like a stray dog. Sirens flashed. When I collapsed at Hayes's feet, begging him, he told me to wait. I waited.

Nolan turned six. "He is your biological son.

Can you show a shred of effort?" Hayes sneered, his voice dripping with disgust. "Or are you abandoning him?" The hypocrisy punched the air straight from my lungs. Abandoning him?

They stripped every maternal right I had before the ink on his birth certificate dried!

I reached under the coffee table, shoving a wrapped Lego set I’d bought months ago toward him. "It doesn't matter. I don't exist in his world. Only Bianca does.

Just give his real mother her fairytale wedding already." The press worshipped them. Hayes and Bianca. The golden couple with their perfect sixyearold heir.

They never threw a wedding, so the tabloids naturally assumed she held the title of his secret wife. Neither family bothered to correct the narrative.

If I marched into the spotlight right now claiming to be Nolan’s mother, they'd lock me in a psych ward. My deadpan stare shattered his remaining composure. "Maeve!

If you're this sick in the head, check yourself into a damn clinic!" He kicked the leg of the coffee table. "Stop acting like a lunatic!" He spun on his heel, striding toward the front door.

Thirty more days trapped in this legal nightmare? Impossible. This marriage had sucked the marrow straight out of my bones. I lunged forward. My fingers clamped around his wrist.

Hayes froze. The rigid line of his shoulders dropped. A splitsecond flicker of something soft—something human—crossed his features. I blinked.

Just a trick of the chandelier light. "Hayes. I'm completely serious." My grip tightened. "Sign the divorce papers." Ice glazed over his eyes.

He violently ripped his arm out of my grasp. "How many times do I have to spell this out before you get it through your head?

Do you have any idea the hell I survived these past seven years?" He jabbed a finger toward my face. "Without Bianca’s backing, the board would have eaten me alive!

Why can't you grasp the basic business politics here?" "I gave you my word!

I promised if we had another kid, you could raise it!" His voice thundered off the high ceilings. "It's your own useless body that couldn't keep it!

Once the IPO launches, Bianca steps down. Then I’ll announce you to the press!" The same recycled script. The same lies. I swallowed those empty promises like gospel for years.

My stupidity cost me everything. The ultimate price. I would never be a mother again. My trembling palm pressed flat against my lower stomach. Flat. Empty.

A jagged, breathless sound tore from my lungs. "You grace this house once a month." Acid burned the back of my throat. "Did you expect me to get pregnant through immaculate conception?

I endured torture to conceive that baby." My fingernails dug crescent moons into my palms. The phantom weight in my abdomen vanished.

A freezing numbness cascaded down my spine. "And because my condition flared up…" I choked on the metallic taste of bile. "…it's gone." Chapter 3 For years, I survived on the crumbs Bianca threw my way just to know my own son.

Every milestone Nolan hit? Bianca’s brilliant parenting. Every fever, every tantrum? My toxic fosterkid genes acting up.

After screaming until my throat bled, after breaking myself against their walls, I surrendered. She gave him a perfect, privileged life. So I suffered in silence.

I choked down fistfuls of fertility pills. I tracked my cycle obsessively, praying to catch that single, monthly night Hayes bothered to show up. I just wanted a lifeline.

A tiny heartbeat to pull me out of the pitchblack void. I didn't care about the billionaire pedigree anymore. I didn't give a damn about the official Mrs. title.

But my baby was gone. Hayes whipped his head around. His mask cracked. His mouth opened, suspended in shock, before snapping shut into a hard, white line.

His gaze darted to the hallway leading to the master suite. He stared at the smeared blood on the hardwood—the exact path where I dragged myself to reach the phone.

He dropped his eyes. He actually looked away. The great CEO, suffocating on his own guilt. Looking at his guilty face, I realized he knew exactly what he did that night.

When the agony ripped through my pelvis, my calls went straight to his voicemail. Hours later, Bianca’s Instagram story updated. A sunset yacht cruise.

Hayes sat right beside her, sipping champagne.

While my body went into anaphylactic shock, suffocating my threemonth pregnancy in the dark. "Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?" he rasped.

A wet, broken laugh hacked its way up my throat. But before I could scream, his clenched fists uncurled.

His posture went rigid. "It's for the best," he said, his voice dropping to zero. "Your body is a wreck.

You couldn't handle carrying it, let alone raising it." The air evaporated from the room. A physical blow slammed into my ribs.

All the words I wanted to scream simply died in my throat.

The sterile smell of the ICU flooded my senses as the realization that my baby had been permanently stripped from my womb finally set in. "Do you want to see her?" the ICU nurse whispered, her eyes brimming with pity.

I couldn't lift my head. I couldn't feel my fingers. But I begged them to bring her to me. A girl. The little girl Hayes used to pray for.

Back when we shared a rusted bunk bed in the foster home, he mapped out our entire future. "I'm going to marry you, Maeve.

We’re going to have a little girl, and I'll give you both the entire world." His eyes used to hold nothing but my reflection. No boardrooms. No Bianca. Just me.

I used to punch his shoulder and tell him to stop reading cheap romance paperbacks. But he’d grab my face, serious, swearing he meant every word.

The old Hayes would have bled out for me. We clawed our way out of the system together. We survived on shared trauma and desperate, fierce loyalty.

We said our vows in a damp, freezing basement apartment long before the billionaires tracked him down. In the dead of winter, a faulty space heater sparked.

Flames swallowed the room in seconds. I dragged his feverburning body out into the snow. But I sprinted back into the inferno. I grabbed the hard drive holding his life's work.

The burning ceiling caved in. We couldn't afford toptier skin grafts. Thick, brutal burn scars warped across my back and shoulders. Hayes kissed every single jagged line.

He never flinched. Then I got pregnant with Nolan. And his dynasty finally came knocking.

Chapter 4 His grandmother, Meredith, the ruthless matriarch of the family, sneered at my fostercare roots and my ruined skin.

She slid a fivemilliondollar check across the mahogany table, demanding I sign the divorce papers. I didn't even blink. Hayes was my husband. We were ride or die.

True love didn't mean a damn thing to his billionaire bloodline. Corporate sabotage. Blackmail. Hayes shielded me and my unborn baby from the fallout, taking the hits himself.

But the person pulling the strings to actually save us? Bianca. I owed her my life, but I was constantly on guard around her.

Staring at her flawless blowouts and oldmoney elegance, my scarred reflection made me sick. The brutal truth tasted like ash. Hayes needed Bianca's political leverage to survive.

The board of directors circled him like vultures, waiting for the illegitimate heir to fail so they could carve up his shares. The corporate snake pit was a bloodbath.

Under Bianca’s family protection, I delivered Nolan safely. But Meredith still refused to acknowledge a nobody from the system as her granddaughterinlaw. Bianca brokered the deal.

She convinced the board to accept Nolan as the heir. The catch? Bianca’s name went on the public birth announcements. She became the mother.

Later, Hayes threw millions at toptier plastic surgeons for my skin grafts. The burn scars faded into pale, shiny webbing, but our marriage flatlined.

The moment I looked at my dead daughter in that ICU, the final nail slammed into the coffin. Hayes and I were finished. My dead silence finally made him flinch.

He realized what he just said. "Look, enough." He rubbed the back of his neck, exhaling sharply. "Do you know how terrifying you look when you sulk like this?

I'll take you back to the estate. You can hand Nolan the gift yourself. Just… wear a surgical mask." That same condescending tone. A billionaire tossing a bone to a stray.

He called the family estate "home." Fitting. Bianca practically lived there. My chest caved in. I missed my son. This would be the last time I ever saw his face.

I gave a slow, stiff nod. "Sign the divorce papers first. Then we'll go. I want a clean break before I say goodbye to him." Something in his brain snapped.

He snatched the wrapped Lego box off the table and hurled it at the wall. The cardboard exploded. Plastic bricks rained down on the hardwood.

The sound shattered the last delusion I clung to. My pulse pounded in my ears. I grabbed the framed wedding photo off the mantle. I launched it straight at the entryway.

The door clicked open. Bianca stepped inside. The frame obliterated against the doorjamb.

A jagged shard of glass ricocheted, slicing right across the exposed skin of Bianca’s foot in her designer heels. A thick bead of crimson welled up instantly. I froze.

My brain shortcircuited. Why the hell did Bianca have the passcode to my house? The realization hit me like a freight train. A bitter, suffocating laugh burned my throat.

She stared at the wreckage, her brows knitting together in faux concern. "Maeve, take your anger out on me. Don't take it out on Hayes.

Even the strongest marriage can't survive you acting like this." She didn't even flinch at the blood pooling in her shoe.

She limped forward, playing the martyr, and set a thermos on the console. "I simmered this artisan bone broth for three hours.

I know my mistake is unforgivable, but I needed to do something to make it right…" Hayes ignored me entirely. He ripped open the hallway cabinet, tearing through the firstaid kit.

He dropped to his knees, his hands trembling as he carefully swabbed the tiny cut on her foot. I stared down at Bianca. The flawless makeup. The subtle Cartier jewelry.

The calculated guilt dripping from her puppydog eyes. For the first time, I saw exactly how I had been defeated. I didn't need her scraps anymore.

I refused to play the grateful, pathetic victim. "Take your damn soup and get out." My voice was dead, stripped of a single ounce of warmth. "Once the ink dries on those divorce papers, you can flaunt him all you want." Chapter 5 Bianca only had the nerve to pull this because Hayes handed her the weapon. "Maeve, why can't you see we did this for your own good?" Bianca murmured, her voice laced with fake sympathy. "You're still young.

You can have another baby once your body heals. If I actually wanted to steal Hayes from you, do you really think you'd win?" The word baby triggered a physical collapse.

A thousand jagged needles drove straight through my sternum. I doubled over. My fingers clawed at the fabric over my ribs. Bianca feigned panic. "Maeve? What's wrong?

Is your heart condition acting up again? Hayes, get the pills! We misunderstood her! Her heart is actually failing!" A bitter pill slid down my throat. Real medicine this time.

Not Vitamin C. They swapped my medication as a test. They played Russian roulette with my life just to see if I was faking a heart condition. They finally got their answer.

Oxygen rushed back into my lungs. I shoved Bianca's hands off my shoulders. "Keep your fake pity." Hayes instantly yanked Bianca against his chest.

His large, welldefined hands locked firmly around her waist. Genuine, raw panic flashed in his eyes—for her. "Maeve!

Stop acting like your illness gives you a free pass to abuse everyone around you!

Blame me if you want, but leave Bianca out of this." He glared down at me. "She carries the weight of the Mrs. Hayes title for you. She raises Nolan for you.

You owe her everything, and you treat her like dirt. Apologize to her right now!" The fight drained out of my bones. A dull, heavy ache settled deep in my chest. I checked my phone.

The lawyers’ offices were closed for the night. I forced myself to stand straight. "Hayes, sign the divorce papers, and I'll give her a public apology.

If you won't sign, get the hell out of my sight." The power couple stiffened. Hayes stared at me like I was scraping the bottom of his shoe.

The temperature in the room plummeted. "My name is on the deed to this house. You have zero right to kick us out." I blinked.

A hollow, cynical smile cracked my lips. "You're right." Ignoring his lethal glare, I grabbed my duffel bag, shoved my passport and a change of clothes inside, and walked straight out the front door.

Behind me, Bianca dropped to her knees, weeping as she gathered the scattered Lego bricks. Hayes gently pulled her up.

He kicked the remaining toys into the trash. "Let her throw her little tantrum!

We'll see how long she lasts out there!" With nowhere else to go, I dragged my exhausted body back to the only place that ever took me in—the old foster home.

Hayes froze my credit cards and blacklisted my ID. Every hotel in the city rejected my name. The old director—the woman who witnessed our basement wedding—answered the door.

Her hair was stark white now. She squinted through the porch light before her eyes widened. "Maeve? Why are you here alone? Where's Hayes?" A brutal sob lodged in my throat.

I swallowed it down. I refused to let anyone see me bleed. I curled into a ball on the lumpy mattress in my old childhood room. The walls felt like ice.

The boy who swore to love me forever didn't exist anymore. He died a long time ago. Dawn broke. I stood by the frosted window, watching the new foster kids play in the yard.

My chest tightened. Nolan. I pulled out my phone and opened Bianca's Instagram. A new post loaded. Bianca and Nolan, baking cookies. Perfect smiles. A perfect family.

Hot tears blurred my vision. I killed the idea of seeing him one last time. He had grown up believing Bianca was his mother. I was just a ghost. I refused to haunt his perfect life.

Chapter 6 My screen lit up. My numb fingers fumbled, accidentally swiping the answer button. Hayes’s voice detonated through the speaker. "Maeve, did you take Nolan?

Bring him back right now. If you traumatize him, I will end you." My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.

The suffocating dread from this morning mutated into sheer terror. "What are you talking about? Is Nolan not at the estate?

How the hell is Bianca watching him?" Panic seized my throat. A frantic pulse hammered against my eyelid. "You didn't take him?" Suspicion still coated his words.

I drove like a maniac to the family estate. The entire extended family had gathered in the grand foyer. My first official debut in front of the billionaire dynasty.

Their eyes dissected me. "That's Nolan's biological mother? Utter trash." "Good God, look at her scars. Hideous." The whispers humiliated Hayes. He cleared his throat sharply.

The room went dead silent, but their glares still flayed my skin. I didn't give a damn about their judgment. My eyes swept the massive room. No Nolan.

I lunged forward and dug my nails into Bianca's forearm. "Where is my son? What did you do to him?" My hair hung in wild tangles. My eyes burned, bloodshot and feral.

A visceral, maternal agony ripped through my core, squeezing the oxygen out of my lungs. "Enough! Haven't you embarrassed us enough?

Lock her in the cellar and get the truth out of her. No one else would dare touch my heir!" Meredith's cane slammed against the marble floor.

Each strike cracked like a whip against my spine. Two security guards clamped onto my arms, hauling me backward.

Hayes stepped forward, a fracture in his composure. "Grandmother—" "Pathetic!" Meredith spat. "What kind of spell does this psycho have on you? You are the CEO of this empire.

Act like it." "Let me go find him!" I shrieked, my vocal cords tearing. "I can find him!" Hayes went still. He watched the guards drag me toward the basement door. The dark room.

My personal hell. Years ago, Meredith locked me in that lightless vault for seven days straight, starving me to force a divorce.

When a younger, powerless Hayes finally found me, he nearly burned the estate down fighting his grandmother. But Meredith used infant Nolan as leverage.

I swallowed my trauma to stop Hayes's rampage. The guilt ate him alive. He iced Bianca out for six entire months. Six months of stolen, perfect happiness.

But borrowed time always demands payback. Seven years of swallowing glass and playing the victim. For what? To end up right back in the same cage?

Blinded by pure rage, I fought with everything I had. I wrenched my arms free from the guards. I ripped a pocketknife from my jacket pocket. I marched straight toward Hayes.

The entire room recoiled. Bodyguards reached for their holsters. I closed the distance. Three steps. Two. Then, the floor vanished. Gravity slammed me backward.

The guard's final, venomous whisper echoed on a twisted loop in my eardrums. Keep throwing tantrums, psycho, and your son dies. The world dissolved into static.

Hayes’s frantic, terrified voice pierced the fog. "Maeve! Maeve!" A concrete block dropped onto my chest. My lungs seized. Oxygen refused to enter my throat.

An invisible, rusted blade carved a cavernous hole straight through my sternum. The physical torture eclipsed everything.

Worse than the day I stood in the shadows, watching Hayes drop to one knee and slide a massive diamond onto Bianca's finger. Chapter 7 I spent years lying to myself.

I swore he only played the billionaire game out of survival.

But as his late nights bled into monthly visits, and he paraded Bianca under the blinding paparazzi flashes—I became the frog in boiling water.

He slipped entirely through my fingers. I desperately tried to use another pregnancy to anchor him.

Or at least buy myself a single shred of comfort for the rest of my miserable life. The security guard’s venomous whisper scraped against my eardrums on a loop. Impossible.

The dynasty worshipped the ground Nolan walked on. Did someone hurt him? Did Bianca finally snap and go after my son? No.

I had just seen the heartwarming photos of them together on her timeline hours ago. Four flawless, candid shots. Nolan looked up at her with pure adoration.

Kids don't fake that kind of attachment. Bianca treated him like her own flesh and blood. Why would she jeopardize her golden ticket to the altar?

The trauma dragged me into a fevered hallucination. The phantom cramps mutated. Suddenly, I slammed back into the delivery room, giving birth to Nolan. Hayes crushed my hand in his.

Tears streamed down his face. "I'd take this pain from you if I could!" He actually paid the nurses to hook him up to a contraction simulator.

Our screams echoed off the sterile tiles. Then, chaos. "Crash Csection! Fetal heart rate is dropping!" Blinding agony. Then, a freezing needle plunged into my spine. Darkness.

My eyelids ripped open. The room echoed with dead silence. No crying baby. Just Hayes. His cheekbones jutted out.

Broken blood vessels spiderwebbed across his naturally affectionate eyes. "We found Nolan," he rasped. "I'm sorry I blamed you." "Where is he?" My pulse hammered against my throat. "I need to see him." A muscle ticked in his jaw.

He swallowed a heavy sigh. "He wandered off. But he’s smart. He found his way back to the estate when he got tired.

I'll take you to see him once they discharge you." I refused to back down. I demanded a FaceTime. A photo. Anything. He broke eye contact. He stared at the linoleum floor.

A sickening flash of guilt warped his features. "Something happened to my son." The words tasted like ash. "Didn't it?" His head snapped up. Panic blew his pupils wide open.

His teeth sank into his lower lip. The ultimate tell. He only did that when he actively lied to my face