His Love My Empire

While I was fighting for my life in the delivery room, my husband was on the front page of every tabloid, caught in a scandalous affair.

He never came to see me or our newborn son. Instead, he whisked his actress mistress away to a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps, dismissing his betrayal as a mere "business arrangement."

When his mistress brazenly appeared in my home, she taunted me, claiming my husband wished I had died in childbirth. Then, she revealed a paternity test claiming my son wasn't his.

My husband believed her. He believed the lies of the woman who secretly snuck into our nursery to pinch and bruise our helpless, sleeping baby.

He took her side, shielded her from me, and even tried to take my son away to raise with her.

I had lost my parents and my brother, and now I was losing everything else. I was an orphan, a betrayed wife, and they were trying to take the only thing I had left: my child.

But they underestimated me. They thought Kane Powell was the most powerful person I knew. They were wrong.

Chapter 1

My body was a battlefield, raw and aching, stitched back together in a sterile white hospital room. The doctor had whispered words like "complications" and "miracle," clinging to life felt like a war I barely won. But the real fight, the one that truly ripped me apart, began with a hushed nurse' s words: "Mr. Powell' s affair is everywhere. Front page news."

The irony was a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth, far worse than the lingering phantom pain of childbirth. While I almost died bringing his child into the world, Kane, my powerful tech CEO husband, was making headlines for his betrayal. My vision blurred, the buzzing of the ventilator a cruel rhythm to my shattered reality.

My family, what little remained of it, tried to shield me from the brutal truth. My father, gone too soon. My mother, lost to the darkness of depression. My only brother, a tragic memory. I was an orphan, now a betrayed wife, barely a mother. They murmured about "fabricated rumors" and "media sensationalism," but the cold, hard fact of it seeped into my bones, a chilling certainty.

Kane had been quick to act. Not to my side, not to comfort me or meet his newborn son. No, he was protecting her. Cristy Taylor, the young actress with her carefully cultivated vulnerability and wide, innocent eyes. He whisked her away to a secluded luxury resort in the Swiss Alps, a fortress built to shield his mistress from public scrutiny. He even had the audacity to dismiss his infidelity as a "business arrangement," a phrase that echoed with the hollow sound of his empty promises.

When he finally graced my hospital room with his presence, his face held a strange mix of exhaustion and irritation. There was no remorse in his eyes, no profound relief that I was alive. He looked like a man utterly inconvenienced.

"Anastasia," he said, his voice flat, devoid of the warmth I once craved. "We need to talk."

My throat was raw, but my voice, though weak, was steady. "About what, Kane? Your… 'business arrangement' ?"

He flinched, a flicker of something in his eyes – not guilt, but annoyance. "It' s not what you think. It' s complicated." He always said that when he was lying.

"Complicated?" I forced a dry laugh, a painful rasp. "It looked pretty straightforward in the tabloids."

He straightened, his CEO persona snapping into place. "You' ve been investigating me?" His tone was accusatory, as if my search for the truth was the real crime.

"No, Kane," I said, my gaze unwavering. "The world has. And it found this." My hand, trembling slightly, reached for the tablet on the bedside table. I tapped the screen, turning it towards him. It displayed a leaked photo, clear and undeniable: Kane, his arm wrapped around Cristy, their faces close, laughing. There was no business in that laugh, no professional distance in that touch. Only a raw, undeniable intimacy.

His jaw tightened. "It' s nothing. A setup."

"A setup that involves you flying her to the Alps the moment the news breaks?" I countered, my voice gaining strength. "A setup where you' ve been spending more time with her than with your wife, who just almost died giving birth to your child?"