The Charity Case's Crown

The Charity Case's Crown

Gavin

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The whiskey glasses clinked, and the air hung thick with cigar smoke at Ethan' s bachelor party. I was just bringing in another round, playing the supportive girlfriend I' d always been for the man I loved since high school. Then I heard my name. "Anya? She' s an artist. No family, no connections. Marrying her would be a liability for the firm." He laughed. "Besides, after all these years, who else would want her? She' s practically a charity case my family took in. She' s not going anywhere." The crystal tray in my hands shattered on the marble floor, but no one bothered to look up from their celebratory drinks and laughter. He even had the audacity to crawl into my bed that night, reeking of alcohol, whispering about keeping me as his "secret girl" after he married his fiancée. Marry his fiancée, Chloe, for a business merger to save his family. Then he actually asked me to be his mistress, offering me a life of comfort as if that erased the disrespect. "Ungrateful," he spat, calling me "an orphan with nothing" when I refused. My heart shattered, then hardened. How could I have been so blind, so stupid, to trade everything for someone who saw me as a pet, a liability, a charity case? The next day, as I stood by the bench where we' d carved our initials, I saw him and Chloe, his new initials gouged over mine. My love, my future, my very identity... all erased by him. But on that very day, receiving a call from a billionaire I' d once shown a small kindness to, I turned away from the Hamilton mansion for good. It was time to show them what this "charity case" could become.

Introduction

The whiskey glasses clinked, and the air hung thick with cigar smoke at Ethan' s bachelor party.

I was just bringing in another round, playing the supportive girlfriend I' d always been for the man I loved since high school.

Then I heard my name.

"Anya? She' s an artist. No family, no connections. Marrying her would be a liability for the firm."

He laughed.

"Besides, after all these years, who else would want her? She' s practically a charity case my family took in. She' s not going anywhere."

The crystal tray in my hands shattered on the marble floor, but no one bothered to look up from their celebratory drinks and laughter.

He even had the audacity to crawl into my bed that night, reeking of alcohol, whispering about keeping me as his "secret girl" after he married his fiancée.

Marry his fiancée, Chloe, for a business merger to save his family.

Then he actually asked me to be his mistress, offering me a life of comfort as if that erased the disrespect.

"Ungrateful," he spat, calling me "an orphan with nothing" when I refused.

My heart shattered, then hardened.

How could I have been so blind, so stupid, to trade everything for someone who saw me as a pet, a liability, a charity case?

The next day, as I stood by the bench where we' d carved our initials, I saw him and Chloe, his new initials gouged over mine.

My love, my future, my very identity... all erased by him.

But on that very day, receiving a call from a billionaire I' d once shown a small kindness to, I turned away from the Hamilton mansion for good.

It was time to show them what this "charity case" could become.

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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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