On The Day I Was Abandoned, I Married A Mysterious Billionaire

Kathrine POV:

I sat on the cold bench inside New York City Hall, the white fabric of my dress pooling around my heels.

It was my seventeenth time checking my phone. An hour had passed since the appointment time my fiancé, Earl Reynolds, and I had agreed on.

The corridor was crowded with people moving in pairs. Couples leaned into each other, holding cheap bouquets and paper cups, their soft laughs echoing off the high ceiling.

Across from where they stood, on a bench a few yards away, one man sat entirely alone.

He wore a tailored black suit with clean, heavy lines, his long legs crossed as he checked a dark wristwatch. He didn't look at his phone, and he didn't look at the couples passing by. For half a second, his pale blue eyes shifted upward and met mine across the tiled walkway. There was a hard, quiet weight in his gaze, and I looked down at my lap, pulling my fingers into my skirt.

My phone remained dark.

Earl was a rising player in the professional hockey league. In the two years we had lived together, overtime practices and sudden team meetings had delayed dozens of dinners. I had learned to adjust. Still, today was the day we were getting married at City Hall.

I dialed his assistant, Scott.

"Scott, where is Earl?"

Scott spoke in a quick rush. "Kathrine, there's a massive collision on the BQE. Total gridlock. Earl is stuck in his car trying to make his way to you."

"The live traffic map is completely clear all the way from his apartment, Scott," I said.

A heavy silence followed on the other end, and then the line went dead.

I sent a short message: Earl, where are you?

Five minutes passed. Nothing.

I gathered the folds of my dress and prepared to stand up. Just as my palms pushed off the wood, the screen lit up with Earl's name.

A sharp jolt went through my heart. I pressed the phone to my ear. "Earl?"

"Looking for Earl, sis?"

The voice belonged to Molly White, my stepsister.

"Molly? Why do you have Earl's phone?"

A soft chuckle came through the line, followed immediately by a prompt for a video call. I stared at the button, then tapped it.

Molly appeared on the screen, propped comfortably against the pillows of a hospital bed. Her makeup was intact, her hair falling in neat curls over a pink cardigan.

She turned the camera toward the small visitor's table beside her bed.

Earl was sitting there in the charcoal suit I had spent yesterday evening pressing. His head was down, his pocketknife slowly carving a clean slice from an apple. He slid the fruit into a small bowl and set it within Molly's reach.

"Earl says he has to stay until the nurses finish running my tests," Molly said, turning the camera back to herself. "He told me he couldn't leave me alone in a clinic just to rush off to City Hall."

She watched my reaction through the lens, a small smile resting on her face.

"You always try so hard for things that slip away from you, Kathrine."

My stomach tightened into a knot.

"You really do love my leftovers, don't you, Molly?" I said. "Tell Earl we're done."

I ended the call.

I opened my settings, blocked his phone number, and deleted his contact information from my device.

The couple near the doorway moved past again, their hands linked over the paperwork they were holding. I stepped toward the wall, looking down at my shoes, unwilling to walk through the main exit looking like someone who had been left behind on a bench.

Just a few feet away, the man in the black suit held a phone to his ear.

"Since you insist, then consider our engagement off," he said into the receiver. His tone was even and flat, without a single raise in pitch.

He ended the call, tucked the phone into his breast pocket, and picked up a dark folder from the seat beside him.

I looked at his profile-the sharp jaw, the faint scar crossing high on his left cheekbone, the same quiet distance he had held when our eyes met minutes earlier.

A sudden, reckless impulse took over before my thoughts could stop it.

I walked directly across the tiles and stopped in front of his bench.

He looked up. "Can I help you, miss?"

"I heard your engagement ended," I said, my heart beating hard against my ribs. "Since we're both here, and appointments are so hard to get, why don't we just do it together?"

He stared at me, his brow furrowing slightly.

The quiet between us stretched for two long seconds. The heat rushed up into my face, and the complete foolishness of what I had just said hit me.

"Never mind," I muttered, taking a quick step backward. "Consider it a bad joke."

I turned toward the glass doors to leave, but the clerk behind the front desk called out across the lobby.

"Kathrine Fields? Window three, please."

I stopped. The appointment clock on the wall showed my scheduled time.

The clerk looked across the counter, glancing around the empty space beside me. "Miss Fields? Is your partner..."

I stood as straight as I could. "My fiancé isn't coming. I'm sorry for-"

Footsteps sounded on the stone behind me, steady and unhurried.

"I'm here," a low voice said from my right shoulder.

I looked over, straight into the ice-blue eyes of the man in the black suit.