PART 1 – THE 8.4 BILLION DOLLAR GALA
As the ballroom in the Manhattan Hilton Crown rose to applaud my husband’s eight‑point‑four‑billion‑dollar merger, his mother gave the slightest signal. A second later, his mistress “stumbled” toward me and a sheet of red wine arced through the air, splashing across my pregnant belly. They expected the fragile wife to flee in tears.
Instead, I blotted the silk with a linen napkin, straightened my shoulders, and looked up at the stage where my husband was soaking in the applause. They had no idea I secretly owned the company signing his paycheck. Tonight, in the middle of New York City, I was going to dismantle their entire world without raising my voice above a whisper.
My name is Mallerie Stonewell, though for the last three hours I’d been referred to almost exclusively as Grant’s wife or, more dehumanizing, the mother‑to‑be. I stood near the edge of the ballroom at the Hilton Crown, a venue chosen specifically because the chandeliers were imported from Austria and the floor‑to‑ceiling windows offered a view of the Manhattan skyline that made everyone inside feel like a minor god looking down on the ants of midtown. The air was thick with expensive cologne, white lilies, and the faint metallic tang of desperate ambition.
Tonight was the Arklight Gala, the crowning social event of the financial quarter. On paper it was a charity event and a celebration of “partnership and innovation” in the American logistics sector. In reality, it was a victory lap for my husband.
Grant was on the verge of closing the deal of the decade. Eight‑point‑four billion dollars. That was the number on everyone’s lips.
It was whispered in the coat‑check line, toasted at the open bar, murmured in the marble restrooms. Eight‑point‑four billion. Enough money to buy small countries.
Enough money to rewrite family histories. Enough money to make a man forget that his pregnant wife was standing right next to him, her feet swollen in shoes she did not choose. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, fighting the ache in my lower back.
I was seven months pregnant—a physical reality that felt heavy and grounding amid all the ethereal, fake laughter of the party. The dress I wore was a pale, shapeless thing, a tent of sea‑foam‑green silk that managed to be both expensive and utterly unflattering. I had not picked it out.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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