She Wants My Fortune, Not My Heart

The Hidden Billionaire & Debt Paid in Full

TOM POV

For five seconds, I just stared at her.

Then a laugh low, rough, and completely devoid of humor scrapes up my throat.

"Cheating?" I repeat, tilting my head as I look down at the manicured fingers digging into my forearm. "That’s a bold word coming from you, Vivian. Why is that the first place your mind goes? Are you asking because you’re already sleeping with someone else, so you assume I must be, too?"

Vivian’s breath hitches.

It’s barely a flicker of a half-second dart of her eyes toward the living room rug but I’ve spent five years studying every micro-expression on this woman’s face. Guilt flashes across her features before she slams her composure back into place.

"That’s ridiculous," she says quickly, her voice softening from a venomous hiss into that smooth, soothing cadence she uses whenever she needs to manage a crisis. Her grip on my sleeve loosens, her palm sliding up to stroke my chest. "I drank too much champagne at the hotel, and my head is pounding. I didn't mean to snap at you, Tom.

Come on, let’s not fight tonight."

I catch her wrist and knock her hand off my chest.

"Don't touch me."

Vivian stumbles back half a step, her eyes flaring wide with genuine shock. In five years, I have never raised my voice to her. I have never once rejected her touch—mostly because she never offered it unless she wanted something signed.

"Tom, what has gotten into you?" she demands, hugging her arms across her stomach.

"Five years," I bite out, taking a step toward her until she’s the one backing up against the edge of the marble console table. "We’ve lived under this roof for five years, Vivian, and you haven't let me share your bed once. Every time I get within two feet of you, you flinch like my hands are made of acid. So forgive me if I think you have someone else warming your bed, especially after what I heard outside the VIP lounge at your banquet tonight."

All the blood drains from Vivian’s face. Her lips part, her chest rising and falling in shallow, panicked jerks.

"What..." She swallows hard, her fingers gripping the edge of the marble table behind her until her knuckles turn white. "What did you hear?"

She thinks I’m going to say the fake marriage certificate. I can see the terror of it sitting right behind her eyes—not the fear of losing me, but the fear of losing Patent #409-X before Monday morning.

I’m not ready to play that card yet. If she knows I know the marriage is a sham, she’ll spend the weekend scrambling to steal the code off my servers instead of walking blindly into the trap waiting for her next week.

"I heard Scarlet talking before I opened the door," I say coldly, watching her squirm. "She mentioned that Matthew Badnor is back in the city and that he’s sitting in the director’s chair at Vanguard. Your first love happens to run the exact partner company you just signed a three-year cooperation deal with tonight. Tell me I shouldn't find that cozy."

Relief washes over Vivian’s face so fast it’s almost comical.

Her shoulders drop an inch, the color rushing back into her cheeks now that she realizes her biggest secret is still safe.

"Matthew?" She lets out a breathless, practiced sigh and steps right back into my space, her hands coming up to frame my jaw. "God, Tom, you scared me. You stood outside the door and heard Scarlet gossiping about Matthew?"

"Take your hands off me, Vivian."

"No, listen to me," she insists, rising onto her toes so her eyes are level with mine, pouring every ounce of fake devotion she has into her gaze. "Matthew and I ended before college graduation. The only reason I agreed to work with him at Vanguard is because Apex Global is announcing their five-year enterprise tender next Friday."

Apex Global.

I keep my face carved out of stone, refusing to let the irony show in my eyes.

"You know how massive that tender is," Vivian rushes on, her thumb brushing my cheekbone. "If Baudelaire Tech wins the Apex Global contract, our valuation triples overnight. I need Vanguard’s distribution channels to qualify for the final round. I’m doing this for us, Tom. For our future."

She’s lying straight through her teeth, and she has no idea who she’s lying to.

She thinks Apex Global is some untouchable corporate giant she can conquer by riding Matthew Badnor’s coattails and using my code. She doesn't know that the man standing in front of her, the husband she mocked as looking like the help three hours ago, is the sole heir to the Monroe family fortune. She doesn't know that five years ago, I walked out of Apex Global’s top-floor boardroom to marry her, or that I still hold sixty-two percent of the conglomerate’s voting shares.

The tender she’s willing to betray me for? It’s my tender.

"I don't buy it," I say flatly, looking down at her painted mouth. "Words are cheap, Vivian. Anyone can make up an excuse. Especially the business one."

"It’s not an excuse!" Panic creeps back into her voice as I turn toward the stairs. She lunges forward, grabbing the back of my jacket. "Wait—where are you going? You can't still be angry about this, not when we have the patent transfer to finalize on Monday—"

There it is. The only thing she actually cares about.

I stop at the foot of the staircase and look back over my shoulder at her. "You want me to believe you aren't screwing your ex behind my back? You want my signature on Monday? Then stop talking and prove you’re my wife."

Vivian freezes.

Her gaze drops from my eyes to my mouth, then flicks toward the wide staircase leading up to the master suite.

For three seconds, I watch the war play out behind her eyes. The distaste she bragged to Scarlet about versus the tens of millions of dollars my patent will bring her company.

Greed wins. It always does with her.

Without a word, Vivian reaches behind her back and pulls the zipper of her emerald silk gown down to the base of her spine.

The heavy green fabric slides off her shoulders, pooling around her ankles on the marble floor and leaving her standing in the foyer light in nothing but a lace bustier and her diamond earrings. Her skin is flushed pink, her hands trembling slightly as she reaches out and curls her fingers into the front of my shirt, tugging me toward the stairs.

"Come to bed, Tom," she whispers against my throat.

My pulse hammers against my ribs. Not from love, because whatever love I had for her died outside that hotel lounge at nine o’clock, but from five years of swallowed rage and a debt that is long overdue.

She used me for five years. She took my company, my youth, and my name, all while laughing behind my back and saving herself for a man who couldn't write a line of decent code to save his life. If I’m walking out of this house for good tomorrow morning, I’m not leaving empty-handed. I’m taking what she owes me.

I don't wait for her to lead me up the stairs.

I catch her beneath her thighs, haul her off the floor, and carry her straight up to the master bedroom, kicking the door shut behind us in the dark.

When her back hits the mattress, there is no gentle, patient husband left in the room. I pin her wrists into the silk pillows above her head, my mouth crashing down onto hers before she can breathe another lie. She gasps against my lips, her nails raking down my back as the heat in the room turns wild and consuming. And when I finally take her—hearing her sharp, genuine cry against my shoulder as she gives up the very first time she kept locked away from me for five years, I don't feel an ounce of mercy.

Just the cold satisfaction of a balance finally paid in full.

The sky outside the bedroom window is still bruised with early-morning gray when I slide out from beneath the tangled sheets at six-thirty.

Behind me, Vivian is dead to the world, exhausted, one bare shoulder peeking out from the duvet with the faint red marks of my fingers still bruising her hip.

I don't make a sound as I pull on a clean black dress shirt from my closet down the hall, button the cuffs, and slide into a tailored charcoal suit I haven't worn since the last time my father’s personal advisor, Jayden, met me in Geneva.

I walk back to the threshold of the master bedroom one last time.

Vivian shifts in her sleep, her hand reaching out across the warm indentation on my side of the mattress, her brow furrowing when her fingers only find empty linen. Even half-awake and flustered, she’s probably already dreaming about Monday’s patent transfer.

I reach into my pocket, pull out my brass house key and the plain gold wedding band I haven't taken off in sixty months, and set them both on the dresser beside the door.

Keep the house. Keep the fake certificate in the safe.

By the time she wakes up and realizes I’m gone, I’ll already be sitting in the boardroom at Brooks Systems, signing over the technology that’s going to tear her empire to pieces.

I pick up my briefcase, walk down the stairs, and step out into the crisp morning air without looking back.