THE DIVORCED EMPLYOEE HUSBAND IS A BITCOIN TRILLIONAIRE

CHAPTER 1

At the company victory banquet, standing in the back of the room with a glass of champagne he hadn't touched, Alex Morgan watched his wife hand over his own $100,000 bonus to her male assistant.

Three hundred employees clapped. The crystal above their heads caught the light and scattered it across the ballroom like cheap confetti. And Alex just stood there, his fingers wrapped around the stem of the glass so tight the veins on the back of his hand pressed against his skin.

"Lucas," Vivian called from the stage, her voice dripping with warmth. "Please come up. Don't be shy."

Lucas rose from the front table in his tailored gray suit, pressing one hand to his chest like the honor was more than he could bear. His face twisted into that look of practiced humility that fooled everyone in the room except Alex.

"Ma'am, I really don't deserve this," Lucas told the microphone, his voice trembling just enough to sound convincing. "There are so many people in this company who worked harder than me. I'm just grateful to be part of this team."

Vivian touched his arm with a gentle squeeze and smiled at him the way she used to smile at Alex in their first year of marriage. That smile hadn't been pointed in Alex's direction in over a year.

"Don't be modest, Lucas." Her voice softened into something almost tender. "You've been my right hand all year. The follow-ups, the client dinners, the late nights. Without you, this ten million dollar deal would never have happened."

Alex felt the muscle in his jaw tighten. A slow heat crawled from his stomach up through his chest and settled behind his eyes.

Client dinners.

Lucas had attended exactly one client dinner in the past twelve months. He got drunk on tequila within the first hour and threw up in the parking lot. The client called Alex personally the next morning and told him never to bring that clown again.

But here was Vivian, standing under a spotlight in her red dress, rewriting history like she was editing a press release.

"So please." Vivian held out a red envelope, thick and heavy. "Accept this small token. One hundred thousand dollars. A cash bonus for the hardest worker in this company."

The room erupted. Applause bounced off the marble walls. Someone at the back whistled. A junior account manager stood up and started a slow clap that rolled through the entire hall.

Lucas bowed. He actually bowed, pressing both hands together and lowering his head like a monk receiving a blessing. When he looked up again, his eyes were glistening.

"I don't know what to say, ma'am." His voice cracked beautifully on cue. "When I was a nobody sending resumes to fifty companies a week, you saw something in me. This means more than money. This is family."

Vivian pressed a hand to her own heart, her eyes wet.

Alex's stomach turned.

He looked down at the champagne in his glass. The bubbles kept rising, oblivious, one after another, going nowhere. He set the glass on the nearest table with a quiet click and folded his hands behind his back. His face was still, composed, absolutely blank. But his pulse hammered against his collar like a fist against a locked door.

That deal took me fourteen months. Fourteen months of red-eye flights and hospital visits and weekends I spent at the client's father's bedside because nobody else cared enough to show up.

A woman from marketing appeared beside him. Rebecca. One of the few people in the office who still had working eyes.

"Alex," she whispered, her face tight with secondhand shame. "I'm sorry. Everyone on the floor knows that deal was yours."

"It's fine, Rebecca." Alex kept his voice level, but his tongue felt heavy.

"It's not fine." Rebecca stepped closer, dropping her voice until it was barely a breath. "Lucas has been telling people in the break room that the deal was mostly his work. That you just showed up at the end to sign papers."

Alex's chin lifted by a fraction of an inch. "Is that what he's been saying?"

"That's the polite version." Rebecca glanced toward the stage where Lucas was still soaking in the applause, his arm raised by Vivian like a boxing champion. "You should hear what he says when he thinks nobody important is listening. He calls you the housepet. He tells people you married up and now you're just furniture."

The word hit Alex in a place he thought he had already numbed.

Housepet.

His eyes moved slowly to the stage. The spotlight made Lucas look golden, triumphant. Vivian was beaming beside him, her hand still resting on his shoulder. The two of them looked like a magazine cover. They looked like partners.

Alex looked like a shadow standing in the back of a room full of people who had already forgotten he existed.

"Alex!" Vivian's voice cut across the ballroom, sharp as a bell. "Come up here for a photo. The team wants to see the whole department together."

He could feel three hundred pairs of eyes turning toward him. Some curious. Some amused. A few full of pity so thick it made his skin crawl.

He walked toward the stage. His steps were slow and even, his back straight, his expression the pleasant, empty mask he had worn every day for the past three years. The marble floor reflected his polished shoes and the bright lights above, and for a moment it felt like he was walking through a tunnel with no end.

Vivian hooked her arm through his the second he reached the top step. She leaned in close, her perfume filling his nose, her lips nearly touching his ear.

"Smile, honey," she whispered through clenched teeth. "Don't you dare embarrass me."

Lucas turned toward him and stuck out his hand, his eyes glittering with something that wasn't gratitude.

"Alex, congratulations to you too, buddy." Lucas's grin widened, his voice just loud enough for the front row to hear. "I know you helped a little bit with the deal."

A little bit.

Alex shook his hand. His grip was firm, controlled, and absolutely still.

"Congratulations, Lucas." His tone was polite enough to frame and hang on a wall. "You must be proud."

"Oh, I am." Lucas leaned forward, his lips barely moving, his voice dropping to a whisper meant only for Alex's ears. "Don't worry, buddy. Your wife takes very good care of me. Maybe one day she'll remember to take care of you too."

The camera flashed.

Vivian smiled brilliantly. Lucas beamed. Alex's face showed nothing at all. But behind his eyes, something ancient and cold shifted into place, the way a lock clicks shut before the whole building comes down.

He stepped off the stage before the second flash.

He walked past the crowd without a word, past the clapping employees, past the bar and the dessert table and the glass doors that led to the elevator. Nobody followed him. Nobody called his name.

Twenty minutes later, he sat alone in his office on the eighteenth floor.

The city spread beneath the glass wall behind his desk. Gold and white lights blinking across a black sky, a million small fires in a million small windows. He didn't turn on the lamp. He didn't loosen his tie.

The voices from earlier turned over in his mind like stones in deep water.

"He's nothing without this company."

"Anyone could do his job."

"You'll never leave me, Alex. You wouldn't survive a week."

She had said each of those things over the past year. In their bedroom. Over breakfast. In quiet moments when she thought her words were just noise that would fade by morning.

She was wrong.

Alex opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a white envelope. He turned it over in his hands. The paper was crisp and cool against his fingertips.

The date printed in the corner read seven days ago.

He placed the resignation letter in the center of his desk and smoothed it flat with the palm of his hand. His reflection stared back at him from the dark glass wall, a man in a black suit sitting in a silent room, calm as deep water.

He allowed himself the smallest smile.

Lucas was probably downstairs counting the money in his head. Vivian was probably raising another toast. None of them knew that the man they had humiliated tonight had written this letter a full week before the knife ever touched his back.

Alex pulled out his phone and scrolled to a contact saved under a single letter.

A.

He pressed call and lifted the phone to his ear. The line rang once.