Jilted Heiress: Her Reign Has Begun

My fiancé, Fremont, was caught with his pregnant mistress, but our families' decade-long alliance meant I was expected to endure the humiliation. He demanded I invite her to my parents' memorial gala. When I refused, he stabbed my hand with a knife and canceled the event entirely.

He then locked me in my parents' desecrated penthouse, announced his engagement to her, and planned to have me publicly disowned at the shareholder meeting where he would be crowned CEO.

He called my family's legacy "junk" and left me bleeding on the floor to answer his mistress's call. He thought he had broken me.

He was a fool.

At the meeting, our lawyer revealed the truth: I held the controlling 51% of the company, and the CEO had to be my husband.

Suddenly, all eyes were on me. And I was ready to make my choice.

Chapter 1

Etta Stark POV:

The scandal broke like a fever across the city, splashed across every gossip blog and whispered in every boardroom. The headline was always the same: Warren Heir, Fremont Warren, Caught in Steamy Tryst with Pregnant Mystery Woman. They used a grainy photo, taken from a distance, of my fiancé, Fremont, leading a weeping girl into his private downtown condo.

His face was turned away from the camera, but I knew the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders. I had traced them with my fingers a thousand times. The girl, Corina Gonzales, was a nobody. A waitress he' d supposedly met when she spilled a tray of champagne on him at a gallery opening. A classic, pathetic sob story.

Everyone waited for the fallout. For the all-powerful Warren family to crush this insignificant girl, to erase her from existence and restore the sanctity of my engagement to Fremont. The union that had been the bedrock of our two families for a decade.

But that' s not what happened.

I was in my studio, finalizing the floral arrangements for the annual Stark Foundation Gala, when Fremont sauntered in. He tossed his phone onto my worktable, the screen still lit up with the offending article.

"Can you believe this?" he asked, a smirk playing on his lips. He wasn't worried. He was amused.

My hands stilled over a bloom of white roses. "What is there to believe, Fremont? The pictures seem quite clear."

"Oh, Etta, don' t be like that," he sighed, running a hand through his perfectly styled dark hair. He picked up the phone. "She was crying. Distraught. What was I supposed to do? Leave her on the street?"

The lie was so effortless it felt like breathing for him. He and Corina had been sleeping together for six months. Her pregnancy was now five months along, a ticking time bomb he had somehow managed to keep hidden until now. A time bomb that was set to detonate just weeks before the shareholder meeting that would officially name him CEO of Warren Corp.

"So you took her to your private apartment?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet.

"She needed a place to calm down."

The next day, he took her to his private apartment again. And the day after that. The paparazzi had a field day. Fremont, the presumed heir to a corporate empire, parading his pregnant mistress for the world to see, while his fiancée, the woman whose family had saved his from ruin, was expected to sit silently in the shadows.

One week into the scandal, Corina Gonzales, emboldened by Fremont' s public display, found my private number.

She sent a photo of a positive pregnancy test.

I finally called Fremont. I didn't yell. My voice was as cold and still as a frozen lake. "You need to handle this."

"I am handling it," he said, his tone impatient, as if I were a bothersome fly. "Corina is just a girl. She' s emotional. She doesn' t mean any harm."

He tried to soothe me with the same empty words he always used. "You' re Etta Stark. You will be my wife. You will be the lady of the Warren family. A little fling means nothing. Don' t be so insecure."

I almost laughed. Insecurity had nothing to do with it. My power, the real power, wasn' t derived from being his wife. It was mine by birthright, sealed in blood and sacrifice. He just didn' t know it yet. He saw my tolerance as weakness, my loyalty as a given.

He was a fool.

But I didn't have time to deal with his foolishness right then. I had a more pressing duty.

The Stark Foundation Gala was not just a party. It was a memorial. An annual tribute to my parents, held on the anniversary of the day their company, their legacy, was sacrificed to save the Warrens. It was the one night a year dedicated solely to their memory.

I was meticulously reviewing the seating chart, the names of donors and old family friends blurring before my eyes. Each placement was a delicate calculation of politics and respect.

My focus was absolute, a shield against the storm raging outside the walls of my family home.

It was a storm I knew I would have to face. But first, I had to honor my parents. Fremont and his cheap affair could wait.

The quiet of the room was a fragile thing, and I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that he was about to shatter it.

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