At the wedding ceremony, the officiant invited the groom to share a few words. No one expected him to slap himself across the face in front of everyone. “This slap,” he declared, his voice cutting through the stunned silence, “is for my heartlessness. Three years ago, I listened to my parents and stayed home—and lost the one I truly loved.” I glanced at my parents, whose faces had tightened with barely suppressed anger. I gave a small shake of my head, willing them to hold back. Then he slapped himself again. “This second slap is for my cruelty. I destroyed a life that never had the chance to be born.” My entire body went rigid. Leo Lancaster and I had been together for three years. We had never had a child. “And this third slap,” he said, his voice dropping low, “is for my failure as a son.” He looked at me. Then at his own parents. “Mom. Dad. Elara—I’m sorry. The wedding will have to wait. Today, I have to go to the airport. I’m picking up Vivienne.” That day, I became the laughingstock of every elite family in Harbor City. The next morning, I held a press conference and announced two things: First: I was putting my marriage up for auction. Highest bidder takes all. Second: I was launching a full-scale hostile takeover of Lancaster Group—and I would not stop until it was bankrupt. …… The moment the announcement ended, the room erupted. Cameras and microphones surged toward me from every direction. “Ms. Hilton,” a reporter called out, “yesterday Mr. Lancaster said the wedding was merely postponed. Now you’re auctioning off your own marriage and openly targeting Lancaster Group. Are you declaring war on him?” “Ms. Hilton, rumor has it Mr. Lancaster pursued you for three full years, and you took three years to say yes. Can you really let go so easily?” I tightened my grip on the microphone. After a pause, I drew a slow breath and answered, “Leo Lancaster and I are enemies now. There is nothing left between us.” I glanced down at my phone. An unknown number had sent me a video. In it, Leo’s hands were removing the last piece of clothing from Vivienne Pierce’s body. On Leo’s wrist gleamed a Vacheron Constantin watch—the limited edition I had given him for his birthday. I raised my head. A cold smile curled at the corner of my mouth. I turned the phone screen toward the press. “You’ve all worked hard today. Allow me to offer you a gift.” Leo’s affair video was captured by dozens of media outlets simultaneously. Three hours later, it detonated across Harbor City. 【Lancaster Scandal: Groom Abandons New Wife to Meet Mistress — Explicit Video Leaked】 【Unbelievable: Leo Lancaster Ditches Billionaire Wife, Checks Into Hotel with Lover — Full Footage Exposed】 I was peeling fruit and scrolling through the headlines when Leo arrived at my door—with Vivienne in tow. He swept everything off the table with one furious arm. Then his hand closed around my throat, squeezing hard, demanding I apologize to Vivienne. “Elara Hilton,” he snarled, “I delayed the wedding by a few days. That’s it. And you leaked that video of me and Vivienne—do you have any idea what that’s doing to her? She just graduated. She can’t handle this kind of harassment.” I forced a slow breath past his grip. “You abandoned me at the altar in front of everyone,” I said. “Did you stop to wonder how I would handle that?” His fingers tightened. My face flooded with heat. “You,” he said, his voice dropping to something venomous, “are nothing but Shen’s dirty little secret. An illegitimate child. What do you have to lose?” My heart plummeted like a stone. When we first got together, he had said: Your background may be complicated, but I’ll have all of Lancaster Group stand behind you. I’ll make you the most powerful name in Harbor City. And now he was using the thing I feared most to twist the knife. So be it. If that’s how it is—then prepare yourself, Leo. The illegitimate child you looked down on is about to make you pay. Before the darkness closed in, I clenched the fruit knife in my hand and drove it into Vivienne Pierce’s right palm. “Leo Lancaster,” I said through gritted teeth, “I am not your seasoning. I was never something you could pick up and put down.” “Leo—blood!” Vivienne screamed, lunging forward. “You—you hurt her, you psycho!” I grabbed Vivienne’s wrist, held the blade up to her face, and met her eyes. “Before you come at me, make sure you know what you’re walking into.” Crack. A blow landed hard across my cheek. It burned like fire. “Vivienne is everything to me,” Leo said, his voice shaking with rage. “Touch me all you want—but if you ever lay a hand on her again, I will destroy your entire family.” I stood very still. The composure I had held together since yesterday fractured—slowly, like a web of hairline cracks splitting apart all at once. Once, when I was a child—locked outside in the rain by my stepmother and older brother—it was Leo who had held me and said those same words. Elara Hilton is the person I treasure most. Anyone who hurts her again will watch Lancaster Group vanish from this city. How laughable. I picked up my phone and called my assistant. “Put out a statement,” I said, my voice perfectly calm, my expression carved from iron. “Whoever has the means to bankrupt Lancaster Group—I will marry them.”
I turned to Leo and said, with quiet contempt, “Tell your father that the humiliation I’ve suffered will be repaid—by every last member of the Lancaster family.” The color drained from his face in waves. “Elara, don’t be ridiculous,” Vivienne cut in, looping her arm through Leo’s. “She’s an illegitimate child. He doesn’t have the reach to pull something like this off.” I let my gaze settle on Vivienne for a long moment, then stepped toward her slowly, deliberately. “Your punishment is coming,” I said quietly. “Soon.” I turned to the butler. “See them out.” I walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows and sat down at my desk. Then I gave the order: short Lancaster Group stock. Across the board. I watched the numbers shift on the screen, the graph dipping in real time, and felt the corner of my mouth lift. The humiliation of that altar—I was repaying it, inch by inch, in the only language that mattered. Three hours later, Lancaster Group’s stock had dropped three points. But it wasn’t enough. My phone buzzed. “Elara Hilton. Stop this. You’ll drag the whole Hilton Group down with you.” My father. Voice tight with fury. “You got dumped because you weren’t good enough. Come home. We’re going to go apologize to the old man Lancaster together.” I kept my tone even. “Father, if anyone is owed an apology—it’s me.” “Have you lost your mind? As of tomorrow, you’re no longer General Manager of the company. Your brother is taking over.” He hung up. Before I could set the phone down, it buzzed again. An old familiar number. I didn’t answer. I let it ring. It rang dozens of times before finally going silent. Then a string of long voice messages appeared on my screen. 【What happened at the wedding was my fault—I know that. But Dad has already dealt with me over it. You had no right to auction off your marriage like that. You’ve publicly embarrassed the Lancaster family, and my parents are furious. Get to the Lancaster estate immediately and apologize to them. On your knees.】 【As for shorting our stock—we’ll let that go for now. We can absorb the loss. But tomorrow morning, you will stand beside me in front of the cameras and confirm that the video of me and Vivienne was fabricated. You will play the loving husband. You will smile.】 I blocked Leo’s number without hesitation. The next morning, he was waiting outside my door. “You didn’t answer my calls. My parents are livid—if you don’t come and apologize, they have ways of making your life very difficult.” He paused. When I said nothing, his voice shifted, softened slightly. “I know I was wrong. I shouldn’t have walked out on our wedding. But you can’t just do whatever you want because you’re angry.” “Leo.” My voice came out flat. “Tell me about the child.” He went silent. At the ceremony, he had stood in front of everyone and admitted it—an unborn child, gone. But in three years, he had never once mentioned it to me. “That was a long time ago,” he said finally. “You need to let it go.” I threw the termination report at his face. “The procedure date,” I said, “was right in the middle of when we were supposed to be falling in love.” He stood there. Motionless. Who was it who had told me—just three years ago—that he had chosen to stay, that his heart belonged a hundred percent to me? Who had stood with both our families present and promised me the most extravagant, most unforgettable wedding Harbor City had ever seen—and then walked away, leaving me a public joke? He had been running between two people all along. And now he had the nerve to call me the reckless one. I watched his face cycle through expressions—caught, embarrassed, searching—and picked up my phone. “Keep shorting Lancaster Group,” I told my assistant. “And hire people to flood every platform with everything you can find on Vivienne Pierce.” “Ms. Hilton,” my assistant said, hesitating. “You—you should come in. Something’s happened.”
On the way to the office, my assistant sent a single message: Bad news. Be careful. I arrived to find a swarm of journalists blocking the entrance—cameras pointed at something in the middle of the crowd. I pushed forward. Two steps in, someone threw their arms around my legs. I looked down. Vivienne Pierce was on her knees in front of me, forehead nearly touching the ground. “Ms. Hilton,” she said, voice cracking, “I know you have power I can’t imagine. But if you’re going to destroy someone—destroy me. Please. Spare Leo. Spare his parents. They’re not young anymore. They can’t take this.” As she spoke, she uncapped a small bottle and raised it toward her lips, her expression fixed with a kind of frantic resolve. “If my life is what it takes to make this stop—then at least I’ll have died for something.” Every word was a carefully placed blade. The message was clear: I’m noble enough to sacrifice myself. You’re just a scorned woman with a grudge, throwing your weight around. She’d barely finished speaking before the reporters closed in. “Ms. Hilton, are you really going to drive them both to their graves?” “Ms. Hilton, murder is a crime—will you turn yourself in if she dies, or use your connections to walk free?” I looked down at Vivienne. My expression didn’t move. “I never intended to kill anyone,” I said, each word deliberate. “And that poison isn’t mine.” Vivienne leaned in—close enough that only I could hear—and whispered, “You’ll never win against me, Elara Hilton.” Then, before I could react, she grabbed my hand, forced the bottle into my grip, wrapped both our hands around it, and tipped the contents into her own throat. “Ah—” The cameras captured every frame of it. A second later, someone wrenched the bottle from my hand. A palm connected with my face—hard. I hit the ground. Leo stood over me, his eyes burning with something beyond rage. “How could you do this,” he breathed. “Vivienne is carrying our child—my family’s grandchild—and you—” I stared up at him from the pavement. Pregnant. So it had been going on that long. The two of them, together—long before today. Every platform picked up Vivienne’s “attempted suicide.” Comment sections overflowed with people saying I deserved to be left. My personal social media was buried under waves of abuse. And then came the petition—a viral post demanding my removal as General Manager of Hilton Group. It wasn’t just Vivienne’s handiwork. My half-brother and stepmother had their fingerprints all over it too. “Secretary Liam,” I said, keeping my voice level, “suppress every negative story about me. Commission some positive coverage.” There was a pause. “Ms.… Hilton…” “The board just released a statement,” she said quietly. “They’ve removed you as General Manager. Effective immediately. All company resources are frozen to you.” “…Understood.” Lancaster Group’s stock had already recovered. I set my phone down on the table. Slowly. It didn’t shatter because I made a choice to put it down carefully. I was still sitting with the wreckage when Leo walked through the door. “I’ve had the negative press about you taken down,” he said. “Elara—if you ask me, I can also get your father to reinstate your position. I know how much you’ve worked for it. I know how badly you want to lead Hilton Group.” He paused, watching me. “But you’d have to ask.”
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