From Ashes: The Unwanted Wife's Return

For five years, I was the wife of Jace Sharpe, the city's untouchable "Golden Boy." I was a loyalty consultant paid ten million dollars to make him fall in love, but I was the one who ended up genuinely falling for him.

Then his old flame, Fallon, reappeared. When I told him I was pregnant with our child, his face became a mask of stone. Fallon smirked from the steps of his private jet.

"The baby has come at the wrong time," he said, his voice as cold as ice. "It must be aborted."

He had his men drag me to a clinic. As the anesthetic took hold, I heard him give a final, cruel order to the doctor: "A hysterectomy. I want to ensure there are no more… inconvenient surprises."

He destroyed my body and our child for another woman. Lying in that sterile room, my love turned to icy hatred. I reached for a burner phone I hadn't touched in years and sent a single message to a mysterious contact. The reply was instant: "I'll pick you up in fifteen days."

Chapter 1

Ellie Gilbert POV:

My name is Ellie Gilbert, and I am a professional loyalty consultant. My job, in essence, is to test the fidelity of the wealthy and powerful, a service I provide for a fee that would make most people gasp. For five years, I was the undisputed best in the business, a ghost in the gilded cages of New York's elite.

My career was born from desperation. My grandmother, the only family I had, was slowly being consumed by a rare degenerative disease. The experimental treatments that offered a sliver of hope came with a price tag that was astronomical, far beyond what my meager savings could cover. So, I leveraged my one true asset: an uncanny ability to read people, to become whatever they desired or feared most. I became a chameleon, a siren, a walking temptation. And I was damn good at it.

My final and most legendary assignment was a ten-million-dollar bet. The target was Jace Sharpe, the untouchable "Golden Boy" of a philanthropic dynasty so powerful their name was etched into the very fabric of New York City. The challenge, laid down by a group of his jaded, wealthy rivals, was simple: make the famously stoic and ascetic Jace Sharpe fall in love. Break his facade.

Against all odds, I succeeded.

The moment he proposed, on the sprawling ancestral estate of the Sharpe family, the city's elite society was stunned into silence. He stood before me, the afternoon sun glinting off his golden hair, and slid the Sharpe signet ring onto my finger. On his own wrist was the sandalwood mala bracelet he was never seen without, a symbol of his cultivated spiritualism. For me, he had removed it, a gesture that screamed commitment.

Of course, the vengeful losers of the bet couldn't let my victory stand. At our wedding, a spectacle of old money and new power, they