Leaving The Billionaire Who Loved His Ex

My father was dying on a hospital bed, and I was frantically calling my husband, Ethan.

He didn't answer. Later, he claimed his battery had died while he was on a crucial business trip.

But a photo sent by my best friend revealed the sickening truth. Ethan wasn't working. He was in a London café, looking at Olivia—the ex-girlfriend he swore he hadn't seen in five years—with pure desperation and love.

His phone was sitting right there on the table between them, face up and fully charged.

I swallowed the betrayal and played the perfect, grieving wife when he returned. But then I found the locked drawer in his study.

Inside wasn't just a shrine of photos of her; it was a journal. The ink was barely dry on the latest entry.

"I pray the child has Olivia's eyes. If it looks like her, I can pretend I didn't settle for the safe, boring option. Ava is a good placeholder, but she isn't Her."

He didn't want a family with me. He wanted to use my body to recreate a ghost of the woman he actually loved. He planned to turn our unborn child into a prop for his twisted obsession.

I wiped my tears. The next morning, I handed him a stack of documents to sign, hiding the divorce papers in the middle.

Then, while he was busy texting her under the table, I walked into a clinic to remove the only thing binding us together.

He thinks he is the mastermind. He has no idea he has already lost the game.

Chapter 1

Ava POV

My father was dying on a hospital bed in New York, and my husband was busy resurrecting his ex-girlfriend in London.

That is how the story ends, but at the time, I simply thought it was just a Tuesday.

I sat in the nursery, running my hand over the crib railing. It was painted a soft, creamy white. In fact, everything in my life was soft and white and perfect. I was twenty-six years old, pregnant with my first child, and married to Ethan Sterling.

Ethan was the kind of man who didn't just turn heads; he stopped traffic. He was thirty-eight, a CEO with eyes like glacial Atlantic water and a jawline that could cut glass.

I remembered how we met. I was twenty-four, struggling with a broken heel on a subway grate. He didn't just help me. He swooped in, lifted me up, and deposited me in a town car. He treated me like I was made of fine porcelain.

He told me he needed someone simple. Someone kind. He claimed I was his breath of fresh air after a lifetime of suffocating in high society.

And I believed him.

I looked down at my phone. I had sent him three messages about the ultrasound.

He hadn't replied.

He was in London for a merger. He was always working. I told myself that his work ethic was how he provided this