The Placeholder Wife: His Too Late Regret

On our fifth anniversary, I didn't get a gift. I got divorce papers.

My husband, Ethan Spencer, the city's most feared Underboss, stood by while his mistress threw red wine over my white gown in front of the entire elite.

"You're just a placeholder, Brooke," she sneered. "A factory rat keeping the seat warm."

I waited for Ethan to defend me. Instead, when she planted a necklace in my bag and accused me of theft, he didn't check the cameras. He didn't look at the blood soaking my dress where he had shoved me aside.

He called the police on his own wife.

"Take her away," he ordered cold-heartedly, stepping over me to comfort the crying woman who was framing me.

I spent the night in a freezing cell, realizing that for five years, he hadn't even opened the anniversary gifts I hid in his closet. He didn't know I wrote the stories for his company's games. He didn't know I was the one keeping his empire afloat.

When I was released, I didn't go back to the penthouse.

I walked straight to the headquarters of his sworn enemy, Dominic Cannon.

"I heard you're looking for a narrative designer," I said, placing my wedding ring on his desk. "And I know exactly how to destroy the Spencer family."

By the time Ethan found out the truth and came crawling back, dying and clutching the steel rose I once made him, it was too late.

I was already wearing someone else's ring.

Chapter 1

Brooke POV

I stood anchored in the center of the ballroom, clutching the manila envelope that contained the autopsy of my marriage, while the orchestra swelled into the very song we had danced to at our wedding.

The irony was sharp enough to sever an artery.

Five years of silence. Five years of playing the perfect, invisible ghost to the most feared Underboss in the city. And on the night of our fifth anniversary, while the elite of the criminal underworld sipped champagne that cost more than my mother's life was worth to them, I was served divorce papers by a courier who trembled to be within ten feet of the Spencer family guards.

Ethan Spencer held court across the room.

He was a masterpiece of violence tailored into a tuxedo. Dark hair, a jawline sharp enough to cut glass, and eyes that usually swept over me like I was a piece of furniture he had regretted purchasing. He was laughing at something a Capo said, his hand resting heavily on the shoulder of a man he would likely order dead by sunrise. That was Ethan. He was the heir to the Spencer empire, a man whose reputation was built on broken bones and silent graves.

I was just the collateral damage.

I retreated into the shadows near a heavy velvet curtain, my fingers trembling against the coarse grain of the envelope. I should have cried. I should have made a scene. But in this world, tears