His Wedding Day, Her Perfect Vengeance

I. HAWKINS

Billionaires | Completed

5.0

Comment(s)

6.8K

View

Chapters

I found Isiah Flynn bleeding in an alley and turned him into a Wall Street king. I taught him everything, gave him an empire, and made him my secret husband. He was my masterpiece. Then his new influencer girlfriend played me a recording. I heard the voice I had crafted call me his "warden," his "crutch," the "old woman who thinks she owns me." But that was just the beginning. He took the power I gave him and used it to demolish the pediatric cancer wing we built in memory of our stillborn daughter, Hope. He was building a luxury spa on the rubble as a gift for his new lover. He even stood there and told me to my face, "Maybe if you hadn't been so obsessed with work, Hope would still be here." The man I built from nothing was trying to erase our entire history, including our dead child. He thought he could just tear me down and build his new life on my ashes. So when they sent me an invitation to their wedding, I accepted. It' s important, after all, to give a man a day of perfect happiness before you destroy him completely.

Betrayal Revenge Teacher and student Age gap Female-centered

Chapter 11

01-06 21:42

Chapter 1

I found Isiah Flynn bleeding in an alley and turned him into a Wall Street king. I taught him everything, gave him an empire, and made him my secret husband. He was my masterpiece.

Then his new influencer girlfriend played me a recording. I heard the voice I had crafted call me his "warden," his "crutch," the "old woman who thinks she owns me."

But that was just the beginning.

He took the power I gave him and used it to demolish the pediatric cancer wing we built in memory of our stillborn daughter, Hope. He was building a luxury spa on the rubble as a gift for his new lover.

He even stood there and told me to my face, "Maybe if you hadn't been so obsessed with work, Hope would still be here."

The man I built from nothing was trying to erase our entire history, including our dead child. He thought he could just tear me down and build his new life on my ashes.

So when they sent me an invitation to their wedding, I accepted. It' s important, after all, to give a man a day of perfect happiness before you destroy him completely.

Chapter 1

Gloria Franco was twelve years older than Isiah Flynn.

It was a number she remembered every time she looked at him.

She found him in a back alley behind a dive bar in Queens, bleeding from a cut above his eye.

He was a scholarship student at Columbia, brilliant and broke, fighting in illegal matches to pay for his mother' s medical bills.

He looked like a cornered animal that night.

There was hunger in his eyes, not just for food, but for everything he didn't have.

He was feral.

He was resilient.

She saw the raw material of a killer, the kind who could dominate Wall Street if given the right weapons.

So she took him in.

She cleaned him up, paid his debts, and gave him a seat at her table.

She taught him how to dress, how to speak, how to gut a company for parts and sell it for a profit.

He was a quick study.

In ten years, he went from a back-alley brawler to a hedge fund prodigy, the wunderkind of New York finance.

He was her greatest creation.

Her masterpiece.

Her secret husband.

Then came Kiley Contreras.

She was an influencer, barely old enough to drink legally, with a surgically perfected face and an ambition as sharp and ugly as a shiv.

Gloria first met her at a charity gala. Kiley, on Isiah' s arm, had looked Gloria up and down, a smirk playing on her lips.

"So you' re the legend," Kiley had said, her voice dripping with mock reverence. "Isiah talks about you all the time. His... mentor."

The word was a carefully chosen insult.

Tonight, Kiley had sought her out again, finding Gloria in the quiet solitude of her penthouse office overlooking Central Park.

Kiley stood there, holding her phone.

"I thought you should hear this," she said, her smile wide and cruel.

She pressed play.

A recording started. Kiley' s voice, giggling. "Tell me again what you call her."

Then Isiah' s voice, smooth and familiar. The voice she had crafted.

"The warden," he said, followed by a low chuckle. "My beautiful, brilliant, suffocating warden."

"And what else?" Kiley pressed.

"My leash. My crutch. The old woman who thinks she owns me because she picked me out of the gutter."

The recording continued, each word a precise, deliberate cut.

He spoke of her age, her control, her pathetic sentimentality over their stillborn daughter.

He called her a walking mausoleum.

Gloria listened without flinching, her face a mask of stone.

She had built him from nothing. She had given him a world he could only dream of, and in return, he saw her as a prison.

The irony was sharp. He complained about the cage, but he had forgotten he was the one who begged to be let in.

When the recording ended, Kiley looked triumphant.

"He' s mine now," she declared.

Gloria didn' t answer. She simply looked past Kiley, toward the hallway.

Her assistant, Marcus, appeared, followed by two security men. They were carrying a large, canvas-wrapped object.

"A wedding gift," Gloria said, her voice calm. "For you and Isiah."

They placed the object on the floor and unwrapped it.

It was the taxidermied head of Isiah' s prized black stallion, a horse he had paid a million dollars for. Its glass eyes were wide and terrified.

Kiley screamed, a shrill, ugly sound that echoed in the vast room.

The door to the office burst open.

Isiah stood there, his face pale with fury. He had a gun in his hand, a sleek, black Sig Sauer.

He pointed it directly at Gloria' s heart.

"You bitch," he snarled.

Gloria didn' t even look at the gun. She met his eyes, her own gaze flat and cold.

"You know I have a sniper across the street aimed at your head right now, Isiah."

She was lying, but he didn' t know that.

"I taught you to assess risk," she continued, her voice a low murmur. "Is this a risk you' re willing to take?"

He took a step forward, the gun unwavering. He was no longer the boy she found in the alley, but he still had that same feral glint in his eye.

He was bigger now. More dangerous. Polished by her money and his own success.

"You' ve gone too far, Gloria."

"Save the dramatics, Isiah. It' s boring."

She nodded slightly.

A low whirring sound started, and Isiah' s eyes flickered upward.

He followed the sound to the high, vaulted ceiling of the living area, where a section of the ornate plasterwork had retracted.

Kiley was there.

She was suspended fifty feet in the air, harnessed to a winch system, her arms and legs flailing.

"Isiah!" she shrieked, her voice thin with terror.

Isiah' s face went white. He stared, frozen, as the winch slowly lowered her a few feet, then stopped with a jerk.

"Every time you say something I find tiresome," Gloria said conversationally, "she drops ten feet. The floor is marble. The impact, I' m told, would be quite final."

"Isiah, help me!" Kiley sobbed, her mascara running in black streaks down her face.

Isiah' s head snapped back to Gloria, his eyes blazing with a desperate, murderous rage.

"I' ll kill you!"

He raised the gun again.

Suddenly, a dozen of Gloria' s personal security guards materialized from the shadows of the penthouse, their own weapons drawn and trained on him.

The air crackled with tension.

Isiah was surrounded, but his gaze never left Gloria.

Gloria raised a single, languid hand.

"Stand down," she commanded.

Her men lowered their weapons but didn't holster them.

Before Isiah could process it, she moved. She closed the distance between them in three quick strides, her movements fluid and impossibly fast. She grabbed his wrist, twisting it sharply.

A sickening crack echoed in the silent room.

The gun clattered to the floor.

Isiah cried out, a sound of pure agony, and collapsed to his knees, clutching his broken wrist.

Gloria looked down at him, her expression unchanged.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, her voice devoid of sympathy. "Good."

He knelt on the floor, sweat beading on his forehead, his face contorted in pain.

"Let her go," he gasped. "Please. She has nothing to do with this."

"She has everything to do with this," Gloria corrected him calmly. "She was the instrument of your betrayal."

The winch whirred again, and Kiley was lowered safely to the floor. She scrambled out of the harness and ran to Isiah, sobbing hysterically.

He wrapped his good arm around her, pulling her close, murmuring words of comfort into her hair.

Watching them, Gloria felt a strange sense of detachment.

It was a painful echo.

He used to hold her just like that.

After the doctors told them their daughter, Hope, had been stillborn.

He had held her for hours in the sterile, silent hospital room, his arms a shield against the crushing weight of her grief.

"I' ll never leave you," he had whispered, his voice thick with tears. "We' ll get through this. Together. I swear it."

He had chosen the name Hope. He had designed the nursery. He had even bought a tiny, handcrafted wooden horse, promising to teach their daughter how to ride one day.

That promise, like all the others, was now just ash.

"She killed her baby!" Kiley suddenly shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at Gloria. "Isiah told me! She worked so hard she killed her own baby in her womb!"

The words hung in the air, sharp and poisonous.

"Shut up, Kiley," Isiah snapped, his voice rough. He knew that was the one line that should never be crossed.

It was the lie he had constructed for himself, a way to absolve his own guilt for not being there when Gloria had collapsed from exhaustion.

He had been closing a deal in Tokyo. A deal she had orchestrated for him.

Kiley started crying again, a theatrical, gulping sound.

Isiah struggled to his feet, pulling the younger woman with him.

He cradled her against his chest as if she were made of glass.

He looked at Gloria one last time before turning to leave, his eyes filled with a cold, pure hatred.

"You will regret this for the rest of your life."