Neron Skies

The Jilted Wife's Spectacular Billionaire Comeback

Zhi Yao

For ten years, I was the perfect, obedient wife to my wealthy husband, managing his severe OCD and hosting flawless high-society parties. But on our tenth anniversary, when I brought him his special hangover soup, I caught him sleeping with my younger sister in our master bedroom. Instead of panicking, he coldly handed me divorce papers with zero assets. He told me I was just a "placeholder" until my sister finished her degree and was ready to take my spot. Desperate, I called my mother for help, only to find out she had known about their affair for years. "You don't have Jana's drive or her looks. You clean house and you cook. That's not a wife, that's a domestic." My own mother sneered at me, telling me to walk away quietly because our family needed his financial support. They kicked me out of the penthouse with nothing but a suitcase, laughing that a woman who hadn't worked in a decade would end up begging on the streets. I bled for this family for ten years, only to be thrown away like garbage when my sister wanted my life. But they didn't know that while I was playing the boring housewife, I had secretly earned a Cordon Bleu diploma, a Cornell nutrition certification, and a Columbia master's degree. Using a hidden photo to blackmail a property out of him, I packed my elite credentials and landed a $300,000-a-year job managing a billionaire's estate. When my ex-husband drunkenly called days later demanding I come back to serve him, I calmly hit block.

Billionaires Divorce Billionaire Female-Centered Divorce Personal Growth

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Illegal transactions should never occur this early in the morning.

I shove my feet into my boots, not bothering to lace them up, because that requires brainpower, and I don’t have enough of that when the sun hasn’t even begun to think about touching the tips of the elite towers. But I do have to think about walking quietly. Dad is still sleeping, and considering what I’m heading to do, I need him to stay that way.

The thick smog hits my lungs as soon as I step out of our tiny cube of a home. It’s one of thousands in the Stacks, the low-income corner of this city we call home. I cough, my lungs trying to adjust to all the pollution in the air, and I set down the weaving walkway that zigzags down past the same neighbors I’ve had for my entire life, before connecting to the skywalk that aims me toward the south end of town.

My connect-link beeps and I hold up my wrist, illuminating a screen against my forearm. A message from “The Mole” displays. You’re late.

I speak to my wrist and the words appear on the screen. That’s what you get for scheduling this so early.

Her response displays as an expletive and a searing strike of electricity in my wrist.

Despite the pain, I smirk and shake my head.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, knobhead!”

Someone yells the words at me as I bump shoulders with another individual on the skywalk. I turn, making eye contact, glaring and daring them to cause even more of a scene.

“Share the walkway, you cack!” I yell back.

I turn and blend back into the crowd of people walking to and from work.

There are so many bodies I can hardly breathe without taking in the scent of an unwashed worker, or the potent perfume of the next space hog. I’m jostled and bumped into, and no one, except for the cack back there, seems to notice or mind.

It’s just a part of life here on Korpillion.

When you’re just one of twenty-eight point one billion people, you learn to share the road.

I aim for the alley coming up, but I don’t even cast my eyes toward it. I shift to that side of the skywalk and raise my left hand a little.

Just as I pass it, another hand reaches out from the alley, and hooks the straps of a bag over my fingers. A quick and seamless handoff.

It’s the reason I pay Crag. I give him the credits he needs to buy his drugs and swill, he hides certain packages around the underbelly of the city until I am ready for them—no one knows the dark and hidden places of Korpillion better than him.

Being a homeless addict on this planet will eat you alive, body and soul, but he gets the job done.

I slip a few blocks further down the skywalk and then duck down a side street, dropping down five flights of stairs until my feet touch the concrete ground of terra level. I slip past dingy, solid steel buildings, tucking around corners.

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