Wanted by Two Billionaire Brothers

Elena's POV

At nine at night, three months pregnant, I was curled up on the sofa with my belly, scrolling through the direct messages in my creator inbox.

Then one caught my eye.

"Ms. Hawthorne, I'm a loyal fan of yours. I've been married to my husband for three years, and I keep feeling like he has another woman on the side. What should I do? I'm falling apart."

My heart dropped the moment I read it.

For any woman, a husband's infidelity is fatal.

From those few lines alone I could imagine how desperate she must be, to confide in a stranger like me.

I was just about to reply when another message from her arrived.

"Ms. Hawthorne, my head is a mess. Can I video call you?"

"Sure."

After I sent that, I followed her back and glanced at her profile.

Most of her posts were everyday photos of herself; now and then a corner of her husband's shirt slipped into the frame.

In a video she'd posted two days earlier, her husband was cooking for her with his own hands, and in one fleeting shot I saw a silver ring on his pinky.

My heart lurched.

It was the same ring my husband, Damian Voss, wore.

My mind ran off with itself before I could stop it.

Damian had been overseas for days, working overtime on a business trip. Every night he called to check in, and the thing he said most was how badly he wanted to finish up and come home to me and the baby.

Five years of dating, three years of marriage — eight years together had taught me to trust him with everything I had.

I didn't dare imagine what I would do if he had really betrayed me.

No.

He wouldn't.

Damian loved me that much. He wrote songs for me. He published a book of the hundred little things from our courtship. He never forgot a single anniversary, and he never came home empty-handed.

Even after we married and there was still no child, he never once blamed me.

To make up for it, I spent those years taking every kind of medicine to settle my body, and went through two rounds of IVF before I finally had this baby.

No one knows how much it hurts to have an egg-retrieval needle the width of a child's arm pushed into you.

I came out of the retrieval room soaked in cold sweat every time. The pain was carved into my bones, but I kept telling myself that for Damian, for our little family, everything I gave was worth it.

And now...

The heart I had held so steady suddenly wavered into confusion and dread.

I was terrified the truth would turn out to be exactly what I suspected.

A moment later her video call came through.

I hesitated, then pressed answer. A beautiful face filled the screen.

"Ms. Hawthorne, I finally get to see you," she said, excited.

I fought down the suffocating weight in my chest.

"Can you tell me more about you and your husband?"

"Sure. The two of us grew up together — he swore in kindergarten that he would marry me. And now we're finally married, but he's always away on business, and sometimes he takes calls behind my back."

Her voice was already shaking with the beginnings of tears.

"I really don't know what to do. I can't bear to give up on us. Ms. Hawthorne, could you help me find the other woman and tell her to leave our life alone?"

Maybe it was my imagination, but on that last line her eyes suddenly filled with resentment, as if I were the woman who had broken into her home.

But how could that be?

Damian and I were legally married. We had registered three years ago.

I pressed my lips together. I was about to press her further when a man's voice came from somewhere in the frame.

"Baby, what are you getting worked up about again? Was I not good enough for you just now?"

That voice — so terribly familiar — shattered the last of my hope.

I could not possibly have misheard.

Was I actually the other woman she meant?

She gave me a faintly triumphant look and ended the call — and in the final instant, her phone tilted right, just enough to catch Damian pushing the door open and walking in.

He was completely naked, still slick with sweat and heat from sex, his tall, sun-bronzed body carrying the unmistakable marks of it.

My phone fell to the floor. It felt as though the whole world had collapsed.

Half an hour earlier I had been reminding Damian to look after himself, work or no work.

Now he was in bed with his other wife.

And I had been kept in the dark, deceived for all this time.

I picked the phone up with trembling hands, and the only thing left in my head was her line: legally married.

If she had not lied to me, then what was my marriage to Damian?

Bigamy is a crime.

My hands clenched so tightly that my nails cut into my palms, and I felt no pain at all.

I scrambled to my feet and went to the study to find our marriage papers.

Our names were fine. But the line for the officiating pastor was blank.

Without a pastor's name, the certificate was worthless.

On the day of the wedding I had been too happy to notice the fatal flaw.

Our marriage documents had never taken effect.

Had he arranged for the pastor's name to be left off on purpose?

Just to keep me reassured, believing we were really married.

I sat on the sofa, dull and slow, my thoughts in complete disarray.

I had only ever heard that Damian had a girlfriend he had loved a great deal. I never knew her name, and I never met her.

While he was sweet-talking me, he was marrying his ex.

The man I had loved all these years turned out to be a complete scumbag.

I couldn't help but lay a hand on my belly.

The baby was already three months along, carrying every beautiful hope and fantasy I had for the future. What was I supposed to do now?

I barely slept that night. Early the next morning I went to the hospital.

I could not accept a marriage like that. I could not accept a husband like that. I wanted a divorce.

This child...

Papers in hand, I stood in line in the hospital corridor, and that was when my vision went dark. In the final second before I lost consciousness, I heard someone shout my name in panic.

"Elena!"