All Chapters of The Wife He Forgot: Ashes to Empire: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

177 Chapters

The Woman in His Boardroom

POV: ISLA WINTERS (Present Day)The moment I walked into Jaxon Romano's boardroom, I made sure he wouldn't recognize me.Six years ago, I'd been the plain, broken girl with oversized glasses and a desperate need for his approval. The girl who'd loved him so completely, she'd lost herself in the process. The ghost-wife who'd coded his empire in the dead of night while he slept in another woman's bed.Today, I was Dr. Isla Vale, sleek, sharp, and worth more than his entire board combined."Gentlemen," I said, setting my Hermès briefcase on the polished mahogany table with a satisfying click. The sound echoed in the tension-thick silence. "Let's discuss why Apex Technologies is hemorrhaging money."Twelve pairs of eyes turned toward me. Eleven looked impressed, grateful, maybe even a little intimidated by the woman their headhunter had called "the best in the business."One pair, cold, calculating, impossibly blue looked right through me.Jaxon Romano didn't recognize his own wife.Perfe

His Crumbling Empire

POV: JAXON ROMANO (Present Day)I stood at the windows of my office long after Dr. Vale left, staring at the Manhattan skyline without really seeing it.Have we met before?The question gnawed at me like a splinter I couldn't reach. Something about her eyes, dark, intelligent, burning with an intensity that felt almost... personal. The way she'd looked at me across that boardroom table hadn't been the typical deference consultants usually showed. It had been colder.Like she knew me.But that was impossible. I'd remember meeting someone like her. Dr. Isla Vale wasn't the type of woman a man forgot.My phone buzzed on the desk behind me. I ignored it. It would be Patricia with the meeting notes, or Gerald wanting to discuss Vale's demands, or another board member expressing concern about giving so much power to an outsider.They were right to be concerned. What she was asking for, CTO position, board seat, complete autonomy, it was unprecedented for a consultant. Any sane person would

The Plan

POV: ISLA WINTERS (Present Day)"Mama, why do you look so pretty?"I glanced up from my laptop to find Nova standing in the doorway of my bedroom, clutching her stuffed rabbit. At three years old, my daughter was already developing the Romano instinct for reading people. Those ice-blue eyes, Jaxon's eyes missed nothing."I have a work dinner, baby," I said, smoothing down the black silk dress I'd chosen. Elegant but professional. The kind of dress that said I'm successful without screaming I'm trying too hard.The kind of dress I'd never owned when I was married to Jaxon."With the mean man?" Rowan appeared behind his sister, his dark hair, also Jaxon's sticking up in all directions from his nap."He's not a mean man, sweetheart. He's just..." I paused, searching for words that wouldn't confuse my three-year-olds. "He's someone Mama used to know. And now I'm helping him with work." I'd spent three years planning this revenge, engineering this return, perfecting every detail of my new

The First Day

POV: ISLA WINTERS (Present Day)Monday morning arrived with the kind of crisp autumn clarity that made New York feel like possibility. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, adjusting the collar of my burgundy silk blouse, and told myself I was ready for this."Mama, you look like a superhero," Nova announced from where she sat on the bathroom counter, swinging her legs and watching me apply lipstick."Do I?" I smiled at her reflection."Uh-huh. Like the ones in Rowan's comic books. Powerful and pretty.""Well, thank you, baby.""Are you going to fight bad guys today?"If only she knew how accurate that was."Something like that," I said, capping the lipstick. "I'm going to work very hard and make sure everything is fair and right."I paused, meeting her ice-blue eyes in the mirror, eyes that were so much like Jaxon's it sometimes hurt to look at her.When is the right time to tell Jaxon about them? When I'd destroyed his company? When I'd taken everything he'd built? When he was on

The Debt

POV: ISLA WINTERS (Flashback - Six Years Earlier, Age 22)Six years earlier...I believed in fairy tales once.Not the princess kind, I'd never been pretty enough or special enough for those dreams. But I believed in the small magic of ordinary life. That if you were good enough, worked hard enough, loved your family deeply enough, they would love you back.I was wrong about a lot of things when I was twenty-two."Isla, come here." My father's voice carried from his study, cutting through the sounds of my birthday dinner winding down in the dining room.Twenty-two years old today. I'd gotten a card from my parents, no gift, but the card was something. Vivian had gotten a car for her nineteenth birthday last month. A Mercedes. Red, because red was her color.I got a card that said "Happy Birthday" in generic script, signed by my mother in her neat, precise handwriting. My father hadn't even signed it.But that was okay. That was normal. Vivian was the daughter who shone, beautiful, con

The Romano

POV: JAXON ROMANO (Flashback - Six Years Earlier, Age 28)Six years earlier..."You need a wife."My father's voice cut through the silence of his study like a blade. I looked up from the financial reports I'd been reviewing, not bothering to hide my irritation."I'm twenty-eight, not eighteen. I don't need you arranging my life."Dante Romano stood at the window of his Park Avenue office, hands clasped behind his back, surveying his kingdom. At sixty-two, he was still an imposing figure, tall, broad-shouldered, with silver hair and eyes that could freeze blood. He'd built the Romano empire from nothing, clawing his way up from the streets through a combination of ruthlessness, intelligence, and strategic violence.He was also the reason I'd spent my entire life trying to prove I was more than just his son."This isn't a discussion, Jaxon." He turned to face me, his expression carved from granite. "The Winters family owes us a debt. A significant debt. They've agreed to settle it with

The Wedding

POV: ISLA WINTERS (Flashback - Six Years Earlier, Age 22)Two weeks had never felt so short and so long at the same time.I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my childhood bedroom, staring at the girl in the white dress and trying to recognize myself.The dress was beautiful, I'd give it that much. Simple, elegant, tea-length with delicate lace sleeves. I'd bought it myself with money from my part-time job at the university library, because when I'd asked my mother if there was a budget for a wedding dress, she'd laughed."Isla, this isn't a real wedding. It's a business arrangement. Don't make it into something it's not."So I'd gone to a bridal shop in White Plains by myself and found this dress on the clearance rack. Three hundred dollars that had felt like a fortune. The saleswoman had been kind, had told me I looked beautiful, had asked about my fiancé with genuine interest.I'd lied and said we were very much in love.It was easier than explaining the truth."You look n

The First Night

POV: JAXON ROMANO (Flashback - Six Years Earlier, Age 28)I stood in the doorway of Isla's room, no, not Isla's room, my wife's room and tried to ignore the self-loathing that had been building all day.She sat on the edge of the bed in a simple white nightgown, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. Without the glasses she'd been wearing all day, I could finally see her face properly. She was... pretty. Not in the flashy, obvious way Vivian had been at dinner, but in a quiet, understated way that I might have appreciated if I'd been capable of appreciating anything beyond my own discomfort.Her hands were clasped in her lap, and she was staring at them like they held answers to questions she couldn't voice."Are you... okay?" I asked, which was possibly the stupidest question I'd ever asked in my life.She looked up at me with those dark eyes, brown, I could see now. A warm brown that seemed completely at odds with how cold I was making this entire situation."I'm fine," she said s

The Ghost Wife

POV: ISLA WINTERS ROMANO (Flashback - Six Years Earlier, Age 22)The first month of marriage taught me what loneliness really meant.I'd thought I understood loneliness before, growing up as the daughter who didn't quite fit, the sister who wasn't quite good enough, the student who studied alone while everyone else went to parties. But that had been solitude. Aloneness by circumstance.This was different.This was lying next to someone in spirit, sharing a home, a name, a life and being more alone than if you'd been by yourself.I woke up alone every morning. Jaxon was always gone by the time I opened my eyes, off on his run or already at the office or simply... elsewhere. Anywhere that wasn't here with me.I made coffee at 6:45 AM every single day. The first morning, I'd asked what kind he liked. He'd said "black, no sugar" without looking up from his phone. So I bought expensive beans from a specialty store in Tribeca, learned to brew them perfectly, had his cup ready at exactly 7:1

The Discovery

POV: JAXON ROMANO (Flashback - Six Years Earlier, Age 28)I discovered the code was fixed on a Tuesday morning, three weeks into my marriage.I'd been struggling with the Apex security architecture for months, the foundation of what was supposed to be our revolutionary platform. My team and I had been going in circles, patching problems that created new problems, building on a flawed structure that kept threatening to collapse.Then one morning, I opened the files and... everything was different.The code I'd been fighting with, the mess that had been keeping me up at night, was suddenly clean. Elegant. Perfect.I stared at my screen, scrolling through line after line of brilliant architecture that I definitely hadn't written. The logic was flawless. The efficiency was remarkable. The security was airtight.Someone had completely rebuilt the entire system while I slept."What the hell?" I muttered, checking the file metadata.Last modified: 3:47 AM. By me, according to the system. But

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