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All Chapters of Married a billionaire to spite my ex : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

16 Chapters

Chapter One: The Wife He Never Had

POV: Lilly Roswell“Miss Roswell, there’s no record of your marriage.”The clerk said it to his screen, not to me. One finger tapped the edge of his desk.I laughed. It came out thin and silly. “Try again. Roswell. R-O-S-W-E-L-L. My husband is Ryan Fox.”“I’ve tried three times.” He typed anyway. The keys clacked in the quiet room.I slid the certificate under the glass. That morning it had been ripped in half in my kitchen drawer, and I’d taped it back together with shaking hands, sure I’d ruined the most precious paper I owned. I’d only wanted a new copy.He held it under his lamp. His mouth went flat. He tilted the paper so I could see the gold seal in the corner. It sat crooked, like somebody had pressed it on in a hurry.“This is a forgery,” he said. “You were never married.”The floor tipped. I grabbed the counter and my nails went white. “Two years,” I whispered. “I wore his ring for two years.”“Sorry, ma’am.” He didn’t sound it. His eyes were already on the next person in li

Last Updated : 2026-10-17

Chapter Two: One Month to Find A Husband

POV: Lilly RoswellI hung up and listened to the muffled chatter of someone laughing downstairs, then stood. My knees groaned their displeasure. On the nightstand across the room sat the wedding picture, Ryan's arm around my waist, me looking up at him, a foolish grin on my face while he stared into the camera. I flipped the frame face down and twisted the ring off my finger, until it caught on my knuckle, and set the metal band on top, and there was a tiny white mark on my skin.Thirty days ,no husband, no marriage. How wonderful.It took twenty minutes to pack. I left the jewelry he'd bought me, the designer bags, the shoes he'd never worn, and brought only the papers, the laptop, the gray cardigan I'd worn daily in Harden House, the elbows worn thin, and the clothes I'd bought with my own meager wages before I'd ever laid eyes on him, and it all fitted in one suitcase. I dragged it downstairs and hovered near the landing, listening to the sounds of the conversation below."She'l

Last Updated : 2026-10-17

Chapter Three: The Man Who Asked for My Hand

POV: Lilly Roswell“Talk about what?”Lex tipped his head toward the elevators, where the man in the gray suit held the doors open. “Somewhere private.”I hugged my folder to my chest. “I don’t follow strangers into elevators. Rich ones either.”The corner of his mouth lifted. “Good.”“You said that like a test.”“You’re due on nineteen at four. Visitors sign in at my front desk.” He said it flat, like reading a weather report. “Your father’s estate is selling two buildings on my block to Kingsley Holdings. My lawyers read the sale papers. The thirty-day clause is in them.”Heat crawled up my neck. Strangers were passing my life around in files. “What do you want, Mr. Kingsley?”“Do you plan to marry again?”“That’s none of your business.”“You’re right. It isn’t.” He didn’t blink. “But your answer could fix a problem for both of us. My grandfather’s will gives Kingsley Holdings to my uncle unless I’m married by the end of the year. I won’t hand him what I built.”“How convenient.” I

Last Updated : 2026-10-17

Chapter Four: A Marriage with Condition

POV: Lilly Roswell“Forty percent?” My voice cracked across Pierce’s glass desk. “Forty percent of my father’s money goes to a husband?”Pierce didn’t flinch. His tie hung crooked, and a cold cup of tea sat by his elbow. Morning light poured through the window behind him, hard and white.“Richard Knight wrote that clause himself,” he said. “He read it to me twice.”“Why?”“He missed twenty-one years of your life.” Pierce rubbed his eyes. “No birthdays. No bad days. He wanted someone beside you when he couldn’t be. A man with a reason to stay. Sixty percent for you. Forty for him.”I stared at the page. My father had tried to buy me a bodyguard out of love and arithmetic. Any other week, it might have made me cry. This week, my hands curled into fists.“Ryan sat in your waiting room yesterday and asked for exactly forty percent,” I said. “He knew the number, Mr. Pierce.”Pierce went quiet. He slid a thin folder across the desk.“Last night I went through the old investigator file.” He

Last Updated : 2026-10-17

Chapter Five: The Woman Who Walked Away

POV: Lilly Roswell“It’s a good forgery,” said Dana Whitfield the lawyer I found, I wasn’t trying to deceive pierce I am just desperate and definitely can’t let Ryan have even a niddle from this inheritance. “That’s what scares me.”She tapped my signature with a red pen. Her office was two rooms above a dry cleaner’s. It smelled of steam and burnt coffee, and a box fan rattled in the window. I’d picked her out of the phone book at the Alder’s front desk, because I trusted nobody with a fancy website. After Pierce’s glass tower, I liked it here better.“Say it plain,” I said. “I haven’t slept since yesterday.”“Plain, then.” She slid the Fox Holdings pages across the desk. “Ryan’s company owes a bank twelve million dollars. This signature says you promised to pay it back if he can’t.”I laughed, short and ugly. “I don’t have twelve million dollars.”“In twenty-eight days, you will.” She let that sit. “He married a girl he knew would be rich, put her name on his debt, and waited

Last Updated : 2026-10-17

Chapter Six: He Watched My Father Die

"Sit down, Lilly." "No." The word came out steadier than I felt. Rain tapped the glass behind him, soft and patient. I stayed where I was, one hand gripping the back of the chair he had pointed to, and I did not sit. "A woman just told me to ask you something," I said. "So I'm asking. Where were you the night my father died?" Lex laid his pen on the desk. He lined it up with the edge of the blotter, the way a man straightens a picture in a house that is not on fire. His fingers went still after that. In two meetings, I had never seen those hands stop moving. "In his car," he said. "Less than an hour before the crash." The rain kept falling. I kept standing. Ryan had always lied smoothly, like pouring water. This was different. Lex's words came out slowly, like he was pulling a splinter, and for some reason that scared me more. A man who struggles to say a thing has usually been carrying it for a long time. "You had four chances to tell me," I said. "The lobby. The phone. Your

Last Updated : 2026-10-21

Chapter seven: Someone Married Me Before Ryan

“Don’t say it over the phone,” Dana said. “Just get here.”I took the car Grant offered, which an hour earlier I would have refused. I made him park by the dry cleaner’s and watched the street the whole ride, counting vans and gray coats like a woman in a bad movie. Nobody looked at me. That was somehow worse.Dana had the file spread across her desk, corners pinned down with a stapler, a mug, and a rock she swore was a paperweight. The box fan rattled in the window. She didn’t say hello.“Ryan’s forger didn’t invent that registration number. He copied it. It belongs to a live record, filed in Queens seven years ago. Bride’s name is Lilly Roswell, date of birth matches yours. The groom’s name is sealed with the rest of the file.”“So unseal it.”“I petition, a judge decides, and it takes two weeks if he’s in a good mood.” She flicked the stapler. “I’m not breaking into a courthouse. If we do this dirty, it’s worthless in court.”I sat on the edge of the client chair. It wobbled. “To f

Last Updated : 2026-10-21

Chapter 8: The Man Who Doesn’t Lose

“It was here an hour ago,” Dana said. “I printed the index myself.”She turned her laptop so I could see the screen. The folder from the Southampton scan was open, and the file named KNIGHT_PROPERTY_LEDGER sat in the middle of it like a tooth with the root pulled out. The size said zero bytes.“Maybe it’s a glitch,” I said.“Maybe I’m a size four.” She dragged her mug closer and made a face at the coffee. “Don’t comfort me, Lilly. Help me.”I pulled the chair around her desk. My legs still felt borrowed from the day. I clicked into the file history and watched the dates scroll. Created. Edited. Edited. Then a line that made me stop.“Last modified, ten forty this morning.”“So?”“Richard died a month ago.” I tapped the screen. “Somebody opened a dead man’s ledger this morning and emptied it. And look at the account name. It’s still logged in as R. Knight.”Dana went quiet. She didn’t gasp or swear. She slid a yellow pad over and wrote the time down, then the account name, then underli

Last Updated : 2026-10-22

Chapter 9: The Woman Who Knows My Face

“A name on a record isn’t a confession,” Dana said. She was already printing the page. “It’s a question with a pulse.”“It’s Helen.” My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “Mrs. Doyle said she came to Harden House twice. She brought lemon bars.”“Lots of people bring lemon bars.” Dana pulled the sheet off the tray and held it out to me. “Initial it. Date it. I’m certifying the original before anyone makes a phone call, because if Helen’s lawyer hears about this first, that line gets amended again.”I signed. When I looked up, Lex hadn’t moved. He stood at the window with the delivery bag crumpled in one hand, and he’d gone so quiet that Dana stopped typing.“You know something,” I said.“I know Richard trusted her for thirty years.” He set the bag down. “I know he texted me not to trust whoever handled your inheritance. Those are two separate facts. I don’t know yet that they’re one.”“That’s a very careful answer.”“It’s the true one. I’d rather give you that than a good one.”I fo

Last Updated : 2026-10-22

Chapter 10: The Billionaire’s Wife

“Since the cake,” I said.Helen’s cup stopped halfway to its saucer.“Mrs. Doyle baked one every March twelfth. Yellow, store frosting. I blew out the candles every year and every year it felt like someone else’s party.” I kept my voice level, the way you hold a full glass. “At eleven I scratched a date into that fence. Not the twelfth. A different one. I don’t even know why.”“Children sense things.”“Children don’t read incident reports. And that’s where you got it, isn’t it? Some old file?” I stepped closer. “Nobody saw me do it. I buried that spoon in the flower bed. So try again, Mrs. Brandt.”Her mouth thinned. It was the first honest expression she’d shown me. “Richard hired a man to watch Harden House for a time. He kept notes. I read them.”“Richard ordered these photographs?”“Richard ordered everything.” She said it like a door closing. “I was in that photograph because his wife delivered at St. Anne’s in Jamaica. I drove her myself. I held the door.”It was a good answer.

Last Updated : 2026-10-22

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