Billionaire's Match novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Reissue
A clerk says there is no record of Brittany's marriage, a lawyer says she is a billionaire's heir, and in her husband's office she hears the truth; she signs the papers as unmarried, and a doctor says she can have children.
The clerk turned her screen around so Brittany could read it.
"I'm sorry, Miss Faulkner. There is no marriage on file under your name."
Brittany had torn the certificate that morning while clearing a drawer.
She had taped it back together and brought it to the courthouse on her lunch hour.
"We've been married two years," she said.
The clerk checked the system a third time, then held the taped paper up to the window light.
"The seal is crooked. This was never issued here. It's a forgery."
A man waiting behind Brittany stepped back to give her room.
She walked out onto the courthouse steps and stood there with the two halves in her hand.
Her phone rang. It was a number she didn't know.
"Miss Faulkner? I'm the attorney handling your late father's estate. Could you come to my office to sign some documents?"
It had to be a scam. Her thumb hovered over the red button.
"Twenty-eight years ago your mother left you at the gate of Brightwater Home," the man said. "A DNA test confirms you are the only child of Neil Strathern."
Brittany sat down on the cold stone step.
Everyone in Goldmont City knew that name. It was on the bank towers and the hospital wing.
Neil Strathern had died the month before.
At the law office, the attorney laid out the list himself.
Stocks, buildings across four countries, and controlling shares in more companies than she could count. Billions, and all of it hers.
Then he folded his hands.
"Before you sign, I have to ask. Are you married? Do you have children?"
Brittany's pen stopped above the paper.
She thought of the taped certificate in her bag.
"Give me two hours," she said. "I need to check something."
She drove straight to Bevan Systems, Dalton's company, and rode the elevator to the top floor.
His assistant's desk was empty.
The door to his office stood open a hand's width.
Brittany reached for the handle and heard a woman laugh softly inside.
"Dalton, we've been married five years. When are you going to make it public?"
Brittany knew that voice.
It belonged to Celia Hartwell, their old advisor at Goldmont University. Celia had written Brittany's recommendation letter. She had cried at their wedding dinner.
"After the listing," Dalton said. His voice was low and kind, the voice he used on Brittany when she was ill. "My grandfather's will keeps you out of the family. If my grandmother finds out, she'll cut me off before we list."
"And Brittany?"
"I need her name on the filings a few more weeks. Kincaid Capital's office has asked to meet her twice, by name. I need her smiling at that dinner."
"You're so good to put up with it."
"I'd do anything to keep you safe, Celia."
Brittany put her hand over her mouth.
The certificate she had taped back together so carefully had been a lie from the first day.
She had not been a wife. She had been a cover.
She walked back to the elevator without a sound.
On the sidewalk, she called the attorney. Her voice came out steady, and that frightened her more than crying would have.
"I'll sign today. Put this on the record. I am unmarried and I have no children. Every asset is mine, and nobody else's."
The five-year-old boy she had raised for two years, Teddy, had adoption papers that came from Dalton, too.
They could not be worth more than the certificate.
She would leave Dalton. She would not tell him why until she was ready.
She signed everything in the attorney's office, then drove home with her mind still in that hallway.
She never saw the car ahead of her stop.
The impact was small. Her forehead hit the top of the steering wheel and split open.
At the hospital, a doctor put six stitches in her hairline and told her to rest.
Brittany sat on the edge of the bed and thought of something else.
Before the wedding, Dalton had shown her a medical report. It said a serious condition in her womb meant she could never carry a child, and that even normal sex could damage her for good.
"I'll marry you anyway," he had said, holding both her hands. "I choose you for life."
For that, she had stood in his parents' living room while his father smashed a teacup and shouted that she would end their bloodline.
For that, she had listened to his mother tell relatives she was a broken woman.
She asked the nurse for a gynecologist.
The scans took twenty minutes. The doctor, a gray-haired woman, read them twice and looked up.
"Everything looks perfectly healthy, Miss Faulkner."
"My uterus is healthy?"
"Yes."
"I can get pregnant?"
"Of course you can."
"And sex wouldn't hurt me?"
The doctor frowned, puzzled. "Why on earth would it?"
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