Six months working overseas, my best friend texted me a wedding invitation — from my own husband.

[Elijah Grant & Sophia Langford cordially invite you to celebrate their union.]

My hands went cold.

Elijah Grant was MY husband. We'd been married for four years.

He told me he couldn't hold a wedding because his mother was superstitious about the timing. Every year, the timing was "wrong." Every year, I waited.

Now he was holding one — just not with me.

I video-called him immediately. He picked up on the third ring, his face relaxed, almost bored.

"Babe, what's up?"

"What's this wedding invitation my friend just sent me?"

He laughed. "Oh that. It's a charity gala thing. Sophia's company is sponsoring it and they needed a fake couple theme. It's for publicity. You know how these things work."

I said nothing.

He yawned. "Don't overthink it. You know you're the only one."

I hung up.

Then I called my assistant back home. "The penthouse I bought Elijah last year — put it on the market. The Porsche, the restaurant I opened under his name — liquidate everything."

My assistant hesitated. "Ma'am, are you sure?"

"He's marrying someone else. I'm sure."

I dropped everything, handed over my project to my deputy and caught the next flight back to Astoria.

Fourteen hours later, I stood in front of the brownstone townhouse I'd bought for us when we first got married.

Red silk draped across the entrance. White roses everywhere. A massive wedding arch framed the front door — OUR front door.

And right in the center, a life-sized poster.

Elijah in a black tuxedo. A woman in white pressed against him, her hand on his chest, both of them smiling like they'd never been happier.

Gold script at the bottom: Elijah & Sophia — A Love Written in the Stars.

My throat tightened, but I didn't cry.

I walked to the front door and typed in my code. ACCESS DENIED.

I tried the fingerprint scanner. UNRECOGNIZED.

I tried facial recognition. NO MATCH FOUND.

He had erased me from my own house.

I stood there for a long moment, staring at that poster. At the woman's hand on my husband's chest. At the home I had paid for with my own money.

Then I turned and walked toward the venue listed on the invitation — The Astoria Grand Hotel.

The hotel my family's company had just acquired three months ago.

When I arrived, the lobby was filled with flowers and guests in evening wear. I could hear music and laughter drifting from the grand ballroom.

I hadn't even reached the entrance when a security guard stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

"Invitation only, ma'am."

I stared at him. "I don't need an invitation."

He looked me up and down — my wrinkled travel clothes, my messy bun, the bags under my eyes from fourteen hours on a plane — and smirked.

"Ma'am, this is the Grant-Langford wedding. Mr. Grant is the CEO of Meridian Corp. If you're not on the list, you're not getting in."

Mr. Grant. CEO of Meridian Corp.

Elijah was a bartender when I met him. He didn't have a company. He didn't have a cent.

Meridian Corp was mine — the subsidiary I had built from nothing under the Ashford Group, my family's conglomerate. I had put his name on the registration because he said it would hurt his pride to live off his wife.

I had given him my company. And now he was using it to marry someone else.

"I'm his wife," I said quietly.

The security guard burst out laughing.

"Lady, Mr. Grant's wife is inside wearing a Vera Wang gown. And you..." He gestured at me. "You look like you just crawled off a bus."

"Now leave before I call the police."