The Billionaire's Discarded Wife

On our wedding day, I changed the bride price from $6,600 to $26,000—every cent for my mom's emergency surgery.

Wyatt Sanchez looked at me, expression unreadable. "If I don't agree, the wedding's off?"

I was pale, shaking. "Yes."

He didn't argue. He signed the new amount.

But when he took my arm to help me out of the car, I heard it—two words, light as air, cold as ice: "Gold digger."

From that day on, he paraded mistresses in front of me. Let everyone call me the bride with a price tag.

Three years later, on our anniversary, I was curled up in a hospital bed with appendicitis. Alone. Broke. Staring at a $150 bill I couldn't pay.

He was onstage at his latest fling's concert, confessing his love to her in front of thousands.

I called him. "Wyatt, let's get a divorce."

A bored sigh. "Making a scene again. How much do you want this time?"

——

Silence.

"Fifty thousand?"

"A hundred?"

"One-fifty?"

His voice dripped with contempt. Before I could answer, a woman's laugh cut through—bright and mocking.

"Wyatt, you spent five hundred thousand on a doghouse for my puppy yesterday. And this is what you're offering your wife?"

"Because…" He paused. "Some people only deserve that price."

His words were a knife dipped in poison, sliding right between my ribs.

From the moment I changed that bride price, he never looked at me the same way. In his eyes, I was a gold digger. Everything I did had a motive. Every kindness, a transaction.

Even in bed, after, he'd ask casually, "How much do you need this time? Name your price."

Every time, I explained. Begged him to understand. My mom had a brain hemorrhage the morning of our wedding. Emergency surgery. If the money didn't arrive, she'd die.

He never believed me.

"Alice Henson," he'd say, looking down at me like I was dirt, "for money, you'd lie using your own mother's life. I never knew you were this vicious."

Now, with his mistress giggling in the background, I kept my voice flat. "I don't want your money. I want a divorce. When are you coming back? We'll file at City Hall."

He still didn't believe me. That familiar disdain poured through the phone.

"You'd really give up the Sanchez fortune? Fine. Return the bride price first—every cent—and prove you mean it."

He hung up.

His words echoed in my head.

Everyone said I'd hit the jackpot marrying him. A sparrow landing on a golden branch. Endless wealth at my fingertips.

No one knew the truth.

In three years of marriage, Wyatt Sanchez hadn't given me a single dollar. My old company fired me the moment I became "Mrs. Sanchez"—too risky to keep around. Every interview after, the same polite rejection.

I'd been living off savings from before the wedding.

And every cent of that went to my mom's treatments and keeping us both alive.