Humiliated, Betrayed Wife of a Billionaire Husband (Billionaire Marriage in Crisis #24)

1. Gianna

— ? —

Gianna

The moment I said the word “pregnant,” my mama dropped her fork like I’d announced I was joining the circus.

“Baby,” she breathed, and then she was out of her chair, rounding the table with the kind of speed that defied her bad hip, pulling me into her arms before I could even finish my sentence. “Oh, my baby is having a baby.”

Behind her, Daddy was already reaching for the good champagne, the bottle they’d been saving since his retirement. I watched him pop the cork with shaking hands, his eyes wet in a way I’d only seen twice in my life.

“To Gianna!” Aunt Cece shouted, raising her glass of sweet tea because she didn’t drink. “And to that fine husband of hers!”

Orion squeezed my hand under the table. His palm was warm and calloused, ranch hands even on a billionaire, his grip steady.

He looked amused, like he was observing the chaos from a comfortable distance.

He’d set his Stetson aside for dinner, but he was still unmistakably him.

Broken-in boots beneath the table, a fitted western shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, tanned skin and lean muscle on display like he’d just come in from working cattle. Which, knowing him, he probably had.

“Boy,” Daddy said, pointing at Orion with the champagne bottle, “you better take care of my girl.”

“Always,” Orion said, his voice carrying that slow Texas drawl that still made my stomach flip. “She’s my whole world.”

My heart did that stupid flutter it always did when he talked about me like that, like I was something worth protecting. Even after two years of marriage, even after the private jets and the manor and the life that still didn’t feel quite real, I couldn’t get used to the way he said my wife.

Cousin Trey was already pulling out his phone, starting a group chat for baby name suggestions.

Aunt Lorraine was crying into a napkin. Mama was asking if I’d been taking my prenatal vitamins and whether I’d found a good doctor in Austin, because she had opinions about Texas doctors, even though she lived in Atlanta.

And through all of it, I kept glancing at the other end of the table.

At Demi.

My sister sat in her usual spot, the one closest to the kitchen so she could escape when conversations bored her.

She hadn’t said a word since I’d made my announcement.

She was swirling her wine in slow, lazy circles, and the expression on her face was the same one she’d worn when I told her I’d gotten into her dream school on a full scholarship.

“Demi,” Mama said, finally noticing the silence from that end of the table. “Aren’t you going to congratulate your sister?”

Demi looked up. She was beautiful in a way that had always made my life harder, the kind of beautiful that got noticed and remembered. Where I was soft, she was sharp. Where I blended in, she stood out. Growing up in her shadow had been its own special kind of exhausting.

“Congratulations,” she said, and the word had edges. “Getting knocked up by a billionaire isn’t an achievement, by the way.”

The table went quiet.

Everyone was holding their breath. I could feel Orion’s hand tighten on mine. Could feel Mama’s disappointment radiating across the room like heat from an oven.

“Demitra Porter,” Daddy said, low and dangerous. “That is enough.”

“What?” Demi shrugged one elegant shoulder, unbothered. “I’m just saying. Any woman with working parts could do what she did. It’s not like she cured cancer.”

“You’re being cruel,” I said, and I hated how small my voice sounded. “Why do you always have to be cruel?”

“I’m being honest. Your hormones are making you a crybaby.” She finished her wine in one long swallow and stood, dropping her napkin on her plate. “I need some air.”

She walked out.

And everyone else scrambled to fill the silence with more champagne, more forced enthusiasm, like they could paper over the moment if they just talked loud enough.

But I couldn’t stop staring at the empty doorway.

Couldn’t stop thinking about that cattle auction gala three years ago.

The one where Demi had been invited, where I’d tagged along as her plus-one because she didn’t want to show up alone.

Orion Barnes, rancher and CEO of Cliff Holdings, a parent company worth more money than I could comprehend, with interests in energy, agriculture, commercial real estate, and half the cattle operations in South Texas, had been introduced to Demi first. They’d talked for twenty minutes while I hung back by the bar, feeling invisible in a room full of people who belonged there.

Then Orion had excused himself, walked straight to me, and asked if I wanted to get out of there.

I still didn’t fully understand why he’d chosen me. I’d asked him once, early in our relationship, and he’d said something about how Demi looked at him like a wallet, but I looked at him like a person. Like I wanted to know him instead of spend him.

Demi had never forgiven me for it.

The rest of dinner was a blur. Hugs and promises to visit and Mama pressing Tupperware into my hands even though I kept telling her we had a private chef, Orion had a private chef, we didn’t need…

“You take this home,” she said firmly, “and you eat real food. None of that fancy nonsense with foam on it. Babies grow stronger on real home-cooked foods.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The car was waiting outside when we finally escaped. A matte black truck, custom and so expensive it looked like it belonged on a different planet.

Thomas, our driver, opened the door for me, and I slid into the leather interior with a sigh that came from somewhere deep in my bones.

Orion followed, tossing his Stetson onto the seat between us, already reaching for his phone, already sliding back into the version of himself that ran an empire and didn’t have time for family drama.

“That was exhausting,” I said as the truck pulled away from my parents’ house. The neighborhood I’d grown up in, modest homes with chain-link fences and lawn ornaments, slid past the tinted windows. “I mean, overall it was good, but…”

“Mmm.”

I looked at Orion. He was scrolling through emails, the blue light of his phone illuminating the sharp angles of his face.

He’d already unbuttoned the top of his shirt, collar open to reveal the sun-browned hollow of his throat.

There was something devastating about the way he looked when he was slightly undone.

The rancher underneath the businessman, all rough edges and easy power.

“Did you hear what Demi said?” I asked.

“I heard.”

“And?”

He didn’t look up. “And what?”

“And don’t you have anything to say about it? Your sister-in-law just called our pregnancy meaningless in front of my entire family.”

“She’s jealous.” He said it the way he said most things, like I was being slow for not having already arrived at the same conclusion. “She wanted what you have, and she didn’t get it, and now she’s bitter. She’s boring, Gianna. Just get over it.”

Like it was that simple. Like I could just decide not to feel hurt by my own sister’s cruelty and that would be the end of it.

“I don’t want to get over it,” I said, and my voice came out harder than I intended. “I want you to be upset. I want you to tell me she was wrong. I want you to… to defend me.”

Orion finally looked up from his phone. His eyes were dark, unreadable, the way they got when he was deciding how much attention something deserved.

“Forget it,” I muttered, turning toward the window. The city was sliding by now, Atlanta’s skyline giving way to the private roads that led to the airstrip. We’d be on the jet in twenty minutes. Back in Texas by midnight. Back to our beautiful manor that echoed when I walked through it alone.

“Gianna.”

I didn’t answer.

His phone was on the seat now. I hadn’t heard him put it down.

Then his hand was on my thigh, warm through the silk of my dress, and he was leaning into my space. I could smell him. Leather and cedar and the faint bite of whiskey from dinner. Something expensive and utterly, unfairly intoxicating.

“Look at me.”

I didn’t want to. I was angry. I was hurt. I was-

His fingers found my chin and turned my face toward his, and I looked at him despite myself, because that was the thing about Orion Barnes.

When he decided to pay attention to you, when he turned the full force of his focus on you like a spotlight, you couldn’t look away.

It was overwhelming. It was probably, if I was being honest, why I’d married him in the first place.

“Thomas,” Orion said without looking away from me, “privacy partition, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

The dark glass slid up with a soft mechanical hum, sealing us into our own world. The only sound left was the low purr of the engine and my own too-fast breathing.

This was how he did it. Every fight, every frustration, every moment where I needed words and he couldn’t find them, he found another way. A physical way that didn’t require vulnerability, just sensation.

I should have pushed back. Should have made him actually talk to me.

His mouth found my neck instead.

Not a polite kiss. An open-mouthed claim just below my jaw, hot and slow, his teeth grazing skin.

A sound escaped me before I could swallow it.

His hand slid higher on my thigh, silk bunching under his palm, until his fingers were at the inside of my leg, tracing the seam of my panties like he had all night and not fifteen minutes.

“We shouldn’t…” I started.

“We absolutely should.”

He kissed me then, and it wasn’t the polite kisses of public appearances or the distracted kisses of morning goodbyes.

It was hungry. His tongue swept into my mouth like he’d been thinking about this the entire dinner, like Demi’s cruelty and my father’s champagne and every unsaid thing between us could be fucked out of me if he just kissed me hard enough.

I tasted wine and him. My fingers fisted in his shirt. He made a low sound against my mouth that went straight between my legs.