Good Wives Finish Last: Revenge of the Billionaire's Ex Wife

The Four Seasons valet recognized me instantly. “Mrs. Costas! Let me take care of that for…”

“I’ll park it myself.”

The words scraped out of me, raw and unfamiliar, like they belonged to someone else. My hands didn’t feel like mine on the steering wheel. The Bentley’s engine purred as I swung into a spot near the service entrance, the tires crunching over polished concrete. I killed the ignition and sat there for a moment, staring at my reflection in the rearview mirror. Mascara already smudged. Eyes wild. Saint Erina was cracking.

I should have turned around. I should have driven straight to Marisol’s, downed another shot of that cheap tequila, and let the night blur into numbness. Instead, I stepped out into the cool evening air, the city lights of Los Angeles glittering below like indifferent stars. Ninety floors up, my marriage was dying, and I was walking toward the corpse.

The private elevator required a key card. Of course, I had one. I’d designed this place—picked every piece of art, agonized over the exact shade of white for the walls because Zayden had said, “I trust your taste, Saint.” Trusted. The word tasted like ash now.

The elevator was all glass on three sides. As it ascended, Los Angeles unfolded beneath me like a glowing circuit board—millions of lives moving forward while mine fractured. My stomach lurched with every floor. Forty. Sixty. Eighty. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass and whispered to the woman staring back at me, “Turn back. Preserve what’s left.”

But the lock on the ninety-floor hallway clicked green when I entered our anniversary code. Four digits that once meant everything. The plush carpet swallowed my footsteps. Recessed lighting cast everything in a soft, funerary glow. The air smelled faintly of cedar and citrus—his cologne. And something sweeter. Strawberries?

The dining room was the only space fully lit, blazing like a stage under spotlights. As if they wanted to be seen. As if this betrayal needed an audience.

And there they were.

On the live-edge walnut table I had spent weeks sourcing—the one that cost forty thousand dollars because Zayden had once said he liked “things with character.” My husband—my Zayden—was fucking my sister on it with a desperate, animal rhythm I hadn’t seen from him in years. Scarlett’s back arched, her tousled blonde hair spilling across the wood like spilled silk. She was completely naked except for the way her legs wrapped around him. His pants were shoved down just enough. The sight burned itself into my retinas.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t look away.

Scarlett turned her head first. Our eyes locked. She smiled—slow, triumphant, almost tender.

“Hi, Sister.” Her voice didn’t hitch, not even a little. “Want tips? You clearly need them.”

Something inside my chest splintered with a silent, total crack. The sound of twelve years shattering.

Zayden didn’t stop. Not immediately. His hips kept moving for another few brutal seconds, eyes half-lidded with pleasure, before he finally registered me standing there. When he did look at me, there was nothing. No shame. No guilt. Just empty irritation, like I was a minor inconvenience interrupting his schedule.

“Get out, Erina.”

Three words. That was all I was worth after everything.

“Zayden—” My voice cracked wide open. The sound was ugly, desperate. “How could you—”

“How could I?” He laughed, low and bitter, finally pulling out and casually adjusting his pants. Scarlett slipped off the table with fluid grace and reached for my Versace robe—the one I’d left here months ago—pulling it around herself like she already owned it. She wasn’t hiding. Why would she? She’d already won.

“You stopped being my wife years ago, Saint,” Zayden said flatly. “You’re just the woman who signs the charity checks and plays housewife for the cameras. The brand ambassador. The pretty prop.”

“I love you.” The words tore out of me like they were being ripped from my soul. “I’ve loved you since UCLA, since the gala, since—”

“Love?” He said it like it was something filthy. “You love the idea of being a Costas. You love the house, the cars, the lifestyle. You don’t love me. You love the story we sold to the world.”

Scarlett plucked a strawberry from a bowl on the counter—where the hell had that come from?—and took a delicate bite, juice staining her lips. “It’s nothing personal, Sister. But you’re exhausting. All that performing. All that… trying.” She waved a hand vaguely in my direction. “Zayden needs someone who doesn’t try so hard. Someone who knows how to just… be.”

The room spun. I grabbed the doorframe to keep from collapsing. The table I had chosen. The art I had hung. The life I had built with these hands. All of it tainted.

“Security,” Zayden called, not even raising his voice. He didn’t need to. Two large men materialized from the shadows of the hallway almost instantly. They must have been waiting. This wasn’t spontaneous. This was planned.

“Mr. Costas?”

“Escort Mrs. Costas out. She’s trespassing.”

“I’m your wife—” The words broke on a sob. Mascara, snot, desperation—I was falling apart in front of them.

“You’re nothing.” Zayden was already checking his phone, bored again. The man who once looked at me like I hung the moon now couldn’t spare me a glance. “You were a project, Erina. A pretty, broken girl from a sad little background who needed saving. And I saved you. Gave you everything. This is how you repay me? Hysteria?”

The security guards took my arms—firm, professional, practiced. They’d done this before. I thrashed, screaming his name. It echoed off the marble walls I had selected, the carpet I had approved. “Zayden, please! We can fix this—please—”

“There’s nothing to fix.” He was already walking away, toward the bedroom, Scarlett trailing behind him like a satisfied shadow. “You were broken when I found you. I just got tired of pretending I could repair you.”

They dragged me toward the elevator. My heels scraped the floor. I was screaming, crying, begging—every dignified inch of Saint Erina stripped away in real time. The doors closed on Scarlett blowing me a mocking kiss through the narrowing gap. The girl I had raised. The girl I had held through nightmares after her parents died. The girl whose hair I braided, whose bike I taught her to ride.

The elevator began its descent. Ninety floors. The mirrors surrounded me—six reflections of a ruined woman. Mascara rivers down my cheeks. Lipstick smeared. Hair wild. Saint Erina stared back at me from every angle, and in every single one, I watched her die.