Victor Hargreave—known in tabloids and boardrooms alike as the Pig Billionaire—stood at the far end of her father’s dimly lit living room, his massive frame filling the space like an unwanted shadow.
His body was thick, his posture awkward, his face hidden behind heavy glasses and a strangely smooth, almost waxy complexion. He smelled faintly of antiseptic and leather. He didn’t smile. He barely spoke.
And yet, he owned half the city.
Amelia was twenty-four, freshly graduated, her dreams still intact—until her father’s business collapsed under debts so large they felt fictional. Loans. Bad investments. Signatures he didn’t fully understand. Men with cold eyes had begun showing up at their door. That was when Victor made his offer.
He would erase the debt.
Every cent.
In exchange, Amelia would become his wife.
“No one else will touch you,” Victor had said calmly, his voice low and strangely gentle. “Your family is finished without me.”
Her father had cried. Her mother had gone silent. Amelia had felt something inside her fold inward, like paper burned at the edges.
She said yes.
The wedding was lavish, grotesquely so. Crystal chandeliers, imported roses, a guest list filled with politicians and executives who avoided Amelia’s eyes. Cameras flashed as she walked down the aisle in a dress worth more than her childhood home. Beside her, Victor looked uncomfortable, stiff, almost frightened by the attention.
The media mocked him mercilessly.
The Pig Billionaire Finally Buys a Bride.
Beauty and the Beast—Without the Fairytale Ending.
Amelia learned quickly that Victor was not cruel, just distant. He never touched her without permission. He never raised his voice. He spoke little, ate alone, and disappeared for hours behind locked doors on the top floor of their mansion. The servants whispered that he was hiding something—disease, deformity, madness.
Amelia slept in a separate bedroom.
Months passed. Then a year.
On the night of their first anniversary, Victor requested dinner together. Just the two of them.
Amelia agreed, her stomach knotted with anxiety.
The table was set in a private room overlooking the city, candles flickering against glass walls. Victor wore a tailored suit, his movements careful, deliberate. Halfway through the meal, he cleared his throat.
“There’s something I need to show you tonight,” he said.
Her fingers tightened around her glass. “What kind of something?”
“The kind that ends this marriage,” he replied softly. “Or finally makes it real.”
After dinner, he led her upstairs—to the locked floor she had never been allowed to enter.
The air was cooler there. Sterile. Medical equipment lined the walls like something from a private clinic. Amelia’s heart pounded.
Victor stopped in front of a full-length mirror.
“I know what they call me,” he said quietly. “I know what you see when you look at me.”
Amelia didn’t answer.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t trap you forever,” he continued. “But before you decide, you deserve the truth.”
Then, slowly, deliberately, he reached up to his face.
And began to peel it off.
Amelia screamed.
She stumbled backward, knocking into a metal table as the man in front of her removed his own skin like a mask. The waxy complexion came away in sections. The thick neck. The heavy jaw. Beneath it was another face entirely—sharper, younger, strikingly familiar.
She froze.
Victor—no, Ethan—set the mask down carefully, his real eyes meeting hers at last.
“I disappeared because I refused to become what they wanted,” he said. “The board. The investors. The politicians who funded my rise. When I tried to expose them, they destroyed me.”
Amelia’s legs gave out. She sank into a chair, shaking.
“So you became… this?”
“I became invisible,” Ethan replied. “I created Victor Hargreave—a monster no one would look too closely at. A man so repulsive the world wouldn’t ask questions.”
“At first… yes,” he admitted. “A marriage no one would envy. A union that looked transactional and ugly enough to be believable.”
Her chest ached.
“But then I watched you,” he continued. “How you endured the whispers. How you never once treated me with cruelty. How you defended me when others mocked me in public. You weren’t supposed to be kind.”
Tears blurred her vision. “You took my life.”
“I saved your family’s,” he said. “And I was prepared to give you your freedom tonight.”
He handed her a folder.
Inside were documents—divorce papers already signed by him, accounts transferred in her name, enough money for her to start over anywhere in the world.
