The Billionaire's Final Bet: No More Games

All because Ethan Cross was obsessed with absolute fairness.

For the five years of our marriage, every single decision in our household had to be decided by the roll of a die.

Until my best friend, Chloe, texted me. She said Ethan was out on the streets, mobilizing a massive search party to find his first loves lost dog.

"That's impossible!" I replied instinctively. "I just won the roll against him."

"He promised he would personally escort our sons donor heart from the docks to the hospital. He should be arriving any minute."

But a phone call from our contact at the harbor slapped me right in the face.

"Dr. Miller, I still haven't seen Mr. Cross! We can't delay young Leo's surgery!"

"There are too many dangerous eyes on this donor heart. Its only safe if Mr. Cross escorts it himself."

Ethans phone went straight to voicemail. Left with no choice, I tracked his GPS location and drove out to find him.

When I arrived, I saw him holding a sobbing Scarlett Vance tightly in his arms, while directing a fleet of luxury SUVs to fan out across the streets.

"If you don't find Bustermine and Scarletts babyyou all know the consequences!"

Suddenly, a wave of exhaustion washed over me.

This man, whose very life I had saved with my own medical skills, wasn't worth it anymore. I was done.

As the search fleet sped away, Ethan turned to get into the drivers seat.

I rushed forward and grabbed his arm.

"Ethan!"

He spun around, startled. "Vivian? Why aren't you at the hospital?"

"I should be asking you that!" I grit my teeth, fighting back tears. "You promised me you would go to the docks to get Leo's heart!"

Leo was our four-year-old son.

He inherited a congenital heart defect and had been on the transplant waiting list for a year.

If his condition hadn't suddenly taken a turn for the worse last month, we wouldn't have had to spend millions coordinating a private international organ transfer.

Ethan avoided my gaze, looking slightly guilty. "Vivian..."

"You know how many competitors are waiting for this heart to fail! Why are you wasting crucial time helping this woman find a dog?"

Hearing my words, the girl clutching his coat stopped crying. She shrank back into Ethans chest, trembling like a victim.

"Watch your mouth, Vivian! Scarlett is a dear friend of mine!"

Ethans voice turned cold. "Buster isn't just a dog. He is our baby!"

"If anything happens to him, Scarlett will break down!"

Our baby?

I carried Leo for ten months, nurtured him through four agonizing years of sickness, and he didn't even rank above a dog in Ethan's eyes?

"No! I don't care what you say today, you are going to the docks and bringing that heart to the hospital!"

I blocked his car door with my body. "Once Im in the operating room saving Leo, you can go find whatever dog you want"

"Stop being hysterical!"

Ethan grabbed my collar and shoved me aside. I stumbled, nearly crashing onto the hard pavement.

"Ethan!" I screamed, my voice cracking. "What happened to your absolute fairness? I won the roll this morning!"

The winner calls the shots. That was Ethans golden rule.

When we got married, he wanted me to resign from the hospital to be his private on-call doctor. I lost the roll, so I resigned.

The day I went into labor, he got a call saying Scarlett was injured. He wanted to leave. We rolled, and I lost again.

When my mother was rushed to the ER with a severe concussion, Scarletts car happened to break down on the highway. I rolled, and I still lost.

But today, for the first time in three years, I finally won.

He had agreed to cancel his plans of fixing Scarletts clogged toilet and promised to fetch Leos life-saving heart.

Yet, he was breaking his word.

"Play fair!" I blocked him again. "Are you going to break your own sacred rule?"

Ethan paused. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his signature golden die, and handed it to me.

"You win, you call the shots. Same as always."

He was so calm, so detached.

My hands shook as I took the heavy gold metal.

*I have to win,* I prayed in my heart. *Please.*

The die rolled across his palms. The seconds felt like hours, sweat slicking my hands.

But when it stopped, the single red dot facing upward made my vision go black.

Before I could process it, Ethan snatched the die back.

"No, that doesn't count!" I fell to my knees on the gravel, grabbing his coat. "The asphalt is uneven! Let's roll again, please..."

"Vivian, you play, you accept the loss."

He took a step forward. I clung to his leg desperately. "Im begging you, Ethan. Please!"

"In the eight years I've known you, I have never begged you for anything. If Leo doesn't get this surgery today, he will die!"

Ethan paused. He didn't look back, but he pulled out his phone.

"Carter, take a car and fetch the boy's transplant box from the docks."

Then he looked down at me. "Are you satisfied now?"

"No!" My eyes were bloodshot. "The docks are dangerous. Only you, Ethan Cross, have the authority to get that heart out safely!"

"Even if Carter drives your car, everyone knows you're here looking for a damn dog! Do you think our enemies are stupid?"

"Ethan, is that dog really more important than your own son's life?"

"Yes!" Ethan snapped. "Buster only responds to my scent and Scarletts!"

He pointed a finger at my forehead. "Vivian, the more time you waste throwing this tantrum, the less of a chance your son has to survive!"

With that, he brushed me off and slammed the car door shut.

The words "your son" froze me to the core.

I chose this man. I gave birth to this child. And I rolled the die myself.

Who else could I blame for my rotten luck?

The SUV roared to life, leaving me in a cloud of dust. As the dust settled, something caught the streetlights.

I leaned down and picked up the golden die he had dropped in his haste.

I shook it instinctively, and my heart sank into an abyss.

Carter drove like a maniac, clutching the steering wheel as the cooler box sat secured in the passenger seat.

I checked my watch. We could still make it!

At sixty miles an hour, we were only thirty minutes away from the hospital.

The freezing wind whipped through the cracked window. I shoved my hands into my pockets and felt the cold weight of the golden die.

Ethan had carried it for twenty years. Its edges were worn smooth.

He always spoke of fairness, and I had almost convinced myself that his obsession was just a harmless quirk of his dangerous lifestyle.

But just now, when I shook it in the quiet car, I felt a tiny, faint click from inside.

"Carter," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "You've been with Ethan for ten years, right?"

"Yes, Mrs. Cross."

"Do you know how to rig a die?"

Carter answered honestly, suspecting nothing. "It's simple, ma'am. You just drill a tiny hole and insert a sliding lead pin inside."

"Whichever number you want to roll, you just tap the pin to the opposite side. Gravity does the rest."

I froze.

My fingers trembled as I lightly tapped the die against my palm. I felt the subtle shift of weight.

I rolled it onto the dashboard. It stopped perfectly on the number 3the exact number I wanted.

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

There was never any fairness. The outcome had always been in Ethan's hands.

What he rolled simply depended on what he valued.

He didn't value my career. He didn't care about my safety during childbirth. He didn't care if my mother lived or died.

To him, I never had any privilege.

"Mrs. Cross, the road ahead is blocked."

The sudden screech of brakes pulled me back to reality.

I leaned out the window. There was a barricade ahead.

Along with the traffic cops, I immediately recognized Ethans men.

One of them was handing a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills to a driver, who smiled and turned his car around.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Ma'am," the guard said, recognizing me. "Mr. Cross had the police department shut down this street. No vehicles are allowed through."

Ethan had connections with the local precinct. Shutting down a minor street in this district was easy for him.

But this was the fastest route to the hospital.

"Move!" My voice shook violently. "My sons heart is in this car! If anything goes wrong, your life won't be enough to pay for it!"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Cross. Mr. Cross's orders are absolute. The road stays closed until Buster is found."

Buster.

That damn dog again.

With shaking hands, I dialed Ethan's number. He picked up, his tone utterly dismissive.

"Just take a detour, Vivian," he sighed impatiently. "I need to find Buster before it gets dark."

"A detour will add an hour and a half! The donor heart will decay!"

But on the other end, he was already distracted, murmuring sweet words to soothe a crying Scarlett.

"You have a heart condition too! You know how painful a heart attack is!" I screamed into the receiver. "Ethan, do you not care if Leo dies?"

"If he can't even handle a little pain, he doesn't deserve to be a Cross!"

The man's harsh roar left me stunned.

Right. I had forgotten.

He had always been like thisa ruthless, arrogant tyrant.

Yet, his very life was something I had dragged back from the gates of hell.

I was the one who found him collapsed and suffocating in a casino bathroom years ago.

I was the one who risked my medical license, performing an emergency bypass in a locked-down clinic at three in the morning.

I was the one who bore the insults of my own family, running through dangerous neighborhoods to source his black-market cardiac meds, even offending local syndicates for him.

On the night he proposed, he had pulled out his golden die for the first time.

He gave me a playful wink.

"If you roll a higher number, I'll give you a week to think about it. If you lose, you put on this ring and become Mrs. Cross right now."

Until today, I actually believed that night was a beautiful twist of fate.

It turned out that for five years, I was just a clown being played in the palm of his hand.

"Let's roll a virtual die on Snapchat," I said, closing my eyes. "If I win, you open the road. If you win, I'll turn around."

"No way," he said coldly. "I only trust real dice."

Suddenly, a sharp scream came through the receiver.

"Scarlett!" Ethans voice panickeda tone I rarely heard. "Why did you climb up that dirt slope? Did you hurt your ankle?"

I hadn't heard him speak with such tenderness in years.

The call went dead.

The dial tone beeped in my ear, cold and mocking.

"Take the detour, Carter," I whispered.

***

I didn't get home until midnight.

I walked into the quiet house, turned on the lights, changed my shoes, and began picking up Leo's scattered toys from the living room floor.

The front door clicked open.

The moment Ethan saw me, the exhaustion on his face morphed into pure rage.

"Why the hell weren't you answering my calls or texts?"

I blinked, pulling out my phone. I had over a hundred missed calls from him.

"You found Buster, I assume. Thats good," I said, my voice completely hoarse. "Make sure to buy him some expensive treats. I'm going to take a shower."

My legs were shaking so badly I had to lean against the wall to stand.

"Vivian, I'm talking to you!" Ethan marched over and grabbed my shoulder. "How is Leo? Was the surgery a success?"

My throat tightened, a metallic taste of blood rising in my mouth.

It physically hurt to breathe as I forced the words out.

"He's dead."

Ethan's pupils contracted. His grip on my shoulder tightened. "What... what did you say?"

"Our Leo is dead," I said slowly, looking him dead in the eyes. "The donor heart decayed because it took too long. He went into cardiac arrest, and he didn't make it."

Ethans mouth opened, but no sound came out except a strained, choked gasp.

I summoned every ounce of my remaining strength and pushed his hand off me.

"I want a divorce."

Ethan stumbled back a step, nearly losing his footing under the double blow.

"Our son just died, and you want a divorce?"

Looking at the devastation in his eyes, I found it hilarious.

"You were the one who had to find a dog. You were the one who ordered the roadblock. And now you're blaming me?"

"I didn't know it would be this serious!" his eyes welled with tears.

"Right. You didn't know," I said, my voice dead and flat. "After all, every time Leo had an episode, you managed to win the roll and leave to be with Scarlett."

Ethan choked on his words.

"Vivian, you're grieving. You can blame me all you want," he said, reaching out to pull me into his arms. "But theres no need to talk about divorce. We've been together for five years."

"We've been married for five years, and we dated for seven before that," I laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. "In all those years, did you ever once break your 'rules' for me?"

"I wanted to go back to the hospital, but you forced me to be your private doctor."

"I was in labor, and you left to bandage Scarletts sprained ankle."

"My mother got a concussion, and you were busy changing Scarletts flat tire."

"Ethan, as your wife, I never received an ounce of your care." My voice felt incredibly heavy. "Living under your version of 'fairness' has exhausted me."

Ethan stared at me for a long time. The guilt in his eyes slowly hardened into cold arrogance.

"Are you sure about this?"

I nodded. I didn't even have the energy to say "yes" anymore.

"Then we do this the old-fashioned way." His voice was freezing. "If you win the roll, Ill sign."

He held out the golden die.

The same die I had quietly slipped back into his coat pocket earlier.

"To keep it fair, you roll first."

Under his confident gaze, I rolled. For the first time in our marriage, it landed on a perfect 6.

"How is that possible?" His eyes went wide. "How did you roll a six?"

"Why not? What did you expect me to roll, Mr. Cross? A one?"

I casually manipulated the hidden pin inside the metal, rolling it again. It stopped precisely on the single red dot.

Ethan stared at me, dumbfounded.

"Just tell me what number you want. I can make it land on whatever you desire."

I slammed the die onto the marble coffee table, picked up a heavy metal trophy, and smashed it to pieces. A tiny metal pin rolled out and stopped near his shoe.

I picked it up and held it in front of his face.

"Five years, Ethan. You used this cheap trick to toy with my life for five years."

He opened his mouth to defend himself, but I raised a hand to cut him off.

"Save your breath. You play, you accept the loss. I'll have the divorce papers sent to your office once I sign them."

"Fine. Great." Ethan laughed bitterly, his pride wounded. "Then pack your bags and get the hell out of my house. You want a divorce? You leave with absolutely nothing."

I never planned on taking a single dime of his dirty money anyway.

But as I dragged my suitcase toward the door, he called out to me.

"I just called the hospital," he said coldly. "Leos body belongs to me. You have no right to touch him."

"What did you say?"

"He carries the Cross name. And you're just an unemployed housewife," Ethan sneered. "You don't even have the money to buy him a proper casket. What makes you think you're qualified to handle his funeral?"

I marched back and slapped him across the face.

"Are you even human? You're using our son's body to force me back?"

"So what if I am?" Ethan wiped a smear of blood from his lip. "If you take back the divorce, I'll let you attend his funeral."

"Go to hell!" My chest heaved. "You are the monster who killed Leo. You don't deserve to touch him!"

"Fine," Ethan shrugged. "Let's make a bet. Winner calls the shots."

"Three days from now, on the VIP cruise ship in the harbor. I'll be waiting." He stepped closer, whispering in my ear, "But the buy-in is five hundred thousand dollars. Can an unemployed doctor like you even afford the seat?"

That night, I dialed the international line for St. Mary's Hospital in Germany.

"Five hundred thousand dollars for a three-year contract, plus my exclusive patent for the cardiac formula. You get me and the formula. It's a win-win."

Three days later, I walked into the VIP lounge of the luxury cruise ship, carrying a briefcase.

Ethan was lounging on the center leather sofa, surrounded by a thick cloud of cigar smoke.

When I dumped the five hundred thousand dollars in cash onto the green felt table, the surrounding crowd erupted into laughter.

"Mr. Cross, your ex-wife is hilarious. Does she not know we don't play for petty cash here?"

*Smack!*

A loud slap echoed through the room. The man who had spoken was sent stumbling, a bright red handprint burning on his cheek.

Ethan sat back down, casually rubbing his palm. "Remind me, what did you just call her?"

"She's... she's your wife, sir..." the man stammered, clutching his face in terror.

Scarlett Vance walked in, wearing a low-cut red silk dress and towering stiletto heels.

"Just take the cash," she purred, brushing her hand against Ethan's jaw. She blew a puff of cigarette smoke into his face. "Consider it a little gift from Vivian to buy Buster some treats. Right, Ethan?"

Ethan smiled, silently giving his consent.

I turned away from them, checking the leather cup and the dice.

"Everything looks fine. Let's begin."

First round. Liar's Dice.

Ethan called three 3s. I raised it to four.

He leaned forward, staring at me intensity. "When Leo passed away... did it hurt?"

The cup in my hand wobbled slightly.

"You should know," I said, looking up. "You have the same condition."

"Did it hurt as bad as my attacks?" he pressed on, his voice dropping. "Like someone reaching into your chest and crushing your heart into pieces?"

I closed my eyes, my palms slick with sweat.

"Five 3s," I called.

"Show them," Ethan said instantly, revealing his dice.

I lost the first round.

"You're distracted," Ethan leaned back on the sofa. "Focus on the next round."

The second round began. I played defensively.

But Ethan kept raising the stakes, pushing from three 4s all the way to six 4s.

"The morgue called me, asking when to cremate him," he said casually. "I told them to wait until I finish this game."

"Seven 4s," I said, keeping my voice dead steady.

He revealed his dice.

He didn't expect me to actually have them.

I won the second round.

"One to one," the dealer announced.

By the final round, Ethan's hand was shaking slightly as he shook the cup.

"I actually went to see him after he died," Ethan murmured softly. "He looked so much like you. Especially with his eyes closed."

The cold sea breeze swept through the open deck doors, making my spine shudder.

"Three 6s," I called.

"Four," he followed.

"If I hadn't closed that street that day, what would we be doing right now?" Ethan choked slightly. "Would you still be my wife? Would the three of us still be a happy family?"

"Five 6s," I raised my voice.

"Six."

Suddenly, the sound of rolling wheels echoed from the corridor outside.

Through the glass partition, I saw a small, brown wooden coffin being rolled by.

It was only four feet long, covered in a white sheet.

My hand slipped. The cup tipped over.

Reveal.

I had two 6s. He had three.

But I had called six.

"I win," Ethan said, lifting his cup with a complicated look. "Vivian, you still can't beat me."

"Make your choice," he stared at me. "Tear up the divorce papers, and we'll bury Leo together."

"Or get off my ship. You won't be allowed near his funeral."

Right then, the heavy double doors of the VIP room were kicked open by heavily armed SWAT officers.

"Nobody move! Hands in the air! We have a warrant for illegal high-stakes gambling!"

"What a joke!" Ethan slammed his hand on the table. "My ship is in international waters. And this is a private game with no money exchanged. You have no jurisdiction here!"

"International waters?" the captain took off his mask, smirking. "Mr. Cross, I suggest you take a look outside."

Ethan rushed to the deck. The glowing neon skyline of the harbor was right in front of him.

"Actually, I had five hundred and twenty thousand dollars," I whispered, walking up behind him. "The extra twenty thousand was more than enough to convince your captain to turn the ship back."

"And one more thing."

I patted his shoulder. "The five hundred thousand dollars Scarlett took from me? That counts as a monetary transaction. It's officially a crime."