His Regret, Her Sudden Marriage
For seven years, I hid my identity as a wealthy heiress to be with my boyfriend, Ewing. I followed him across the country and made myself small so he could feel big.
On Thanksgiving, he ditched our celebration for his first love, Bree, who supposedly had a "burst pipe."
Later, she posted an intimate selfie with him, calling him her "hero."
Then she sent me a video of him at a bar, laughing with his friends.
"She's just being dramatic," he slurred, smirking at the camera. "A new necklace and she'll forget all about it. She's easy."
Easy. Seven years of my life, my love, my sacrifice-all reduced to that one word. I realized I was never his partner. I was just a placeholder.
I didn't cry. I packed my bags, booked a one-way flight to New York, and sent him one final text before blocking his number.
"Don't bother coming home. I'm getting married."
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Chapter 3
Haven Holden POV:
Bree' s expression was one of pure, theatrical surprise, but her eyes held a glint of cruel amusement. She was enjoying this. She was expecting a scene, a repeat of the countless times I had broken down in the past, my composure shattering at the sight of her and Ewing together.
I thought of all the moments he had chosen her over me. My college graduation, which he missed because Bree needed a ride to the airport. Our fifth anniversary, which he cut short because Bree had a fight with her on-again, off-again boyfriend. The countless nights I had lain awake, waiting for him to come home from "cheering her up."
Each time, I had confronted him. My voice would rise, thick with tears and accusations. "Why is she always more important than me? Do you even love me, Ewing?"
And he would always respond with the same cool, detached patience. "Don' t be ridiculous, Haven. She' s my best friend. You' re being insecure."
He made me feel like I was the crazy one, the demanding one. And I, desperate for his love, had always, eventually, backed down.
Looking at them now, in this restaurant he had refused to bring me to, a cold realization washed over me. He didn' t want to come here with me because this was their place. A place he was saving for her.
My pain was invisible to him because he simply didn' t care enough to see it. And my hysterics only served as entertainment for Bree.
Not this time.
I took a deep breath, stood up, and walked over to their table. A placid smile was fixed on my face.
"Hi," I said, my voice light and pleasant. "Looks like you' re having a great time. Did you want me to take a picture for you both?"
Ewing froze, a piece of shrimp halfway to his mouth. The color drained from his face, his embarrassment quickly morphing into a flash of anger. He looked cornered, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
"Haven? What the hell are you doing here?" he hissed, his voice low and furious. "Are you following me? This is exactly what I' m talking about. You' re so suffocating."
He slammed his chopsticks down on the table. "Is this why you sent that ridiculous text? To guilt-trip me? I can' t even have a meal with a friend without you making a scene. No wonder I need space."
The sheer hypocrisy of his words was breathtaking. He was the one who abandoned our Thanksgiving for this "friend." He was the one sitting in a romantic booth, sharing food in the most intimate way possible. And I was the one making a scene?
"I' m just here to eat dinner, Ewing," I said, my voice still calm. The steadiness of it seemed to unnerve him more than any shouting would have.
"And we are broken up. Remember? What you do, and who you do it with, is none of my business."
Bree' s perfectly made-up face registered a flicker of surprise. This was not the reaction she had anticipated. She quickly recovered, pasting on a concerned expression.
"Haven, don' t say that," she cooed, her voice dripping with false sympathy. "You' re just upset. Ewing was just keeping me company because I wasn' t feeling well. He was worried about you the whole time."
It was the same manipulative, saccharine performance she always gave. The damsel in distress who just happened to need my boyfriend' s constant attention. I used to agonize over her words, trying to decipher their hidden meaning. Now, they just sounded pathetic.
I ignored her completely. My business was with Ewing, and that business was finished.
"Enjoy your meal," I said, turning away from them. I walked to an empty table across the room and sat down, my back to them.
In the past, I would have stormed out, blinded by tears. I would have spent the night replaying the scene in my head, dissecting every word, every look, torturing myself. But tonight was different. I wasn' t in the wrong. I just wanted to eat my damn dinner.
The waiter came, and I ordered with a newfound sense of freedom, choosing all the dishes I truly loved without a thought for anyone else' s preferences. The food arrived, and it was glorious. Spicy, flavorful, and all mine. I savored every bite, a small, genuine smile on my face. I had denied myself so much for so long. No more.
As I ate, their conversation drifted over to me.
"She' s never been like this before," Bree said, her voice a stage whisper. "You' re not very good at handling her anymore, Ewing."
I could imagine the pout on her face, the subtle challenge in her tone.
"When you used to come to me, upset about some girl who had a crush on you," she continued, her voice laced with nostalgia, "you would just buy her a little gift, say a few nice words, and she' d be happy again. You' ve lost your touch."
There was a long pause. I held my breath, waiting for Ewing' s defense.
"She' s not them," he said finally, his voice low and tight. "You can' t compare Haven to them."
A fork clattered against my plate. The spicy chili sauce suddenly felt like fire on my tongue, and my eyes began to water. I quickly took a sip of water, trying to swallow the lump that had formed in my throat.
Seven years. Seven years of devotion, of sacrifice, of unconditional love, and all it earned me was that. A backhanded compliment that still placed me leagues below her.
I had spent so much of our relationship wondering what was wrong with me. Why wasn' t I enough? Was I not pretty enough, not smart enough, not interesting enough? I tried so hard to be the perfect girlfriend, hoping that one day he would finally see me, truly see me, and choose me without reservation.
Now I knew. It was never about me. It was never my fault.
His heart had been given away long before I ever came into the picture. I was just trying to fill a space that was never meant for me.
The realization was a bitter pill, but it was also liberating. The addiction I had to his approval, the constant craving for his affection-it was over.
I was finally free.
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9.5
My boyfriend, Jefferson, convinced me to give up my Yale scholarship for him. He was my secret, my escape from the shame of my mother's past, and I threw away my future for our love.
Then, at a gala, he publicly announced his engagement to Aubrey Carroll-the girl who made my high school years a living hell.
He trapped me in his mansion, forcing me to become her personal servant. She tortured me daily, culminating in her brutally killing our dog, Charlie, with a garden trowel.
When her friends arrived, they joined in, stripping me half-naked and live-streaming my panic attack for the world to see.
The man who once promised to protect me watched as they destroyed me.
But as I lay bleeding out on the floor, it wasn't an ambulance that arrived. It was the private security of Alexzander Stevens-my estranged, billionaire grandfather.
He revealed I was his sole heiress, and now, we were going to make them pay for every last tear.
9.5
The disgraced daughter of the Patton family is back from the countryside.At the news, everyone spurned her with contempt!
A good-for-nothing young lady, a crude village wench, a vicious devil...
Until one day--The world-famous life-saving medical sovereign is her.The enigmatic top forensic specialist is her.The grandmaster hacker hunted across the globe is also her.
One hidden identity of the young miss came to light after another.Shocked and dumbfounded, the crowd fell to their knees to beg for forgiveness.
In an instant, Evie was cornered by the mysterious powerhouse.Hartwell's voice lured and mesmerized:"Darling, you have countless secret identities. Would you mind taking on one more, being my wife!"
7.5
To survive a lethal genetic breakdown, Holden, a legendary mercenary known as "Ghost," was forced into an arranged marriage with the wealthy heiress Julia Ramsey.
But the moment he stepped into the lavish estate wearing an oil-stained jacket, he was treated like absolute garbage.
Julia accused him of being a perverted stalker, pulling a gun on him and demanding he be thrown out. Even after Holden used a forbidden kinetic strike to save her grandfather from a fatal heart attack, the family still looked at him with pure disgust. Julia confined him to a cramped guest room, warning him to stay out of her life. To make matters worse, his other estranged fiancée, an elite military commander, barged into the penthouse just to throw an annulment in his face.
"You are a pathetic, bottom-feeding parasite! You have no ambition. You hide in this woman's apartment like a stray dog. You are entirely beneath me."
She mocked him in front of Julia, completely blind to the fact that Holden had just effortlessly incapacitated her Tier-1 operative with a single strike. They all thought he was just a greedy, low-class thug clinging to their wealth. They had no idea they were mocking an apex predator who commanded the city's underground and hunted mutant monsters for sport.
When Julia forced him to attend a high-society yacht party as part of a trap to publicly humiliate him, Holden just smirked and took a sip of his cheap beer.
He was more than happy to play along, already calculating exactly how he was going to tear their arrogant little world apart.
8.8
Alaia Dudley spent her life playing the devoted partner, completely unaware that her fiancé Austen was sleeping with another woman.
She thought the worst he could do was break her heart, until she found herself pinned to a cold operating table.
Austen held her down with a cruel smirk while a scalpel sliced through her sternum.
They cracked her chest open while she was still fully conscious.
The agonizing pain of her heart being cut out burned into her nerve endings.
She realized then that to him, she was never a lover—just a spare organ, a boring piece of wood to be discarded the second his true love needed it.
She died in excruciating agony, choking on her own blood while the man she loved walked away with her heart.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand why she had to suffer so brutally.
Why did she waste her life begging for a monster's attention? Why did they get a happy ending while she was carved up like an animal?
But then, ice-cold water flooded her lungs, and Alaia violently broke the surface of her bathwater.
Her trembling fingers touched her smooth, flawless chest. No scars. Her heart was still beating.
The date on her phone glared back at her: it was exactly five years ago.
Tonight was the exact night Austen first took his mistress to a hotel room.
This time, she wouldn't just expose them. She would use Wall Street's most terrifying tyrant as her personal weapon to strip them of everything they had.
9.8
When I woke up on the muddy bank of the freezing river, I unlocked a brutal, unfiltered preview of my actual future.
For the past six months, I had been the town's ultimate joke, chasing after a city boy who looked at me like a diseased insect. Everyone thought I jumped into the river because he rejected me.
But the nightmare didn't stop there. In the future I foresaw, my entire family was destroyed. My eldest brother was handcuffed and dragged into a squad car. My second brother died in a pool of blood on the asphalt. My parents passed away from sheer grief and humiliation, and our farm was foreclosed.
Meanwhile, Bart Hawkins—my family's sworn enemy, the boy everyone accused of pushing me, but who actually jumped in to save my life—became a billionaire tech mogul. I ended up starving to death in a damp, moldy basement, completely alone.
I finally understood that I was just a pathetic, tragic side character meant to drag my family into hell. My own sister-in-law, Felicie, had been stealing our food and money, laughing at my misery behind my back.
But right now, my mother was still alive, my brothers were safe, and the farm was ours.
When Felicie walked into my bedroom, playing the devoted sister-in-law with a bowl of clear, meatless broth while a stolen roasted chicken thigh leaked grease through her apron pocket, I didn't play along.
"What's in your pocket, Felicie?"
This time, I was going to tear that horrific future apart with my bare hands.
7.4
For nine years, Arianna was the loyal girlfriend and lead engineer who built Gregory's tech company from the ground up.
But coming home early from a business trip, she overheard him laughing with his friends about how he would never marry her.
"Arianna is useful. She's convenient for my physical needs. That's all it is."
He was just using her while waiting for his untouchable stepsister to get a divorce.
The betrayal didn't stop there. Days later, she caught him buying Cartier diamonds for a twenty-two-year-old intern.
When she secretly checked his phone that night, the truth was even uglier. Gregory wasn't just cheating; he was plotting corporate sabotage. He planned to steal the proprietary code she had poured her life into, kick her out of the company without a dime, and hand her executive title to his mistress.
Nine years of blind devotion and endless sacrifices were nothing but a cruel, calculated joke. She had excused his emotional distance for years, never realizing he was intentionally draining her dry while keeping his soul loyal to another woman.
But instead of breaking down, the weak, devoted Arianna died in the dark. She quietly locked her core engine code in a biometric safe, hired an elite private investigator, and put on her sharpest suit. It was time to burn his empire to the ground.