Once His Wife, Now His Worst Regret
She thought their love could survive anything. She was wrong.
For five years, Amara Hayes was the perfect wife - loyal, gentle, and endlessly forgiving. She believed her husband, Ethan Blackwell, when he said his late nights were for business. She trusted him when he swore his heart was hers.
Until the night she walked into his office and saw him making love to another woman.
Humiliated, heartbroken, and betrayed, Amara left without a word - leaving behind her wedding ring, her identity, and the man who destroyed her faith in love.
Three years later, she returns to New York as a powerful businesswoman with a new name and a cold smile. She's no longer the naive wife he controlled - she's his rival, his downfall, and his punishment.
But Ethan isn't the same man either. He's haunted by the woman he lost and desperate for redemption. And when fate throws them together again, old flames reignite amid a storm of revenge, pain, and forbidden desire.
He once broke her heart. Now, she'll make him wish he never did.
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Chapter 3
The rain had slowed to a faint drizzle by the time Amara finally drifted into a restless half-sleep on the couch. Her hair was still damp, her blanket clutched too tightly around her shoulders. The city outside whispered, the kind of quiet that comes only after a storm.
Then- Bang. Bang. Bang.
Her eyes flew open.
The sound came again. Three hard knocks on the door, sharp and impatient.
Her breath caught. She didn't need to look through the peephole to know who it was. She knew that knock. She'd lived years of it - the one that demanded instead of asked.
Ethan.
She stayed still, heartbeat roaring in her ears. He shouldn't even know she was here. And yet... he'd found her.
"Amara," his voice came, rough, almost slurred. "Open the door."
Her throat tightened. She could smell his cologne even through the wood, that same intoxicating scent that had once meant safety and now made her stomach twist.
"Please," he said again, this time softer. "Just... talk to me."
She closed her eyes. The irony was cruel - now he wanted to talk. Now that she'd walked away.
Another knock. Louder. "Amara, I swear to God-"
The doorknob rattled, then stopped.
Amara's hand hovered near the lock, trembling. Every part of her screamed to open it, to demand answers, to hear the apology she had imagined a hundred times before. But she remembered the woman in his office. The way his hands had touched someone else like they used to touch her.
She backed away.
Inside the hallway, Ethan leaned his forehead against the door. His tie was gone, shirt half-untucked, eyes bloodshot with guilt and panic. The storm had drenched him, but he didn't seem to notice.
"I messed up," he said hoarsely. "It didn't mean anything, Amara. You have to believe me."
She stood silently on the other side, watching the shadow of his feet under the door.
He waited. Then hit the door again, softer this time. "Say something."
Still nothing.
"Damn it!" he cursed, voice cracking for the first time. "You can't just disappear like this!"
Amara exhaled shakily, tears burning her eyes - not because she wanted him back, but because she could finally hear the desperation that used to belong to her.
Lena's voice came from the hallway behind him. "You should go, Ethan."
He turned sharply, startled. Lena stood there in her robe, arms crossed, fury cold and sharp in her eyes.
"She doesn't want to see you," she said.
"She's my wife," he shot back, his tone half-pleading, half-commanding.
"Was," Lena replied. "Now she's just the woman who finally realized what you are."
Ethan's jaw tightened. "You think you know us?"
"I know she deserved better." Lena took a step forward. "Leave before she hears something that'll make her hate you even more."
For a long moment, he just stared - chest rising and falling, eyes flicking toward the door one last time. Then he muttered something under his breath and walked away.
Amara sank to the floor the moment his footsteps faded. She pressed her palms to her face, tears spilling freely now. Not from weakness - from release.
She wasn't afraid anymore. She was done being quiet out of love.
Hours later, when the sky began to lighten, Amara's phone lit up again. Dozens of missed calls. One unread message.
Ethan: "If you think walking away will end this, you're wrong. You're still mine, Amara. We'll talk tomorrow."
Her heart turned to ice. It wasn't an apology. It was a threat wrapped in love.
And as she stared at the message, a strange calm settled over her. Tomorrow? No. Tomorrow, she would talk. Tomorrow, she would end it on her terms.
Outside, the first ray of dawn cut through the clouds - pale, cold, unyielding. And Amara whispered into the stillness, "Then let tomorrow come."
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8.4
Grace, after three years of silence from a crash that stole her voice and family, finally uttered a hoarse syllable. It was her first sound, a breakthrough she desperately wanted to share with Josiah, her childhood protector. Instead, through a slightly ajar door, she heard his careless chuckle, followed by a sharp, entitled voice.
Alexandria's voice sliced through the air: "Josiah, are you really planning to bring that little mute to the banquet? She's a walking trailer park tragedy. It's embarrassing." Grace froze, waiting for Josiah to defend her. He didn't. Instead, he sighed, calling her "a responsibility" and "a lifeless ghost," then pulled Alexandria closer.
The words were serrated blades. Her silent devotion, her self-erasure for his peace, had made her a punchline. He was relieved she was broken. The bitter realization of his betrayal ignited a cold, white-hot fury.
Wiping away tears, Grace met Josiah, feigning her usual submissive smile, and quietly refused his "hush money." As he walked away without a glance, her inner voice was clear, sharp, and resolute: "I'm done playing your game."
8.9
Audrey Fletcher was forced to marry the notorious playboy Julian Sterling to save her family's sinking company after her sister ran away.
On their wedding night, her new husband threw a $100,000 check at her face, told her they would be strangers in private, and abandoned her in the bridal suite.
She thought being trapped in a loveless, transactional marriage was the worst fate possible.
She was wrong.
To protect herself, Audrey hung a pair of men's boxer shorts on her balcony to fake a lover's presence.
Instead of deterring her husband, the ridiculous ruse brought Alistair Sterling—Julian's terrifying, powerful uncle and the true puppet master of the family.
He stormed into her apartment with a legal team to catch her cheating, and later even offered her ten million dollars to divorce his nephew.
When she refused out of fear of her own family's ruin, the situation escalated.
Forced to attend a charity gala, Audrey was tricked by staff into wearing a scandalous, backless gown and sent to a dark penthouse suite to beg her husband for peace.
But the man waiting in the shadows wasn't Julian. It was Alistair.
"Does the thought of seducing your husband's uncle give you a special kind of thrill?"
He didn't listen to her desperate explanations. Instead, he pinned her arms behind her back and crushed his mouth against hers in a brutal, punishing kiss.
Trembling with terror and revulsion, Audrey bit his lip until she tasted blood, shoved the billionaire away, and ran for her life.
She couldn't understand why this powerful man was so dangerously obsessed with destroying her sham marriage.
But as she fled into the cold city night, she realized the terrifying truth: the real game was just beginning.
8.6
I woke up choking on rotting air in an alien jungle, surrounded by giant bioluminescent ferns and a three-eyed, armor-plated beast charging straight at me.
Before the monster could tear me apart, I was saved by a squad of men with metallic wings and laser rifles, but my nightmare was just beginning.
When they brought me back to their high-tech military base, every soldier we passed stopped dead, staring at me with a feverish, starving hunger that made my skin crawl.
In the medical wing, a manic doctor bypassed all protocol, pulling out a wicked silver needle to forcibly extract my blood, looking at me not as a patient, but as a winning lottery ticket.
Even their highest-ranking commander, a giant, scarred Admiral, immediately tried to claim me, demanding I be moved into his personal bedroom for "protection."
I didn't understand why I was being treated like a caged miracle, nor why a simple, accidental touch of my hand could bring my winged protector to his knees and silence his feral instincts.
"In the Aethel Empire, there are no females," my protector whispered, his icy blue eyes filled with raw desperation. "You are the only one."
The portal that brought me here was fading, trapping me in a universe of eighty billion shapeshifting Alpha males. Looking at the terrifying devotion in his eyes, I realized my life as an ordinary human was over, and to survive this, I had to tame the beasts.
7.2
Elara Vex had everything-a flawless ice core, the title of prodigy, and a place at the pinnacle of the High Tower. But in one brutal night, it was all ripped away. Her mentor tore the core from her chest. Her fiancé drove a sword through her back. Her own sister smiled as she bled out on the cold marble floor.
When Elara wakes, she's years in the past, mere hours before her core is scheduled to be stolen. This time, she won't be anyone's sacrificial lamb. She shatters her own core with forbidden blood magic and forges something far more terrifying in its place-a bottomless, ravenous Chaos Core that devours magic itself.
Now, branded a worthless cripple and cast into the deadly Abyss, Elara is pulled from the darkness by the outcasts of Elysium Academy-a school for heretics, psychopaths, and everything the Tower despises. Under the tutelage of a reclusive principal who knew her murdered mother, Elara will master her forbidden power and uncover the Tower's darkest secrets.
When the Five Academies Ranking Tournament arrives, Seraphina Vex stands in the arena, draped in white saintess robes, ready to claim ultimate glory. She doesn't know that a ghost from her past has clawed her way back from hell. She doesn't know that Elara is coming-and this time, the prodigal sister isn't asking for mercy. She's bringing chaos.
9.6
I was only three and a half years old, living in a damp basement and beaten daily by Enoch Pruitt with a heavy leather whip.
"Get up, you useless waste of space!"
He always told me I was a stray he had picked out of the garbage.
But during one brutal beating that nearly stopped my heart, time froze, and a glowing figure called The Chronicler appeared.
"You are not an abandoned orphan, Clare. You carry the blood of the highest gods."
He revealed that I was the stolen daughter of the ultra-wealthy Barrett family.
Then, he showed me the horrific ending of my previous life.
I had died right here on this bloody dirt floor.
My real parents and three brothers went completely insane with grief, turning into ruthless monsters who destroyed themselves and the entire world to avenge me.
Meanwhile, the Pruitt family kept torturing me, locking me in a woodshed and feeding me moldy bread.
The memory of my bones breaking and my real mother's agonizing screams crushed my chest.
Why did I have to suffer like an animal while my true family tore the world apart looking for me?
This time, I refused to die in the mud.
I accepted my divine blood, my eyes glowing gold as I summoned a bolt of purple lightning to strike my abuser.
I just needed to survive the night.
Because my real father's heavily armed convoy was already tearing up the mountain, ready to burn this hell to the ground.
8.7
Adelia thought she was just heading upstairs to rest in the hotel suite arranged by her caring stepsister.
But her champagne had been heavily drugged. In the pitch-black room, her rational thoughts melted away as she was violently pulled into the darkness by a terrifying stranger.
The next morning, the heavy suite door was kicked open, and blinding camera flashes shattered her world.
Her fiancé stormed in, hurling their prenuptial agreement directly at her bleeding cheek.
"You make me sick! Violating our agreement like this. You are a disgusting, unfaithful whore!"
Her stepsister squeezed to the front of the crowd, crying perfectly rehearsed tears of horror for the tabloid reporters, while her eyes gleamed with pure, unadulterated triumph.
Desperate and trembling, Adelia begged her father for help, explaining she had been framed.
But her father, the family CEO, only cared about his plummeting stock prices. He coldly stripped her of her inheritance, froze her trust funds, and had massive security guards physically drag her out of Manhattan.
She hadn't just been betrayed; she had been completely slaughtered by the people she loved most. As the elevator plummeted toward the lobby, her tears dried into a bloody, silent vow.
Six years later, Adelia stepped out of JFK Airport, flanked by her terrifyingly smart six-year-old twins.
She was no longer a disgraced, pathetic victim. She had returned as a legendary, untouchable ghost surgeon, ready to rip her family's empire apart.
And her very first move involves saving the life of the ruthless Wall Street predator who ruined her that night.