The Family's Regret, Too Late Now
My family accused me of betraying them, of nearly destroying the tech empire they had built from nothing.
As punishment, my father and two older brothers locked me in my room, leaving me without food or water until I confessed to a crime I didn't commit.
But when a medical condition flared and I began to suffocate, they dismissed my desperate screams for help as just another one of my "theatrics."
"She's just being dramatic," I heard them say through the thick oak door, right before they added extra bolts.
They were completely blinded by Ivy, the manipulative outsider I had welcomed as a sister. They chose her lies over their own blood, forgetting how I had secretly liquidated my own assets to save their company years ago.
I died alone, my last breath a desperate gasp in a house that refused to listen.
Then, I woke up.
Floating as a spirit above my own decaying body, I became a silent witness, waiting for the moment they would finally break down the door and be forced to see what they had done.
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Chapter 3
Chelsea's POV:
My spirit drifted, a weightless presence, following Corbin. The living room blurred behind me, replaced by the dimly lit hallway. With every step he took towards the room, an unsettling emptiness grew within me. It wasn't just the absence of my physical body; it was the hollow recognition of how utterly alone I had been.
Emilio and Erland were right behind him, their heavy footsteps thudding on the Persian rug. They reached the door to the room, the one with the secondary bolts Corbin had ordered. The air around it felt colder, heavier.
Corbin pounded on the thick oak. "Chelsea! Enough of this nonsense! Open this door right now!" His voice boomed, echoing in the suffocating silence.
No answer. Only the silence of a house that held a secret.
Corbin's jaw tightened, his face darkening like a storm cloud. He banged again, harder this time. "Don't test my patience, young lady! You are pushing your luck! You think this is some kind of clever protest? An act of rebellion?"
Still, nothing.
"She' s probably just sulking," Emilio scoffed, trying to sound confident, but a sliver of unease flickered in his eyes. "Trying to make us feel bad. She's always been so dramatic, so self-indulgent."
Erland stepped forward, his eyes narrowed, a different kind of anger on his face. "She thinks we'll just forget about the data leak if she hides away. Thinks she can manipulate us with her silence. She's always been weak, always running from responsibility."
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. No defiant retort, no whimper, no sound at all.
Corbin turned, his gaze sharp and accusatory, landing on Mrs. Gable who hovered timidly a few feet away. "You said she was calling out, Mrs. Gable. That she was unwell. Was that another one of her fabricated stories? Were you in on it?"
Mrs. Gable trembled, her eyes wide with fear. "No, sir! Never! She… she was truly unwell. I heard her. I swear."
"She' s probably just run away," Emilio muttered, rubbing his chin. "That's her style. Cause chaos, then disappear."
"I wouldn't put it past her," Erland agreed, though his gaze kept drifting back to the door. "She' s never truly fit in with the family. Always the sensitive one, the artistic one, the one who couldn't handle the pressure." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Honestly, sometimes I wonder if she was really one of us."
One of you? My spirit scoffed, a silent, bitter laugh. I was more of you than you ever cared to see.
Mrs. Gable, her voice a reedy whisper, insisted, "No, sirs. She' s been in there. I've heard her. She hasn't left."
Corbin' s eyes lingered on the door, a flicker of something unreadable in their depths. A nascent worry, perhaps? A whisper of doubt in the fortress of his certainty.
He tried the doorknob, twisting it with a violent jerk. It held fast. He slammed his shoulder against the wood, once, twice. The door remained stubbornly shut.
"Chelsea, seriously!" Corbin roared, his voice laced with frustration now. "This isn't funny! You think you're clever, locking yourself in? Playing coy?"
Coy? My spirit echoed. If only you knew what was behind that door.
I remembered the last moments. The air, heavy like wet blankets, pressing down on my lungs. My body, writhing, desperate for a gasp of fresh air. My fingers clawed at the solid wood, leaving faint, bloody streaks. I screamed until my throat was raw, until my voice was nothing but a rasp.
The door, thick and unyielding, had been an impenetrable barrier. It was then that I realized the cold, hard truth: they weren't coming. They believed Ivy. They believed their own narrative about me. They were letting me die.
My last breath was a ragged, silent cough. My chest burned, then went numb. The light faded to black.
Just open the door, my spirit pleaded, a silent prayer to the men who could no longer hear me. Just see what you' ve done.
Corbin' s frustration boiled over. He kicked the door, a solid, furious thud. The wood groaned, a faint crack appearing near the top hinge.
Then, a smell. Not the metallic tang of blood, or the sweet odor of decaying flowers. This was deeper, fouler. A sickly-sweet stench, heavy and cloying, wafted from the crack.
Mrs. Gable gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. "Oh my God! What is that smell?" Her voice was tight with rising panic.
Emilio and Erland, drawn by the sudden shift, rushed forward, their expressions mirroring hers.
"It's probably a dead rat," Emilio said, trying to dismiss it, though his nose crinkled in disgust. "Or she's spilled something foul in there. Another one of her childish attempts to bother us."
"Perhaps she's making some kind of… art project," Erland added, his voice laced with disdain. "Something to shock us."
The three Gibson men, their faces contorted with a mixture of disgust and irritation, simultaneously kicked the door. A loud, splintering CRACK echoed through the silent hallway.
The door lurched inward, ripped from its frame.
The stench intensified, a suffocating wave that assaulted every sense. It was the smell of something truly, horribly, irretrievably dead.
The darkness of the suffocating room was finally exposed.
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9.7
"Be my wife for eight months and I will save you from this hell. But if you fall in love with me? I will destroy you."
She wasn't sold for a price. She was lost in a bet.
A dark deal made in the shadows between a father who sold his own daughter without thinking twice and the man who runs the Blackwood empire. The CEO who doesn't just own money. He owns the city. He owns the law. He owns the men and their fates.
She was just a normal designer until she became his wife on paper. A wife to a man who knows no mercy. A man who never loses a deal. A man who refuses to let the woman carrying his name be weak.
Eight months. A marriage with no love. Strict rules. Forbidden feelings.
But what happens when the deal turns into a deep hunger? What happens when the contract becomes a cage? What happens when she finds out that running away from her father put her in the trap of a man who is a thousand times more dangerous?
Her father sold her in a bet. And her only escape was the man who owns the city.
7.7
Married off to him to pay a debt that was never mine, my only purpose was to give him an heir.
Year after year, my foolish heart fell harder while he shattered it without mercy.
When my service ended, my debt paid, and no child to bind us, I chose freedom through divorce.
But just when I thought I was free...
I was bound to him again.
Bound by his child.
7.4
I never expected to be branded a 'fake heiress' and a 'scheming bitch' on my own wedding anniversary.
"Did you really think we'd never find out you faked the DNA test?" My mother's voice cut like a blade. "You've been impersonating our real daughter all along."
The irony was suffocating. They were the ones who stormed into my peaceful life, insisting that I was their long-lost child-no proof needed. And now they dared to call me the fraud.
"Since Camille has finally returned to where she belongs," my father declared coldly, "it's time for you to crawl back into whatever shadow you came from."
Then came the final blow. My husband of five years didn't even hesitate.
"I'll have the divorce papers drawn up immediately. Don't make this difficult, Mirena. You were never meant to be my wife."
Overnight, I was discarded. The scandal of the city. The woman who stole a life that was never hers.
But they forgot one thing: I never needed them.
Before I was George Ashton's wife, I was Mirena Sterling-the Investment Queen. The woman who broke Wall Street records before she turned twenty-five. A racing champion. A tech prodigy.
I walked away from all of it. Gave up my empire. My crown. My name. All for a man who threw me away like garbage the moment someone "better" came along.
Big mistake.
On the night they cast me out, soaking wet and humiliated, I ran into the last person I ever wanted to see.
"Look at you now, Mirena," Alexander Pierce murmured, watching me with those piercing eyes. "The woman who once ruled the financial world. Reduced to this." He tilted his head. "And for what? Love?" A dark laugh. "Pathetic."
My former rival. The man who spent years trying to beat me-and never once succeeded. Now he stood before me, a Wall Street titan, watching my downfall with hungry satisfaction.
He thought he'd seen the last of me.
He was wrong.
The game was simple now: drop the dead weight, reclaim what's mine, and remind everyone why they feared my name.
Within months, I was back. Every market moved when I breathed. Every headline screamed my return. The Sterlings came crawling, begging for mercy they'd never shown me. And George? He watched in horror as I bought his most prized company without blinking.
The divorce he'd so eagerly signed? His greatest regret.
"Mirena, please," he begged, groveling at my feet. "Give me another chance."
I didn't even look at him. "Sorry, darling. I don't recycle trash."
But what I didn't expect was him.
Alexander Pierce dropped to one knee in front of me-the man who had once mocked my fall, now looking up with something raw and undisguised in his crimson gaze.
"I knew you'd take back everything they stole," he said, voice low. "Now..." A slow, dangerous smile curved his lips. "Take me too."
7.7
I was kneeling on the warped linoleum of my trailer, packing my life into a trash bag, when the predatory purr of a luxury SUV echoed through the thin walls. I thought it was a raid, but it was something much worse.
Julian Sterling, a federal prosecutor in a charcoal suit, stepped into the mud and bought me from my alcoholic stepfather. He didn't use cash; he used a list of felonies and a legal settlement to trade my freedom for my stepfather's silence.
"Throw it away," Julian ordered, pointing at the bag containing everything I owned. I watched my sister's stuffed bear fall into an oil puddle as he forced me into a world of cold leather and silence. By the time we reached Boston, Faith Vance was dead. He forced me to sign papers changing my name to Elara, erasing my past to fit a narrative of Swiss boarding schools and high-society breeding.
The horror didn't stop there. The family patriarch, Arthur Sterling, looked at us with hawk-like eyes and issued a command that turned my blood to ice. To avoid scandal, Julian and I were to be introduced as "Brother" and "Sister." Julian's jaw tightened until a vein throbbed in his temple, and when he finally called me "Sister," the word sounded like a curse.
I was a prisoner in a mansion with bars on the windows, caught between a "brother" who loathed my existence and a cousin who tried to assault me in my own room. They dressed me in silk armor and expected me to be a doll, a manageable piece of a legacy I never asked for.
I sat at a dinner table worth more than my hometown, swallowing oysters that tasted like salt and iodine, while Julian created a physical barrier between me and the wolves. Under the tablecloth, I reached out and squeezed his clenched fist.
His fingers uncurled and captured mine in a grip so crushing it felt like a pact signed in the dark. I have a jagged shard of glass in my pocket and five thousand dollars a month to hoard. Julian says the law is a weapon that breaks weak people, but he's about to find out that I'm not a lamb. I'm a survivor, and I'm ready for the casualties.
9.4
On our wedding anniversary, I came home to find my husband, Jace, celebrating with another woman in our living room.
She was wearing my mother's necklace-the only thing recovered from the explosion that killed my parents. Jace laughed, calling it a "cheap piece of junk," and tried to write me a check to buy a new one.
His family called my parents' ashes "garbage" and "unsanitary." When I confronted them, Jace sided with his mother, ordering me out of the penthouse I secretly owned. He let his friends publicly humiliate me, calling me a gold-digging leech with no background.
But that wasn't the worst of it. When a gunman stormed the restaurant we were in, Jace shoved me directly into the line of fire to shield his mistress.
The shotgun blast tore through my arm. As I lay bleeding on the marble floor, I stared at the man who had just used me as a human shield, his face pale with terror as he protected her.
In that instant, every ounce of love I ever had for him died. The pain in my arm was nothing compared to the cold, hollow void that consumed my heart.
He thought he was sacrificing a quiet, useless wife to secure his future. He had no idea he had just declared war on Captain Cilla Henson, West Point valedictorian and the most lethal operator of the Eagle Task Force.
7.6
I was the ultimate trophy wife, a polished ornament in Francisco Zimmerman’s billionaire empire. For three years, I perfected the "Zimmerman Wife Smile," playing the role of the devoted partner while smoothing the Egyptian cotton of his shirts.
The illusion shattered when I stood outside his study and heard him laughing with his mistress, Annalise.
"She’s just a vase that only knows how to smile," Francisco’s voice was cold, devoid of any warmth. "As long as I pay the maintenance fees on time, she stays obedient."
I walked out that night with nothing but a canvas bag and the clothes on my back. But Francisco wasn't finished with his "asset." He froze my bank accounts and used his massive influence to blacklist me from every interior design firm in New York. He tracked my phone, watching me struggle from the shadows, waiting for me to starve so I would crawl back to his mansion.
He even showed up at the dive bar where I was playing piano for rent money, mocking my desperation.
"You have technique, but no heart," he sneered, tossing a silver coin into my tip jar as if I were a beggar. "You're hollow, Iris. Just like your pride."
I couldn't believe this was the same man whose life I had saved during a bloody night in Macau. To him, I wasn't a wife; I was a stock price that needed stabilizing. The more I fought for my independence, the tighter he pulled the net, determined to break my spirit until I had no choice but to return to his gilded cage.
Then, the morning sickness hit. I realized I wasn't just carrying my own life anymore—I was carrying his heir. If Francisco found out, he would never let us go; he would turn my child into another "performance bonus" for his brand.
Looking at the sonogram, I knew a divorce would never be enough to escape a man who thought he owned the world.
"I'm not going back," I whispered, staring at his yacht moored in the harbor. "To save this baby, Iris Potter has to die."