Too Late For Regret: His Secret Heir
Five years ago, Grace made a devastating deal to save her fiancé, Jake, from federal prison.
She publicly dumped him, threw her Cartier engagement ring at his chest, and pretended to be a heartless gold digger who abandoned him for money.
Now, Jake had returned as a ruthless tech billionaire, and his first act was buying the very hotel where Grace worked as a struggling maid.
He didn't know she had secretly given birth to his son, Cody, who was currently fighting for his life in the pediatric ICU.
Driven by a dark, obsessive hatred, Jake made her life a living hell. He forced her to clean up shattered glass with her bare hands and crushed her fingers under his expensive leather shoe.
When Grace desperately begged him for three million dollars to pay for her son's life-saving treatment, Jake mistook it as a plea to save her new lover.
"You want the money? Get on your hands and knees and crawl to the desk like a dog."
Grace swallowed her shattered dignity, dropped to her knees, and crawled across the floor as he poured red wine over her head.
She endured the agonizing humiliation, unable to understand how the man who used to kiss her forehead every morning had become a sadistic monster.
Clutching the check, Grace walked out of his penthouse. But with the hospital pressing for answers, she knew the secret couldn't stay buried forever. What would Jake do when he finally discovered the "lover" he just humiliated her to save was actually his own dying son?
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Chapter 4
The wheels of the heavy laundry cart squeaked as Grace pushed it down the long hotel hallway.
Her arms ached. Her uniform was still damp from yesterday's champagne.
"Oh, God. What is that smell?"
Grace stopped the cart.
Blythe stood in the middle of the hallway. She wore a pristine white Chanel suit. Three other wealthy women stood behind her, laughing.
Blythe was Jake's fiancé.
"It smells like a literal slum," Blythe said loudly, waving her hand in front of her nose. She glared at Grace.
Grace lowered her eyes. She gripped the handle of the cart and tried to push it past them against the wall.
Blythe stepped sideways, blocking her again.
"Did I say you could move?" Blythe snapped.
She reached out and shoved the top of the laundry cart with both hands.
The heavy cart tipped over. It crashed onto the floor. Dozens of freshly washed, pure white towels spilled out, scattering across the dusty hallway carpet.
One of Blythe's friends giggled. She stepped forward and dragged the sharp heel of her stiletto directly across a clean towel, leaving a black dirt mark.
Grace felt a hot spike of anger in her chest.
She took a deep breath, forcing her heart rate down. She looked up at Blythe.
"Please move," Grace said evenly. "I have to finish my job."
Blythe's eyes widened in outrage. "How dare you look at me like that?"
Blythe raised her hand and slapped Grace across the face.
The sound cracked through the hallway like a gunshot.
Grace's head snapped to the side. Her cheek instantly burned. A red handprint swelled on her pale skin.
She didn't cry. She slowly turned her head back. She stared directly into Blythe's eyes. Her gaze was completely dead.
Blythe took a step back, suddenly intimidated by the absolute emptiness in Grace's eyes. Her face flushed red with embarrassment. She raised her hand to strike again.
"What is going on here?"
Jake's voice froze the air in the hallway.
He walked out of the elevator. His dark eyes instantly locked onto the bright red mark on Grace's cheek.
Blythe dropped her hand. Her face morphed into a mask of pure victimhood. She ran to Jake and grabbed his arm.
"Jake, honey," Blythe whined. "This disgusting maid tried to run over my feet with her cart. She ruined my shoes."
Jake looked down at Blythe's hands on his jacket. He felt a wave of physical revulsion.
He yanked his arm away. He brushed the fabric of his sleeve as if she had left a disease on it.
Grace watched him. A tiny, pathetic spark of hope flared in her chest. Maybe he would see the truth. Maybe he would stop this.
Jake looked at the dirty towels on the floor. Then he looked at Grace.
"This hotel does not pay you to stand around," Jake said coldly.
He pointed to the towel with the black shoe print.
"Get on the floor," Jake ordered, his voice dropping to a vicious, venomous register. "Lick the dirt off that towel. Now."
The words left his mouth before he could stop them. For a fraction of a second, a flicker of shock crossed his own dark eyes as the sheer malice of his command hung in the air. He tasted the bile of his own cruelty.
Grace's mouth fell open. The spark of hope died, turning to cold ash in her lungs.
Blythe and her friends erupted into loud, cruel laughter.
Grace's hands shook. She looked at the filthy carpet. If she got fired, Cody wouldn't get his medication next week.
She slowly bent her knees. She lowered herself toward the floor.
Jake watched her knees hit the carpet.
A sudden, sharp pain stabbed him directly in the center of his chest. He couldn't breathe. Seeing her actually submit, seeing her break herself for a job, made his blood boil with a rage he couldn't control. The realization that he was acting like a deranged, sadistic monster over a woman who had betrayed him made him physically sick.
Before Grace could lean forward, Jake spun around.
He kicked the heavy metal trash can against the wall with all his strength.
BANG.
The metal dented. The loud noise made everyone jump. Grace flinched, pulling her hands back to her chest.
Jake ripped his tie loose. He was suffocating.
"Get out," Jake snarled, glaring at Grace. "Get out of my sight before I fire you."
Grace scrambled to her feet. She grabbed the handle of the empty cart and ran down the hallway, her breathing ragged and panicked.
Jake stared at the empty corner where she disappeared. His chest heaved. His knuckles were white.
Blythe smiled and reached for his arm again. "Jake-"
Jake turned his head. He gave her a look so violently dark that Blythe froze in terror.
"Do not ever cause a scene in my hotel again," Jake whispered dangerously.
He turned his back on her and walked into his penthouse suite, slamming the door behind him.
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7.8
Elie Joyce’s entire life was controlled by Ebert Ewing, a ruthless billionaire who held her sick grandmother's survival and her family's freedom in his hands.
But on a freezing, stormy night, he forced her into a scandalous scrap of red silk and handed her over to a notorious, disgusting predator.
"You aren't an escort. You're just a free gift."
Ebert mocked her, using her as a disposable bargaining chip to secure a corporate funding round.
When the predator humiliated her, forced high-proof vodka down her throat, and violently pinned her to the floor, Ebert simply watched with dead eyes.
And when Ebert finally intervened to brutally beat the man, it wasn't out of mercy.
"She is my property. Even if she is trash that I threw away, a filthy pig like you doesn't get to touch her."
Afterward, he dragged her battered, barefoot body into his car, only to kick her out into the torrential rain, leaving her on the dark streets to die.
Standing in the storm, shivering and bleeding from broken glass, the last shred of Elie's hope shattered.
She had sacrificed her dignity and soul, enduring his violent bites and cruel control, just to keep her family alive.
Why did she have to suffer this endless, twisted humiliation for a psychopath who only saw her as trash?
But she didn't break.
Tearing a strip of his expensive shirt to bandage her bleeding foot, Elie gripped her broken stiletto like a knife.
With her eyes turning cold and calculating, she limped out of the shadows.
She was going to survive, and Ebert Ewing would soon realize she was no longer his obedient prey.
8.0
I sat at a table for two in the center of Le Coucou, clutching a gift box that had cost me two months of savings. It was our three-year anniversary, and I was waiting for Gavin to finally ask the big question.
But when the heavy oak doors opened, Gavin didn't walk toward me with a ring. He walked in with a polished blonde heiress tucked under his arm, her hand resting protectively over a small baby bump.
"This is Tiffany Stone. My fiancée," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. He didn't apologize for being late or for the three years we'd spent together. Instead, he pulled out a checkbook, scribbled a number, and slid a ten-thousand-dollar check across the white tablecloth.
"Consider it severance for your time," he added, as Tiffany mocked my cheap drugstore dress. "Don't contact me again. Tiffany doesn't need the stress." I was the entertainment for the entire restaurant—the pathetic girl dumped for a better model. By the time I walked out into the rain, I had lost my boyfriend, my home, and the funding for my secret medical research project.
I was an orphan with no safety net, facing an eviction notice and a ruined career. I had given Gavin everything, and he had discarded me like a broken tool. The injustice burned in my chest, a hot, sharp rage that replaced my tears.
Desperate and freezing, I ducked into a coffee shop where I met Colton Bentley, a reclusive billionaire in a wheelchair. After I defended him from a cruel date, he offered me a contract: a marriage of convenience and a seven-figure payment to act as his shield. I signed the papers that night, ready to use his wealth to rebuild my life. But as I watched my new husband navigate his penthouse, I noticed his "paralyzed" legs tense with a strength that shouldn't exist.
9.5
Blaire's mother gave her a ruthless ultimatum: find a husband today, or never call her mother again.
Desperate to escape the suffocating control and disastrous blind dates, Blaire agreed to a fake marriage with a stranger she met through an old woman.
She thought she was marrying a dirt-poor salesman drowning in mortgage debt.
They lived in a rundown Queens apartment and split the living expenses fifty-fifty.
He drove a sputtering Toyota Camry, established extreme territorial rules, and treated her like a gold-digging biohazard.
When she accidentally tripped and spilled hot soup on him, he didn't help her up, instead accusing her of using pathetic tricks to seduce him.
Her own mother even crashed their apartment, ruthlessly mocking his pathetic financial state and calling him a total loser.
Blaire endured his coldness and extreme germaphobia, genuinely pitying him for his stressful, low-paying job.
She refunded his money and defended his dignity, refusing to take advantage of a struggling man.
But she couldn't understand why this supposedly broke guy possessed such a lethal, commanding aura, or why an incredibly expensive cashmere blanket mysteriously appeared on her when she was freezing on the couch.
Until her brother called with a shocking warning.
"Blaire, the name on your marriage certificate belongs to the notoriously secretive billionaire CEO of New York's top financial syndicate!"
Blaire laughed out loud, completely unaware that behind the bedroom door, her "broke" husband was frantically ordering his PR team to bury his true identity.
8.4
Everly spent four years playing the perfect, accommodating wife to Carson Moss, swallowing every grievance just to secure medical treatments for their sick daughter.
But at a high-society banquet she exhausted herself organizing, Carson's pregnant mistress crashed the party.
The woman shoved an ultrasound of Carson's "real heir" directly into Everly's frail grandfather's face.
The shock triggered a massive heart attack.
Carson refused to use his private helicopter to save the dying old man, choosing to protect his mistress and his company's IPO instead. Her grandfather died on the hospital table.
Instead of remorse, her mother-in-law demanded Everly publicly cover up the murder.
"You will do exactly as I say, or I will freeze every single cent of the medical trust fund paying for your crippled daughter's treatments."
When a battered Everly returned to the estate, she discovered her three-year-old daughter covered in dark bruises and pinch marks. Her in-laws were deliberately torturing her disabled child.
Everly couldn't comprehend how a family could be so utterly heartless. Her only family was murdered, her child was abused, and her husband threw a five-million-dollar check at her face as hush money.
They thought she would just break and quietly disappear.
But when a terrifyingly powerful billionaire unexpectedly blocked Carson's security team from locking her up, Everly finally saw her window.
She grabbed her sleeping daughter and ran out into the freezing storm, making a blood-bound vow to make the entire Moss family bleed.
7.4
For five years, Jodi was the perfect, compliant secret lover to billionaire CEO Armand Taylor.
Then, she woke up to a cold email and a seven-figure wire transfer. Armand was marrying European royalty. The money was a severance package to quietly warehouse her out of sight.
Refusing to be his dirty secret, Jodi invoked her contract's termination clause to leave for good. But Armand wouldn't let her go easily. He forced her to personally train her vicious new replacement, Selah.
Selah immediately tampered with a crucial financial file, framing Jodi for sabotaging Taylor Corp's multi-billion-dollar tech acquisition.
Without a second thought, Armand took the new girl's side. He cornered Jodi in the boardroom, his eyes dead and cold.
"You have three days to fix this. If you fail, I will personally see to it that you go to prison for corporate fraud."
He froze her bank accounts and stripped away her dignity, ready to destroy her life over a blatant lie.
He thought she was just a weak, discarded toy who would break under his threats.
What Armand didn't know was the terrifying secret Jodi had just discovered hidden at the bottom of her bathroom trash can.
Three positive pregnancy tests.
If the ruthless billionaire found out she was carrying his heir, he would never let her escape.
Wiping her tears, Jodi slipped into a severe black silk gown and crashed an exclusive Hamptons gala to intercept the tech CEO herself.
This time, she wasn't playing the obedient lover. She was going to clear her name and burn Armand's empire to the ground.
7.4
I was freezing to death in an abandoned cabin, desperately waiting for my fiancé to save me.
Instead, my phone flickered with a video from my adopted sister.
She was smiling as she confessed that she and my fiancé had orchestrated my kidnapping, and my parents' fatal plane crash, just to steal my family's trust fund.
When I called him with my dying breath, he mocked me for faking a PR stunt and hung up.
I died in the sub-zero blizzard, consumed by absolute despair.
But as a ghost, I watched my greatest business rival, the ruthless billionaire Collins, kick down the doors of my mansion.
He didn't just mourn me.
He shot my fiancé, trapped my sister, and set the entire place on fire, choosing to burn alive in the inferno just to avenge me.
I couldn't understand why the man I had publicly despised for a decade loved me so fiercely, while the people I gave everything to wanted me dead.
Opening my eyes again, I was back backstage on the night I won my Oscar, four years ago.
My fiancé smiled, holding out his arms to hug me.
I pushed him away in disgust, marched straight into the crowded theater, and kissed my billionaire rival on live television.
"Let's get married tomorrow."
This time, I would use him to burn them all to the ground.