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 5
The silver tray was heavy.
Grace balanced the ice bucket and the bottle of vintage champagne as she walked toward the VIP penthouse suite. The manager had specifically ordered her to deliver it.
She knocked on the heavy oak door.
"Come in."
Grace opened the door.
Blythe stood in the center of the massive living room. She was wearing a breathtaking, pure white Paris couture gown. The silk pooled around her feet like a cloud.
When Blythe saw Grace, a nasty, calculating smile spread across her lips.
"Bring it here," Blythe ordered.
Grace walked carefully across the thick rug. She kept her eyes on the tray.
As she got close, Blythe suddenly lunged forward. She threw her shoulder directly into the bottom of the silver tray.
The tray flipped.
The heavy bottle of champagne flew into the air. It smashed onto the floor. The dark, sticky alcohol exploded everywhere.
It completely soaked the front of Blythe's white couture dress, staining it a sickly yellow-brown.
Blythe immediately let out a blood-curdling scream.
"You bitch!" Blythe shrieked, pointing at Grace. "She did it on purpose! She threw it at me!"
The door to the study burst open.
Jake walked out, holding a stack of financial reports.
He stopped. He looked at the shattered glass, the ruined dress, and Blythe's fake tears.
"Jake!" Blythe sobbed, running toward him. "This dress is two hundred thousand dollars! She ruined it because she's jealous of me!"
Jake's eyes slowly moved to Grace. His gaze was a physical weight, pressing down on her shoulders.
"She bumped into me," Grace said quickly, her voice trembling. "I didn't move. She hit the tray."
"Shut up," Jake said. His voice was dangerously quiet. "A gold digger who lies for a living has zero credibility in my room."
Grace closed her mouth. Her throat burned. She stared at the man who used to kiss her forehead every morning. He was gone.
Jake walked over to the wall safe. He punched in the code.
He pulled out a thick stack of crisp, hundred-dollar bills.
He walked right up to Grace.
He raised his hand and threw the heavy stack of cash directly at her face.
The paper hit her cheek hard. The bills exploded into the air, raining down around her feet like dead leaves.
"Get on your knees," Jake commanded. "Apologize to my fiancé. Beg for her forgiveness."
Grace clenched her fists. Her fingernails dug so deep into her palms that the skin broke.
"No," Grace whispered.
Jake stepped closer. His chest brushed against hers.
"Kneel," he whispered in her ear, his voice dripping with malice, "or I fire you right now. And I will make sure you are blacklisted from every single job in New York. You will starve on the streets."
Grace stopped breathing.
If she lost her income, Cody would be kicked out of the hospital. He would die.
Her psychological defenses shattered.
Tears filled her eyes. Her legs began to shake violently.
She slowly bent her knees.
As she lowered herself, her wrist caught on the edge of her uniform pocket.
The old, frayed woven bracelet around her wrist pulled tight.
Snap.
The cheap string broke.
The bracelet fell. It hit the thick carpet and rolled right until it stopped against the toe of Jake's expensive leather shoe.
It was a braided string with a cheap, ugly gray stone in the center. Jake had made it for her five years ago on a beach in Malibu.
Jake looked down.
He saw the bracelet.
His lungs stopped working. The blood rushed out of his head, leaving him dizzy.
He stared at the cheap stone. He couldn't process it. Why did she have this? Why was a woman who sold him out for money wearing a piece of garbage he made her half a decade ago?
Grace let out a panicked gasp.
She abandoned her dignity. She threw herself onto the floor, her hands scrambling frantically over the carpet to grab the bracelet.
It was her lifeline. It was the only thing that kept her sane in prison.
Jake watched her panic over the cheap string.
The confusion in his brain instantly mutated into a violent, twisted rage. She was mocking him. She kept it as a trophy of how stupid he was.
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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.