Too Late For Regret, Mr. Morrison
I came home exhausted from an eighteen-hour hospital shift, just wanting to rest in the bed my husband of three years rarely shared with me.
Instead, I found his mistress sprawled on our bedroom floor in a pool of stage blood, holding a knife and screaming that I had pushed her and killed her baby.
My husband, Kian, rushed in. He didn't care that I was still in my wrinkled scrubs, nor did he look at the blatantly fake ultrasound she threw on the floor.
"Shut up, you vicious bitch."
He shoved me out of the way so hard that my head cracked open against the sharp marble fireplace. As real blood gushed down my face and blinded me, he simply scooped her up and walked out, leaving me bleeding on the floor while the house staff watched in disgust.
As I lay there gasping, my medical training cut through the haze. The chronic weakness and dizzy spells I'd suffered for months weren't from overwork. Kian had been slowly poisoning me. I had played the meek, invisible wife for three years, enduring his coldness and his cheating. I didn't understand how the man I married could not only frame me, but actively try to murder me just to clear the way for his secret lover.
I dragged myself up, stitched my own torn scalp without a single tear, and pulled out my hidden military-grade laptop. I signed the divorce papers to claim my guaranteed half of his ten-billion-dollar trust fund, and logged back into my old hacker alias. The meek wife was dead.
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Chapter 5
"Let her go."
The voice came from the SUV. It was calm, unhurried, but it carried the weight of a nuclear threat.
Kian froze, his grip on Carmen loosening slightly. He turned his head, his eyes widening when he recognized the face in the window. "Thorne? This is none of your business. This is my wife."
"Your ex-wife," Julian corrected smoothly. He gave a slight nod toward the rear of his vehicle.
Two massive men in dark suits stepped out of the front of the SUV. They moved with the silent efficiency of trained killers. Before Kian could react, one of them grabbed his wrist, twisting it sharply until Kian yelped and released Carmen. The other gently steadied her as she swayed on her feet.
"Get your hands off me!" Kian shouted, struggling against the bodyguard's grip. "I'll have you arrested for assault!"
Julian stepped out of the car. He walked over to the gravel, ignoring Kian entirely. He looked down at Carmen, who was barely conscious, her head lolling.
He bent down and picked up the cracked photo of her and her mother. He slipped it into the pocket of his suit jacket. Then, he carefully lifted Carmen into his arms. She was feather-light.
"Take him to the ground," Julian ordered without looking back.
A loud grunt and a thud told Carmen that Kian had been introduced to the gravel.
Julian placed Carmen gently in the back seat of his SUV. He climbed in beside her and shut the door. The soundproofing immediately cut off Kian's screaming.
"Drive," Julian told his driver.
The car pulled away smoothly. Inside the cabin, the air was cool and smelled faintly of leather and sandalwood.
Carmen forced her eyes open. The world was spinning, but she could see the man sitting next to her. Sharp jaw, dark eyes, an aura of absolute control.
"You're Julian Thorne," she slurred, her tongue feeling heavy.
"And you are very lucky I was in the neighborhood," Julian replied, his gaze fixed on her face.
Carmen's brain was foggy, but her medical training kicked in. The weakness, the dizziness, the blurred vision-it was more than just exhaustion. It was chemical.
"Hospital," she rasped, swallowing hard. "He's been poisoning me. Something slow-acting. Chronic. I need a full toxicology screen. And dexamethasone. Ten milligrams. Now."
Julian raised an eyebrow. He didn't question her. He simply spoke into the car's intercom. "Change of destination. NewYork-Presbyterian, VIP wing. And get Dr. Evans on the line. Tell him to prep for a priority toxicology case and have ten milligrams of dexamethasone ready on arrival."
He turned back to her, his eyes narrowed in thought. "You seem to know your way around a medical emergency," he said quietly. It wasn't an accusation, but a statement of fact, filed away for later.
Carmen didn't answer. She leaned her head back against the cool leather, conserving her strength. The fog in her brain was thick, and a cold dread was seeping into her bones. He knew. Kian had been poisoning her. For how long?
Julian watched her, his expression unreadable. He had come to the Morrison estate today on a hunch, a calculated business move to probe a rival's weakness after hearing rumors of the divorce. He hadn't expected to walk into a kidnapping.
And he certainly hadn't expected Kian Morrison's supposedly unremarkable wife to diagnose her own chronic poisoning and prescribe the correct counter-agent while on the verge of collapse.
He leaned back against the leather seat. He studied her with an intensity that made her skin prickle, even in her dazed state.
"I've been looking for someone with a very particular set of skills, Mrs. Morrison," he said, his tone conversational but his eyes sharp. "It seems my search may have just gotten more interesting."
Carmen stared at him. The mask was slipping, on both their parts. She couldn't talk her way out of this. The evidence was in her own words, in the blood running through her veins.
She met his gaze, her eyes as cold and hard as his. "What do you want, Thorne?"
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9.1
For three years, June played the perfect, submissive wife to billionaire Augustus Pruitt, hoping a child would finally warm his cold heart and secure their marriage.
But when she cautiously suggested they have a baby, he looked at her with pure, unfiltered disgust.
"A woman who schemes her way into a marriage doesn't get to carry my blood."
He sneered, leaving immediately to lavish his mistress with diamonds. The nightmare only escalated from there. Augustus bought the one painting June desperately wanted—a piece she had secretly created herself—just to gift it to his mistress. He publicly outbid June at the gallery, mocking her lack of wealth, and left her to collapse in the freezing rain. When the storm gave her a severe 104-degree fever and she nearly died on their staircase, he didn't even stay by her hospital bed. Instead, he sent an assistant with a box of jewelry to buy her silence, then forced her to attend a family dinner where his mother and sister viciously mocked her barren womb and background.
Looking at Augustus, who sat there casually cutting his steak while his family tore her apart, the last flicker of hope in June's chest sputtered and died.
She finally understood that her three years of bleeding devotion were nothing but a pathetic joke to them.
She dropped her silverware, the sharp clatter silencing the entire room. She wasn't going to be their punching bag anymore. It was time to finalize the divorce papers, reclaim her hidden identity as the world-renowned artist 'mr.sun', and make them all regret it.
7.5
He wasn't supposed to notice her.
She wasn't supposed to want him.
And her daughter definitely wasn't supposed to fall in love with him first.
"He's not just dangerous," she whispers to herself . "He's the kind of man who ruins your life slowly... and makes you thank him for it."
He rides loud.
He loves hard.
And once he wants something, he doesn't let go.
"You don't get to look at me like that," she tells him.
His smile is slow. Predatory. Certain.
"I already did," he says. "And now you're mine."
She's a single mother barely holding it together.
He's a biker king with blood on his hands and loyalty carved into his bones.
Their worlds should never touch.
But they collide anyway.
"You think I don't know what you're doing to me?" he growls.
Her back hits the wall. His body cages her in.
"You think I'd touch you if I didn't plan to keep you?"
This isn't a sweet romance.
It's raw. Possessive. Unforgiving.
The kind of love that marks you.
"Mummy," her daughter says softly, holding his hand.
"Can he stay forever?"
He shouldn't want them.
But the idea of leaving them hurts worse than any knife.
"I don't share," he tells her in the dark.
"Not my bike. Not my club. And definitely not my woman."
One kiss turns into hunger.
One night turns into obsession.
And one choice could burn everything down.
"If you climb on my bike," he warns, voice low and lethal,
"you don't get off unchanged."
8.3
Hovering as a translucent soul in the freezing cemetery, I watched Corbin Mendez—the ruthless billionaire I had spent my entire life despising—violently smash open my tomb.
I thought he had come to desecrate my corpse. Instead, he collapsed to his knees, reverently kissed my dead lips, and swallowed a lethal bottle of pills without a drop of water.
In my past life, I was betrayed by my ex-fiancé, framed by my vicious step-family, and trapped in a suffocating marriage with Corbin. I thought he was a paranoid, abusive monster who only wanted to control me. I fought his madness every single day until I died sick, exhausted, and utterly defeated.
But watching him climb into my casket, wrapping his massive arms around my cold body to die beside me, my non-existent heart shattered.
Why hadn't I seen the truth? He wasn't a monster; he was a deeply traumatized man suffering from severe PTSD, and his obsessive love for me was his only tether to sanity.
The regret and agony tore my soul to pieces.
"My love, I'm too late."
Those were his last words before his heart stopped.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't floating in a dark tomb. I was lying in Corbin's bed, exactly two years in the past.
This time, I wouldn't run away. I would heal the broken beast who died for me, and I would personally put a bullet in everyone who ruined us.
9.5
For two years, Clementine played the perfectly obedient wife to billionaire Donovan Bray, wearing his heavy diamonds and enduring his cold indifference.
Until she accidentally saw his tablet and discovered she was just a "collateral asset"—a cheap lookalike prop hired to make his ex-girlfriend, Gisela, jealous.
When Gisela returned to New York, Donovan's mask completely slipped.
During a vicious argument where he mocked Clementine as a pathetic shadow, he grabbed her, causing her to fall down a flight of marble stairs.
Waking up in the hospital, Clementine learned she had miscarried a six-week-old baby she didn't even know she had.
But what truly shattered her was hearing Donovan's voice through the cracked hospital door.
"It changes nothing."
He coldly lied to his friend that the fall had caused permanent infertility.
"It was probably for the best."
He had killed her unborn child and casually dismissed her worth, truly believing she was a penniless nobody who would suffer his abuse in silence.
He thought he held all the power, leaving her broken and discarded for his true love.
What Donovan didn't know was that his fragile, dependent wife was secretly "C.", the billionaire genius behind Aurelian, the world's most exclusive luxury jewelry empire.
Lying in the sterile room, Clementine dried her tears, filed for a ruthless divorce, and permanently froze his supplementary black card.
It was time to show him who really held the strings.
9.0
Eleanora arrived at the city's most exclusive club with a custom cake, ready to surprise her boyfriend of six years, Kason, for his birthday.
But when she opened the suite door, she found him pressing her cousin Brielle against the sofa, kissing her passionately.
Brielle splashed red wine over Eleanora's silk dress, mocking her as a passionless dead fish.
"Get out. Don't stand there and ruin my night."
Kason didn't even look guilty as he waved her away like a nuisance.
Fleeing in tears, Eleanora accidentally drank a spiked cocktail and stumbled into a dark penthouse pool.
She was pulled from the water by Horace Reeves—Kason's terrifying, billionaire uncle and the ruthless black sheep of the family.
Drugged and hallucinating, she clung to him and whispered Kason's name.
"Since he didn't want you, I'll be happy to take his place."
That single word triggered a dark, possessive fury in the billionaire as he pinned her to his bed, claiming her completely.
Waking up covered in bruises, she realized her six years of blind loyalty had been a complete joke. She had escaped a cheating boyfriend only to be trapped by the most dangerous predator in Manhattan.
Forced by her mother to attend a family dinner that very night, she was suddenly dragged into a dark VIP room by Horace.
He kissed her brutally against the door, just as Kason and Brielle walked by and pushed it open.
Seeing his uncle pressing his ex-girlfriend against the wall, Kason's jaw went slack in absolute shock.
Horace slowly lifted his head, his eyes like chips of ice as he looked at his nephew.
"Get out."
7.5
For three years, I was trapped in a paper marriage to a billionaire I had never met, until my father forced me to finally visit his hotel suite.
But when I walked in, I found my husband, Bryton Lott, heavily drugged by my own father. Stripped of all reason, Bryton violently pinned me down and took my innocence, making me a pawn in my father's sick scheme to force a pregnancy and save his bankrupt company.
After escaping his feral grip, I overheard Bryton call my father. He called me a useless, invisible wife, vowing to hand me divorce papers the second he saw my face. The nightmare didn't end there. When I brought a priceless antique jade bracelet to my mother's birthday, she slapped me across the face in front of the entire elite crowd. My stepsister publicly accused me of selling my body. Hiding in the shadows, I even heard my mother admit she wished I was dead, only keeping me around to exploit my marriage.
I had played the obedient, impoverished daughter for years, enduring their endless abuse just to protect my grandmother's legacy. Why did my own flesh and blood treat me like a sacrificial lamb to be sold and destroyed?
The last thread holding my heart together completely snapped. I left the multi-million dollar bracelet on the cold stone sill and walked out into the freezing night. Snapping my everyday SIM card in half, I pulled out an encrypted satellite phone and activated my true identity as the underground world's top operative, "King."
"Run a full hostile intelligence sweep on Apocalypse Corp."