Too Late For Regret: My Ex-Husband's Downfall
Colette Bentley gripped her terminal leukemia diagnosis, her world shattering. Her only comfort was that her husband, Edwardo, was the country's foremost hematologist.
But when she called him, desperate for a lifeline, she didn't hear his reassuring voice. Instead, she heard the playful voice of her own sister, Cleo.
"Edwardo, hurry up. The water's getting cold..."
As Colette stood outside an exclusive club hours later, collapsing in a pool of her own blood, Edwardo was busy pressing Cleo against his car and gifting her diamonds.
He ignored Colette's emergency calls, coldly texting back that he was too busy to be bothered.
When Colette miraculously secured a single, priceless vial of an experimental drug to save her own life, Edwardo broke into her private safe and stole it.
He fed her life-saving medicine to his mistress to treat a minor symptom, smiling proudly as he claimed he knew Colette wanted to help.
"I confirmed it was the VX-7 compound and gave it to Cleo. The effect was miraculous."
He had completely erased her existence, casually sentencing his own wife to death to play the hero for the woman who ruined her marriage. How could a doctor who swore to save lives be so monstrous?
But Colette wasn't going to die quietly in the shadows.
She slapped the smug smile off his face, extorted a hundred-million-dollar divorce settlement, and walked into a rival research institute. This time, she chose to live for herself.
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Chapter 3
Colette woke to the soft, rhythmic beep of a machine. The light was gentle, diffused, not the harsh glare of a typical hospital. The air smelled clean, faintly of lavender, not the usual chemical sterility.
She was in a private room. An incredibly luxurious one. Her arm was connected to an IV drip, the clear fluid slowly seeping into her vein. She instinctively touched her nose; it was clean, no trace of the blood.
Her pocket. Her phone.
Panic flared in her chest. She sat up, her head swimming, and fumbled for her dress pocket. It was empty.
"Looking for this?"
The voice was low and resonant, a quiet rumble from the corner of the room. She looked up, her heart lurching.
A man was sitting in a chair in the shadows by the window. He held her phone in his hand. As he stood and walked into the light, she saw the figure from the garage. He was tall, dressed in the same black trench coat. His face was starkly handsome, all sharp angles and shadows, but a thin, pale scar cut through his left eyebrow, giving him a dangerous, broken quality.
He held the phone out to her. "You collapsed. I called an ambulance. They brought you here. The Ward Institute."
She snatched the phone, her fingers immediately flying across the screen. The video was still there. Not just there, but moved into a new, password-protected folder. She let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.
Her eyes narrowed, her fear replaced by suspicion. "Who are you? Why did you help me?"
"Kash Ewing," he said. His voice was flat, devoid of emotion. "I was passing by. As for why... let's just say I don't like watching people die on my property."
Her gaze flickered to his wrist. He was wearing a simple, plastic-looking bracelet, the same kind she had. An identification band for a clinical trial participant. A small measure of her tension eased. He was a patient, like her.
His eyes, a startlingly dark gray, dropped to the medical file on her bedside table-the one the paramedics must have brought. "Acute Myeloid Leukemia, M5 subtype. Nasty."
He could read a diagnosis. She was surprised.
"Your primary physician is Edwardo Lucas?" he continued, his tone still unnervingly calm. He gestured to her phone. "He doesn't seem very concerned about your well-being."
The shame and pain washed over her again. She said nothing.
"You won't survive if you rely on him," Kash stated, not as a question, but as a fact.
Her fists clenched at her sides. "That's none of your business."
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, but it didn't reach his eyes. "It wasn't. But you collapsed in the Ward Institute's parking garage. And I happen to know there's a clinical trial here. For your specific condition."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, unassuming white box. He placed it on her nightstand.
"This is Asidancanmab. The newest compound from the VX-7 project. It's not on the market. I had to pull a lot of strings to get this one dose."
Colette stared at the box. She knew that name. Edwardo had mentioned it once, calling it a miracle drug, a theoretical game-changer. He said it could halt the disease's progression, buying precious time. It was a phantom, a myth in the oncology world.
"Where did you get this?" she whispered, her voice hoarse.
He ignored the question. "Consider it a welcome gift. If you want to live, you'll enroll in the VX-7 trial." He paused, his gaze intense. "But I need something from you in return."
"What?"
"I need you to survive. And to do that, you need to keep your eyes open. This place isn't always what it seems. Just... watch for irregularities. Things that don't add up."
Her mind reeled. "Why me?"
"Because you're smart," he said, his voice dropping even lower. "And you're desperate. A woman who has just been abandoned by her husband and her family will do anything to survive."
His words were brutal, a scalpel slicing away her pride, but they were true. And in their brutal honesty, they ignited something within her. A flicker of defiance. A desperate, clawing will to live.
She looked from the small white box-her only hope-to the face of the mysterious man offering it. He was right. She had nothing left to lose. And everything to fight for.
She met his gaze, her own eyes clear and hard for the first time in days.
"Okay," she said, her voice steady. "I'll do it."
Kash Ewing gave a single, sharp nod of approval. He turned to leave, his trench coat swirling around him.
"Someone will be here tomorrow to handle your admission," he said over his shoulder. "Stop relying on other people, Colette. From now on, the only person you can count on is yourself."
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9.3
Alyssa Gregory slept with Benton Steele, a recently disgraced and bankrupt heir, just to humiliate him.
She threw a massive check at his bare chest, treating the former prince of Wall Street like a cheap escort.
But Benton didn't take the charity.
Instead, he manipulated her anger, tricking her into signing an ironclad contract that surrendered absolute control of her entire trust fund to him.
When her abusive mother found out she had funded a penniless outcast, she slapped Alyssa across the face.
Her mother froze all her bank accounts, locked her inside her bedroom, and arranged to sell her off to a degenerate politician.
Desperate to escape, Alyssa climbed down her balcony, falling fifteen feet and shattering her ankle on the stones below.
Stripped of her money and freedom, she dragged her broken body to a VIP club just to publicly declare that Benton belonged to her.
She thought she was the boss, playing a rebellious game with a broken man.
But when Benton effortlessly carried her away from the club and locked her inside his rundown apartment, the terrifying calculation in his dark eyes shattered her illusion.
How could a man stripped of his entire empire still radiate such suffocating, violent power?
"You bought me," Benton whispered, his massive frame trapping her against the sofa. "That means I have to take care of you."
Physically trapped and completely broke, Alyssa stared into his consuming eyes, her mind racing to find a way to turn the tables.
9.5
On the day she discovers she is pregnant, Amara is handed divorce papers by the man she loved for three years. Betrayed by her husband and her best friend, she walks away with nothing-except the secret growing inside her.
But what Ethan Cole doesn't know is that the woman he abandoned is not weak... and not alone.
When Amara returns as a powerful heiress, no longer the woman he could control, Ethan begins to regret everything. But as secrets unravel and the truth about her pregnancy comes closer to light, one question remains-
When he finally finds out the child is his... will it already be too late?
9.5
My husband, Colton, the Wall Street mogul, slid annulment papers across the table, coldly discarding me and our unborn child. He thought he was getting rid of a useless wife, but he was actually throwing away the secret architect of his entire empire. Now, I'm ready to make him pay for every insult, every lie, and every single secret I've kept.
For three years, eight months pregnant, I secretly saved Colton's ten-billion-dollar company from collapse, enduring a cold, transactional marriage.
One night, he shattered that illusion, serving annulment papers and callously discarding me and our unborn child.
I signed, leaving luxury behind. Exposing his butler's fraud, I escaped. Colton later found his wedding ring gone and, on his desk, my SEC compliance fixes—proof I was his hidden genius.
Blindsided, he realized he’d destroyed his own empire. His mother then called, gloating. The injustice ignited a fierce resolve within me.
The next morning, I launched Kidd Legal Consulting. I'd use forty-seven folders of Farmer Capital's un-patched loopholes to force a fair settlement, securing my daughter's future.
8.1
He was powerful.
He was terrifying.
Said to be cruel and unjust...
7.1
After the one-night stand with a man who refused to tell her his name, Charlotte would figure out on TV that the man she had s*x with the previous night was the heir to a billionaire empire.
At the same time, Jace Norman-the infamous playboy heir-faces a public scandal that threatens his inheritance. To protect the family empire, his ruthless father forces him into an immediate contract marriage.
And just like that Charlotte would get married to the spoiled, reckless son of the most powerful billionaire in the city.
That One night, Room 55 and Five thousand dollars she desperately needed would change her life forever.
Weeks later, Charlotte discovers she's pregnant.
But before she can process the truth, her manipulative boyfriend claims the child is his and begins blackmailing her.
As their fake marriage becomes dangerously possessive, secrets begin to spiral. An ex-boyfriend demanding money. Jace's jealous college lover is determined to destroy Charlotte. Charlotte's sister is hiding betrayal behind sweet smiles. And a billionaire father who will eliminate anyone to protect the Norman name.
When a forged DNA test claims the baby isn't Jace's, the empire turns on Charlotte.
But the truth is far darker than any of them realize.
Because someone has been orchestrating every lie from the beginning.
And when Jace finally discovers the baby is his...
He will have to choose between his father's empire-
Or the woman carrying his heir.
9.8
I spent ten years locked in an asylum, heavily sedated, until my wealthy family dragged me back to their Hamptons estate. I pretended to be a brain-damaged lunatic to survive.
They didn't bring me back out of love. The Holden family was bleeding money, and they desperately needed me dead to inherit my massive trust fund shares.
My step-cousin Cristian was the mastermind behind the purge. First, he tried to quietly murder our billionaire grandfather with a mutated toxic orchid. Then, he ordered a guard to drop a deadly Gaboon viper into my bedroom in the dead of night. My father was a spineless coward, my mother was drugged into a stupor by the family doctor, and my brother was a crippled addict. They all stood by as I was thrown into the freezing mud, treated like garbage.
"She is a disgrace to this family! Get her back to the asylum immediately!"
My uncle roared, completely unaware that my brain was forged in a decade of clandestine warfare. But the strangest part wasn't my hidden combat skills. It was that my blood relatives could suddenly hear my cold, tactical inner thoughts.
Through my silent, telepathic broadcasts, I exposed Cristian's poison to my grandfather, woke my mother from her chemical haze, and turned my paralyzed brother into a ruthless, blood-soaked protector. Still playing the shivering, crazy girl, I smiled in the dark. The real war had just begun.