Too Late For Regret: My Genius Wife
I was hemorrhaging on the cold linoleum of the emergency room, my jeans soaked in blood as I begged the nurse to call my husband. I needed Erik’s signature for an emergency surgery to save my life, but he wouldn't pick up.
When I finally reached his assistant, the truth hit me harder than the physical pain. Erik was in the same hospital, just a few floors up, giving strict orders not to be disturbed because his sister-in-law, Athena, was having a "difficult" delivery.
I signed my own consent form and woke up hollow, the pregnancy gone. Shaking and barely able to walk, I dragged myself to the VIP ward only to find Erik rocking Athena’s baby with a look of pure, paternal love—a look he had never given me.
"You’re just trying to pull focus because my brother’s heir was born," he sneered when I finally confronted him at home later that night.
"Stop the drama, Carie. Was it a migraine or just cramps this time?"
He didn't believe me when I told him I’d lost our child, and he certainly didn't believe me when I told him Athena had intentionally rammed my car two years ago to cause my first miscarriage. To him, I was just "low-stock" trash who couldn't provide an heir, while Athena was the fragile widow who needed his protection.
His mother stood there laughing, threatening to freeze my credit cards if I walked out the door, while Erik watched with cold indifference. They thought they had trapped a penniless orphan, but they forgot one thing: I was the one who designed the very empire they were standing on.
As I walked out into the blizzard, I didn't just leave a divorce petition on the floor; I triggered the code to short their family stock into the ground.
"I'm not just taking my name back, Erik," I whispered as the gates slammed shut.
"I'm taking everything."
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Chapter 5
The headlights of the matte black Mercedes G-Wagon, which had been parked discreetly down the snow-covered road, flashed once. The engine growled to life, and the SUV surged forward, crunching over the ice to skid to a halt inches from Carie's knees.
The driver's door flew open. Katy Cash jumped out. She was wearing a leather biker jacket over a silk pajama set, and combat boots.
"Jesus Christ, Carie!"
She saw the blood on Carie's neck first. Her eyes went wide.
"Did he hit you? I swear to God, I will burn that house down with them inside."
"No," Carie said, her voice shaking. "I did it to myself. Just... get me out of here."
Katy didn't ask questions. She grabbed Carie's suitcase and heaved it into the back. She practically carried Carie into the passenger seat.
She blasted the heat. "Here." She threw her cashmere coat over Carie. It smelled like her expensive perfume and cigarettes.
She slammed the car into gear and peeled out, tires spinning on the ice before gripping the asphalt.
Carie watched the side mirror. The Flynn estate disappeared into the white void.
"I grabbed some stuff from your old apartment last week," Katy said, glancing at Carie. "Before Erik changed the locks. It's in the center console."
Carie opened the console.
There was a thick, leather-bound book. Their Wedding.
She opened it. A photo of Erik and Carie cutting the cake. He was smiling at her with that charming, crooked grin that had fooled her so completely.
She felt sick.
She rolled down the window. The cold air rushed in, deafeningly loud.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her windproof Zippo lighter.
"What are you doing?" Katy yelled over the wind.
Carie flicked the lighter. The blue flame danced.
She held it to the corner of the photo album. The paper caught instantly.
She watched the flames lick across Erik's face, turning his smile into black ash.
She held it until the heat singed her fingertips. Then she let go.
The burning book tumbled out onto the snowy highway, a streak of fire in the night.
"Nice," Katy shouted. She floored the gas.
An hour later, they pulled into the underground garage of the Four Seasons in Midtown.
Katy flashed a black Amex card at the front desk. "Presidential Suite. Indefinite stay. No names on the registry."
The room was massive, warm, and safe.
Katy pushed Carie onto the velvet sofa and shoved a mug of hot tea into her hands.
"Okay," she said, sitting on the coffee table in front of Carie. "What's the plan? We sue? We go to the press?"
Carie took a sip of the tea. The warmth spread through her chest, chasing away the chill.
"Laptop," she said.
Katy blinked. "What?"
"Give me your MacBook."
She handed it to Carie.
Carie opened a secure messaging app. "Brice," she typed. "I need you to retrieve some footage. Two years ago. January 14th. 5th and Main intersection. NYC DOT archives. The one I left you access to."
A few moments later, a reply came. "Understood, Mademoiselle. Sending to your secure server now."
Carie opened a terminal window, watching as the encrypted data streamed in. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, decrypting the file.
"What are you doing?" Katy leaned in, watching the lines of code scroll down the screen. "I thought you barely knew how to use Excel."
"I lied," Carie said.
The video file popped up.
"Is that..." Katy gasped.
"The accident," Carie said.
She played it frame by frame.
There was her car, turning left.
And there was the white Range Rover behind her. Athena's car.
It was stopped. Brake lights on.
One second. Two seconds. Ten seconds.
She was waiting. Watching.
Then, the brake lights went off. The front of the car dipped as she slammed on the gas.
Impact.
Carie's car spun into the guardrail.
"Holy shit," Katy whispered. "That wasn't an accident. That was a hit."
"She wanted to kill the baby," Carie said. Her voice was devoid of emotion. "And she succeeded."
"We take this to the FBI," Katy said, reaching for her phone. "Right now."
Carie closed the laptop. "No."
"Carie! She tried to kill you!"
"If we go to the police, the Christian family lawyers will bury it. They'll say the video is inconclusive, or corrupted. Athena will plead insanity. She'll go to a luxury rehab for six months and come out a victim."
Carie looked out the floor-to-ceiling window at the Manhattan skyline.
"I don't want her in rehab," she said. "I want her destroyed. I want her to lose everything she thinks makes her valuable. Her reputation. Her money. Her name."
She pulled up a document template.
Separation Agreement.
She filled in the details.
"I'm initiating the separation," she said. "Tonight."
Katy looked at Carie. Really looked at her.
"Who are you?" she asked softly.
Carie turned to her. Her eyes were dry.
"I'm the one who's going to burn them all down."
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7.8
I was Grayson Warren’s "broken doll," a disgraced socialite kept on a short leash to pay off my family’s debts. To the world, I was a fragile liability; to Grayson, I was a pet he could humiliate for sport, forcing me to play the role of a mentally unstable girl while I secretly gathered evidence against his empire.
The cruelty peaked when Grayson forced me to break three years of sobriety in front of his investors, mocking my struggle before making me kneel on a golf course to scrub his shoes. He treated my life like a game, literally betting my sanity against a corporate board seat while he soft-launched a new relationship with a high-profile PR queen.
When the pressure triggered a massive panic attack, Grayson abandoned me in a private clinic just so he wouldn't miss a dinner reservation. Even my own mother turned against me, threatening to leak my psychiatric records and brand me a "violent delusional" if I didn't beg for Grayson’s forgiveness. I was trapped between a man who owned my debt and a mother who valued her estate over my daughter’s life.
I realized then that they would never let me go; they would only break me until there was nothing left. They thought they had erased my soul, but they forgot I was the only witness to the night my true love, Felix, was murdered. I was done being the victim.
I faked a suicide jump off the Queensboro Bridge to go off the grid, then crashed Grayson’s elite gala in a dress that signaled his downfall. Just as Grayson tried to physically crush me one last time, the room went silent. Felix Law, the man the world thought was dead for three years, walked out of the shadows with a federal warrant in his hand.
"Take your hands off her, Warren."
The game didn't just change; it ended. Felix was back from the dead, and this time, we were burning the empire to the ground together.
7.4
When I called my husband while trapped in a kidnapper's warehouse, he laughed. "Stop faking," he said, "my delicate mistress needs her sleep." He hung up. I signed the divorce papers drenched in my own blood, giving up everything just to escape the monster I married.
His mother threw a broken umbrella at me in the rain. I had nothing—no money, no identity, no hope.
But the moment I turned away, eight black Escalades encircled the street. A man in a tailored suit stepped out of a Rolls-Royce, shielding me with an umbrella. In his hand was a DNA test—and twenty-three years of relentless search.
"Your last name isn't Smith," he said, wiping blood from my wrist with his handkerchief. "It's Wilder. The Wilder family. And the man who left you to die?" He smiled, icy. "He owes us nine billion dollars."
7.2
Talia Morgan is a broke final-year medical student with one nightmare she cannot escape - her mother is dying, and the hospital bills are impossible to pay.
Just when all hope is lost, she receives an unbelievable offer: a one-year contract marriage to billionaire tech CEO Adrian Blackwood... in exchange for $50,000.
No love.
No intimacy.
No emotions.
Just rules and signatures.
Adrian needs a wife to secure his inheritance. Talia needs money to save her mother. The deal is simple.
Until it isn't.
Living under the same roof with a cold, dangerously attractive billionaire brings unexpected complications:
• His jealous ex refuses to disappear
• His family starts to love her
• And every touch, every glance, begins to feel less like a contract and more like a promise
When Talia discovers she may be carrying the one man she was never supposed to love, the contract threatens to destroy everything.
7.2
Ade had sacrificed the life she loved, the things she liked doing to please James. But it was never enough for him. Somehow, the one woman he just couldn't get, was the price, she was the gem.
And so once the opportunity presented itself, Ade became a past chapter of his life. A reject.
Betrayed and scorned, Ade is on a quest to reclaim her life back and face off adversaries.
But now what is she to do with the two men in front of her. One of them her ex James who can't seem to forget her and keeps stepping in her way, and the other, a billionaire who wants her at all costs.
7.9
I sat in a private hospital suite that cost more than a luxury car, watching the green line on my daughter's heart monitor struggle to climb.
Everything shattered when a hospital administrator accidentally dropped a folder, revealing a document with my husband's unmistakable signature. Darius Brandt had personally authorized the "reallocation" of our daughter's donor kidney to his mistress's son just to secure a multi-million dollar corporate merger.
When I confronted him, Darius didn't even blink, calling our daughter's life a "liquidated asset" before offering me a five-million-dollar settlement for my silence. In a blind rage, I set our penthouse on fire, choosing to burn with the proof of his betrayal rather than live another day as his puppet.
As the flames consumed the room, I couldn't understand how a father could put a price tag on his own child's life. How could he look at our dying daughter and see nothing but a resource to be traded for a European distribution network?
But the heat suddenly vanished, replaced by the scent of expensive perfume and the muffled sound of a string quartet.
I opened my eyes to find myself staring into a gold-framed mirror at the Brandt Charity Gala, exactly eight years in the past.
It was the night my nightmare first began, the night I was framed and forced into a marriage that would eventually kill my child.
"I see you, Darius," I whispered to my reflection as I applied a coat of blood-red lipstick.
"And this time, I'm not the prey."
9.3
"I want a divorce, Elodie, and you have just 30 days to respond to the petition. If not, it will be granted automatically." His words echoed like it's the easiest thing to say.
And just like that, Elodie's world shatters.
Five years later, she rebuilds her life but fate strikes again when her son is nearly killed in a tragic accident by Travis Milton, a billionaire CEO.
Haunted by what could've been, Travis covers the hospital bills and brings Elodie and her son into his home.
What begins as a gesture of responsibility slowly turns into something deeper, and passion ignites.
But the walls between them crumble, and long-buried secrets resurface, truths that could ruin everything.
Will Elodie risk her heart again for a man she barely knows? Or walk away to protect the only thing that matters...her son?