Too Late For Regret: The Genius Ex-Wife
I placed the positive pregnancy test on the black marble island, expecting at least a flicker of emotion from my billionaire husband.
Instead, his assistant dropped a thick divorce agreement right on top of it.
"Laelia is back in New York," Alistair said, his eyes completely dead. "This two-year game is over. Get rid of it."
He ordered his private security to book an abortion clinic for that very night.
To protect my unborn child, I fled through a freezing maintenance shaft and threw myself off a snowy cliff into a rocky ravine.
When I woke up battered and bruised in the hospital, I faked a miscarriage, hoping he would finally let me go.
Instead of an ounce of pity, he choked me, called me a vile creature, and had his guards throw me out into a deadly Manhattan blizzard in nothing but a thin hospital gown.
As the hypothermia set in, I remembered my father jumping off a Wall Street high-rise, driven to bankruptcy by the very man who just left me and his own blood to freeze to death.
For two years, I had played the submissive stand-in wife, mapping out every vulnerability in his empire, but I never expected him to be this ruthless.
Just as I was about to lose consciousness in the snow, a black Maybach skidded to a halt in front of me.
Inside sat Silas Rhodes, Alistair's biggest corporate rival.
I dragged my battered body up and offered him the ultimate weapon to burn my ex-husband's empire to the ground.
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Chapter 6
Clara Donovan burst through the heavy doors of the VIP ward. She still wore her white lab coat, her chest heaving from sprinting up three flights of stairs.
She gripped her phone so tightly her knuckles were white. The screen was illuminated, playing a looped video of Alistair fastening the pink diamond around Laelia's neck.
Clara shoved open the door to Seraphina's room. She stopped dead in her tracks.
Seraphina lay against the pillows. A thick white bandage wrapped around her forehead. Her skin was the color of ash.
Clara gasped. The phone slipped from her fingers, hitting the linoleum floor with a sharp crack.
She rushed to the bed and gently pulled back the thin hospital blanket. She stared at Seraphina's legs and arms. Massive, dark purple bruises mottled her skin. Deep red abrasions covered her knees.
As a trauma surgeon, Clara's brain instantly categorized the injuries. Blunt force trauma. Violent impact.
She thought of the news video. She thought of Alistair's cold, ruthless reputation. Tears welled in her eyes.
"Did he do this?" Clara's voice shook with rage. She pointed a trembling finger at the dropped phone. "Did that bastard beat you to force the divorce?"
Seraphina pushed herself up on her elbows. Pain shot through her ribs. "Clara, listen to me-"
"He beat you!" Clara sobbed, the tears spilling over. "He beat you until you lost the baby! I'm calling the police. I'm going to destroy him."
Clara spun around and grabbed the hospital phone from the bedside table.
Seraphina lunged forward. She grabbed Clara's wrist, her fingers digging in with desperate strength.
"Stop!" Seraphina hissed. "If you call the cops, he will crush you. You'll lose your medical license tomorrow."
In the hallway outside, the elevator doors chimed. Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed on the tile. Alistair walked down the corridor, a dark cloud of fury surrounding him. He had come to see if her submission was just another trick.
Inside the room, Clara tried to yank her arm away. "I don't care! He belongs in jail!"
Seraphina heard the footsteps stop right outside her slightly open door. She saw the shadow of a man's dress shoes block the light from the hallway gap.
Alistair was listening.
Seraphina's mind calculated the variables in a fraction of a second. She needed Alistair to stop hunting her. She needed him to be so disgusted that he would never look for her again.
She let go of Clara's wrist. She reached for the heavy glass water pitcher resting on the bedside table and hurled it violently against the wall. It shattered with a deafening crash, sending shards of glass flying across the linoleum.
Clara screamed and stumbled backward, covering her face.
Seraphina immediately dropped to her knees beside the bed, carefully protecting her stomach, and let out a loud, agonizing wail. She grabbed Clara's coat, pulling the doctor down with her. "Don't move," she whispered fiercely under the cover of her fake sobs.
Outside, Alistair froze. His hand hovered over the door handle.
"He beat you until you miscarried!" Clara cried out, her voice carrying clearly into the hall. "Why are you protecting him?"
Alistair's heart stopped. The word 'miscarried' slammed into his brain like a bullet.
Seraphina looked up at Clara. She let out a dry, harsh laugh. The sound was eerie, echoing off the bare walls.
She raised her voice, making sure every syllable pierced the crack in the door. "He didn't do this, Clara. I did."
Clara froze. She stared down at her best friend, confusion replacing her anger.
Seraphina stared at the wall, her eyes wide and empty. "I threw myself off that cliff. I wanted the baby to die. I made sure it didn't survive."
Outside the door, Alistair's body went entirely rigid. The blood drained from his face. His fists clenched so hard his fingernails cut into his palms.
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9.7
Clarissa rushed into a crowded nightclub for one simple reason: to save her wildly drunk best friend.
But her ruthless billionaire husband, Giovanny, was watching from the VIP room. After effortlessly ruining a man just for grabbing her wrist, Giovanny punished Clarissa for breaching their public image contract with an impossible curfew.
When she inevitably arrived back at his penthouse late, he didn't just yell. He forced her to her knees by his bathtub to wash his back, making her watch an explicit, humiliating video as punishment.
A sudden family medical emergency dragged them to his parents' estate. Still in her soaked, transparent dress and his misbuttoned shirt, Giovanny's mother caught them. She joyfully assumed they had been passionately intimate.
Instead of clearing her name, Giovanny pulled Clarissa close and lied to his mother's face.
"We are working very hard on the family's future, Mother."
He locked her in the guest suite, tossed a sheer silk nightgown on the bed, and literally shattered the tablet holding their "no-contact" prenuptial agreement. He then slapped a file against the window—he had secretly bought all her father's toxic debt.
Clarissa was terrified. They were supposed to be business allies bound by a strict contract. Why was he suddenly acting like a predator determined to own her body and soul?
"Give me an heir, or your father goes to federal prison," he whispered.
Stripped of all choices, Clarissa picked up the white silk. She would surrender tonight to save her family, but as his shadow swallowed her, she made a silent vow to survive this monster, and one day, tear his empire to the ground.
7.2
Four years ago, Madelynn accepted money from Caiden's family and vanished. She thought it was for the best-he would remain the untouchable heir while she faced her tough life alone.
When they met again, Caiden humiliated her in public, yet appeared when she was cornered by a difficult client, pulling her back into his life.
He forced her to stay as his lover, using her mother's medical bills as leverage, whispering, "What you owe me... you'll repay the same way."
Madelynn believed he despised her. Only after the accident, when he ran toward her before the explosion, did she understand-he never let go.
8.7
Ada was eight months pregnant, sitting peacefully in her husband's Manhattan estate, looking at a baby nursery catalog.
Suddenly, her husband's mistress, Jacklyn, walked in, threw an ultrasound photo on the table, and locked the door.
Before Ada could process the betrayal, Jacklyn dragged her to the top of the marble staircase and threw herself backward just as Desmond walked through the front doors.
"She pushed me, Desmond! She tried to kill our baby!"
Desmond looked at Ada with absolute hatred.
He ignored Ada's breaking water and her agonizing screams for help, leaving her to miscarry on the freezing floor while he rushed Jacklyn to the hospital.
He sent Ada to a brutal federal prison for three years, where she was tortured and left with a body covered in horrific scars, mourning the baby she was told died at birth.
When Ada was finally released, Desmond destroyed her cousin's company to force her back to his estate as a lowly maid.
But when Ada saw Jacklyn's three-year-old son, her world stopped.
Right in the center of the little boy's palm was a faint crescent moon birthmark.
It was the exact same mark Ada had kissed on her own lifeless baby's tiny hand before the doctors took his body away.
How did her dead child become Jacklyn's little prince?
Looking at the woman who stole her life and the husband who threw her in hell, Ada clenched her scarred hands and swore she would tear their world apart to get her son back.
7.5
Five years of a fake marriage to a billionaire.
Christi thought she was a wealthy wife-until City Hall told her the truth.
No marriage license. No legal rights. Nothing but a lie.
Her husband cheated on her for four years.
His entire family mocked her, used her, and planned to trap her with a baby.
She was ready to ruin them all.
Then a secret changed everything:
Her late parents were DARPA elites. She is the sole heir to $50 billion.
There's only one catch-marry Cornelius Gregory, Wall Street's ruthless paralyzed tycoon.
She signs the contract in an instant.
Freeze their accounts. Destroy the Rivera family.
The game is over for them.
And the queen has just arrived.
8.2
Karmen lived suffocating under a tight chest binder and a grotesque silicone scar, forced to disguise herself as her degenerate twin brother, Kem. Her only job was to maintain a fake corporate engagement with the ruthless billionaire Earl Calderon.
But her abusive father suddenly escalated his demands. He ordered her to steal Earl's revolutionary AI patents, threatening to cut off her mother's life-saving medical trust and abandon the real Kem in a locked Swiss psych ward if she failed.
The task was a death sentence. Earl absolutely despised "Kem." He treated her like a repulsive parasite, constantly threatening to break her neck. When he accidentally caught her without her wig, he mistook her for a deranged cross-dresser, forcing her to glue the dirty fake scar back onto her raw, inflamed face in sheer disgust. At home, her father hurled glass ashtrays at her, violently yanking her collar.
"Do whatever you have to do in that bedroom, Kem. I don't care how disgusting it is. Just get the signature."
Trapped between a fiancé who loathed her very existence and a father ready to sacrifice their family for greed, Karmen endured the agonizing physical pain of her disguise. She was exhausted, terrified, and running out of time as her brother's life hung by a thread.
But they all underestimated her. When the Calderon matriarch forced Earl to link his ultra-secure private phone with "Kem" to fake their romance, she unwittingly handed over the master key. Karmen wasn't just a helpless victim; she was the elite hacker Nyx, and she was going to tear their empire apart from the inside.
9.5
Bridget left the office early on her anniversary, her pocket heavy with a custom velvet ring box meant for her fiancé.
But when she pushed open the bedroom door, she found him tangled in their bed with her best friend, Chloe.
"Bridget! Wait, it's not what it looks like!" Jacob stammered, his eyes wide with panic.
"Evidence," Bridget stated coldly, snapping a photo of their naked bodies before fleeing into the freezing New York night.
Desperate to numb the betrayal, she got blackout drunk at an underground lounge and threw herself at a dark, terrifyingly handsome stranger.
She woke up in a penthouse suite alone, finding only a limitless black credit card left on the nightstand.
Humiliated and feeling like a cheap escort, she ran away, swearing to forget the nightmare.
But the nightmare had just begun. When she rushed into the office, she discovered the stranger was Jevon Rocha—the ruthless billionaire CEO of her company.
He didn't fire her. Instead, he trapped her in a twisted, obsessive power game, forcing her into his private life and demanding she report to his penthouse.
Bridget couldn't understand why a ruthless billionaire was so dangerously fixated on a low-level employee.
Until she stumbled upon his secret social media account and saw a crayon drawing of a little kid, captioned with a single word: "Finally."
A wave of absolute horror washed over her. He wasn't just playing games; he was hiding a secret child and a messy, high-stakes family drama.
She refused to be the naive collateral damage in a billionaire's twisted life.
Trembling, Bridget hit "Block" on his profile, determined to escape his dangerous web.