Too Late For Regret: The Lethal Orphan
For years, I hid my identity as a lethal dark web operative by playing the quiet, submissive charity case of the wealthy Valentine family.
On my seventeenth birthday, their spoiled kids set up a cruel trap to dump industrial glue and paint on my head.
When I dodged it and they tumbled down the stairs instead, my adoptive parents completely lost their minds.
Sterling Valentine slammed emancipation papers onto his heavy oak desk, calling me a dangerous liability and a monster.
He kicked me out into a torrential storm with nothing but a canvas backpack, sneering that I would be eating out of dumpsters in a week.
"You ungrateful piece of trash! We took you out of the gutter and this is how you repay us!"
I looked at the man trying to intimidate me.
He thought he was throwing away a helpless orphan, completely unaware he had just released a predator who could dismantle his entire life with a single keystroke.
I didn't shed a single tear. I signed the papers, walked out the front door, and stepped directly into a waiting armored SUV.
By midnight, I had a new billionaire cover family, hacked a mercenary group for three million dollars, and secured my spot at the city's most elite academy.
"Game on."
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Chapter 5
Jimmie kept the umbrella over Amara and Bernice as they walked toward the dark back corner of the diner's parking lot.
Kenny dragged his feet behind them. "This weather is garbage. Why did we have to drive all the way out here?"
Amara's eyes scanned the darkness. Her vision caught the massive silhouette of a vehicle parked away from the streetlights.
Jimmie pressed a button on his key fob. Two blinding xenon headlights cut through the rain.
It was a pristine, vintage black Rolls-Royce Phantom. The silver Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament gleamed in the light.
Amara's footsteps faltered for a fraction of a second. A car like this cost more than the Richmond family's documented income for the next twenty years.
Bernice pulled open the heavy suicide door. "Get in, sweetie. Let's get you warm."
Amara slid into the backseat. Her fingertips brushed against the full-grain calfskin leather. It was authentic.
Jimmie got into the driver's seat. He pressed the ignition. The massive V12 engine roared to life with a deep, flawless purr.
Directly across the highway, Sterling Valentine sat in the back of his Mercedes S-Class at a brightly lit gas station.
Sterling rubbed his temples. He was furious about a failed business deal. He turned his head and looked out the rain-streaked window toward the diner.
His eyes locked onto the black Rolls-Royce pulling out of the parking lot.
Sterling's breath hitched. He recognized the exclusive VIP crest bolted to the license plate. That car belonged to the absolute apex of the city's elite.
As the Rolls-Royce drove past the gas station, the rear window rolled down two inches to let in some air.
The yellow streetlights illuminated the backseat. Sterling saw Amara's cold, indifferent profile clear as day.
Sterling's hand jerked. The hot coffee in his cup sloshed over the rim and soaked into his expensive suit pants. The heat burned his thigh, but he didn't feel it.
His brain short-circuited. The trash he just kicked out of his house was sitting in a car he could not even afford to lease.
His driver looked back. "Sir? Should I follow them?"
Sterling gripped the leather seat. Panic squeezed his throat. He forced his brain to find a logical explanation.
"No," Sterling muttered. "She found some old billionaire to be her sugar daddy. She is selling herself. I knew she was garbage."
The thought made his stomach churn, but it protected his fragile ego. He convinced himself he had made the right choice.
Inside the Rolls-Royce, Bernice opened a small refrigerated compartment between the seats. She pulled out a slice of expensive mousse cake on a porcelain plate and handed it to Amara.
Kenny sat in the passenger seat. He glared at Amara through the rearview mirror. "Don't think you can just come into our house and act like a princess."
Bernice reached forward and slapped the back of Kenny's head. "Watch your mouth when you speak to your sister!"
Amara took a bite of the cake. The rich chocolate melted on her tongue. She watched the mother and son bicker.
Jimmie caught Amara's eye in the mirror. He gave a sheepish smile. "I borrowed the car from a distant relative. Wanted to make a good impression on your first day."
Amara chewed the cake. She looked at the custom stitching on the seats. She did not expose his terrible lie. She just gave a small nod.
The Rolls-Royce accelerated, driving away from the city lights and out toward the dark, sprawling acres of the Richmond farm.
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7.6
Jocelyn Yang lived in the grand Turner Mansion, not as a guest, but as a prisoner. Ever since her father's death, the ruthless billionaire Elam Turner forced her to atone for sins her father never committed.
On her nineteenth birthday, a male classmate secretly sent her a diamond necklace. Elam, who had flown back from London overnight, flew into a psychotic, jealous rage at the sight of another man's gift.
He mercilessly crushed the delicate necklace into the marble floor with his custom leather shoe.
"Did you forget what you are?" Elam hissed, dragging her into a pitch-black storage room. "You take gifts from other men behind my back?"
He pinned her to the dusty floorboards and violently assaulted her. The next morning, a wire transfer of $500,000 hit her bank account. He had humiliated her, broken her spirit, and was now casually trying to buy her silence. Later, when a broken bike left her walking miles through a freezing rainstorm, he just shoved scalding tea into her bleeding hands.
"Look at you," he sneered. "You look like a stray dog ruining my floors."
Jocelyn curled up in the cold, her lips bleeding and her heart shattered. She couldn't understand his terrifying obsession. If he hated her so much, why did he refuse to let her go? Why did he look at her with such manic hunger while systematically destroying her life?
Staring at the massive sum of hush money on her phone, a desperate spark of vengeance flared in her chest. Jocelyn wired every single cent back to Elam's account. She picked up her charcoal pencil, vowing to win the upcoming art competition and buy her escape from this monster forever.
8.8
I discovered I was pregnant with twins from my marriage to Ell Steele, the ruthless CEO of the Steele Group. But he saw me as a gold-digging nobody, unworthy of his heir.
He stormed into our penthouse with his lawyer, slamming down abortion consent forms and a divorce NDA, offering five million to terminate and vanish. "You're not fit to carry my child," he spat, gripping my jaw.
I refused the abortion, signed the zero-payout divorce to keep my company insurance for my dying mom's ICU bills, but stayed on as an admin assistant. Brittany, his mistress, spilled coffee on my reports, got me demoted to the dusty sub-basement sorting old files.
She framed me for attacking her, security dragged me out, slamming me into doorframes that cramped my belly. Trapped in a sabotaged freight elevator, I nearly miscarried in the dark, gasping for air while Ell rescued me—only to find my prenatal pills and rage.
At the gala, I warned Brittany the Angel's Tears necklace—Georgina's flawed design—was cracking. She accused me of theft; Ell ordered me stripped and searched publicly. It snapped anyway, shattering the diamond, but he blamed me, firing and blacklisting me on the spot.
Beaten down, humiliated, body aching from their cruelty—how could my husband, who I once loved, destroy me without a shred of doubt? What made him so blind to my pain?
Dragged from our home in the rain, a black Rolls-Royce Phantom pulled up. The butler bowed: "Madame Aura, your suite awaits." As Ell watched from his Maybach, I initiated the hostile takeover—time to bankrupt them all.
7.2
Elmore Thomas rushed into the emergency room, clutching his feverish seven-year-old son, Buddy, tightly to his chest.
When the privacy curtain was pulled back, the air in Elmore's lungs vanished. The attending physician standing under the harsh lights was his wife, Kendal—the woman everyone believed had burned to death eight years ago.
But there was no tearful reunion. Kendal looked at him, and her eyes froze into impenetrable ice. She treated him like a biohazard, strictly referring to him as the family member.
Worse, she didn't recognize Buddy. She comforted their crying son with the same gentle warmth she used to reserve for Elmore, completely unaware she was soothing the baby she thought had died.
Days later, Elmore watched from the shadows as she picked up another boy outside a prep school, her left hand flashing a massive diamond engagement ring.
When his butler accidentally recognized her, Kendal shielded her new stepson with pure disgust in her eyes.
"Tell that psychopath to sign the divorce papers immediately. I have a new family now."
The words 'new family' echoed in Elmore's skull, tearing him apart. For eight years, he had lived in a hell of guilt and madness, raising their son in the shadow of her ghost. How could she just erase their past? How could she give her tender smiles to a stranger and look at him with absolute revulsion?
Standing in a luxury ballroom, Elmore squeezed his hand until his crystal champagne flute shattered, thick blood dripping onto the rug. The murderous obsession in his dark eyes returned as he called his lawyer.
"Freeze her divorce application. Use every dirty trick in the book. She isn't leaving."
7.9
Valerie Ashford, a girl who had just turned twenty-one, was introduced by her father to his business associates at a grand party, where she met a frightening, cold-blooded man.
That man was none other than her father's business partner, the CEO of a major corporation. He was taken with Valerie and had wanted her from the moment he first laid eyes on her.
For Rovano Morvane, whatever he desired was absolute and he had to have it, even by the worst means possible.
That night Valerie vanished without a trace and Rovano became the prime suspect, yet the Ashford family could not prove their allegations.
"P-please, I don't want to die, sir..." Valerie whispered so softly that Rovano had to bend down even lower.
"Didn't you just say you didn't care whether you were kidnapped or not? So shut your mouth." Rovano ordered.
Cold, Valerie felt the other side of the folding knife pressed against her cheek.
Rovano was going to mark Valerie.
It felt like something was missing if Rovano didn't take out his psychopathic urges on someone.
And this time, for the first time, he wanted a girl: Valerie Ashford.
Would Valerie's life end here?
8.0
Eloise Ferguson was the legitimate daughter of a powerful Senator, yet she was treated like a hysterical burden by her own family.
In her past life, her parents forced her to marry a sadistic billionaire for political funding.
When she resisted, they locked her in a psychiatric facility, drugged her, and left her to die in restraints while her "fragile" cousin Jaylene stole her life.
She never understood why her mother hated her so fiercely.
Why did her mother treat her brother Cortez and her cousin Jaylene like absolute royalty, while throwing her own flesh and blood to the wolves?
Opening her eyes again, Eloise found herself back at age twenty-two, trapped in a restroom at a charity gala.
Escaping her abuser, she used her awakened mystic abilities to look at her family's life forces.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Thick, red biological cords connected her mother directly to both Cortez and Jaylene, intertwining in a perfect symbiotic bond.
They weren't cousins. They were illegitimate twins born from her mother's secret affair.
Eloise was the only true outsider in her own home.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her entire life of abuse was just a cover-up for a nest of parasites stealing her father's name and her inheritance.
But this time, she refused to be their victim.
Armed with an unchallengeable executive order she blackmailed out of the United States President, Eloise crushed the hidden microphone in her bedroom.
"Game on, Mother."
7.5
Daisy spent her birthday cooking a perfect dinner, waiting in their massive penthouse for her billionaire husband, Emmett.
Instead of coming home, a breaking news alert flashed on her screen: Emmett was at the hospital, protectively shielding his old flame, Eryn. When Daisy rushed to the VIP ward, Emmett physically blocked her to comfort a crying Eryn, completely forgetting it was his wife's birthday.
Heartbroken, Daisy demanded a divorce and fled. In response, Emmett ruthlessly froze all her bank accounts and trust funds, leaving her penniless in the freezing Manhattan rain. When she cornered him with divorce papers at a public funeral, a heavy metal cart slammed into her, tearing her calf wide open. Bleeding onto the marble floor, she begged him to sign. Instead, Emmett violently ripped the bloody papers to shreds.
"Unless I am dead, you are my wife," he snarled, locking her inside a room.
Daisy risked her life to escape through a window, dragging her bleeding leg to a dingy motel. But the real nightmare began when Eryn called. The tragic car crash that killed Daisy's adoptive parents ten years ago wasn't an accident—the brake lines were cut. And Emmett, the man she loved, had been using his vast corporate empire to protect the murderers all along.
Why did Emmett bury the police report? What was the deadly secret behind her true identity and the antique "Venus" necklace? Staring at her blood-stained hands in the cracked mirror, the terrified wife died. Daisy grabbed her coat and limped out into the dark, heading straight for the Navy Yard to burn his empire to the ground.