Too Late For Regret: The Surgeon Heiress
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On our third wedding anniversary, I waited in our empty penthouse until twenty minutes past midnight.
When the private elevator finally opened, my husband stepped out, followed closely by a younger woman who was practically swallowed by his oversized suit jacket.
He coldly announced she was staying the night because her apartment lock was broken.
When I calmly pointed out her building had armed security, she immediately dropped to the floor, faking a hysterical panic attack.
"Don't touch me! Please, keep her away!" she shrieked.
Without a second of hesitation, my husband violently shoved me to protect her.
My spine crashed hard into the sharp edge of the marble kitchen island. A blinding, white-hot pain knocked the breath completely out of my lungs.
"You are vicious! You have absolutely zero sympathy!" he roared, his eyes full of disgust.
But as I gasped for air, I saw the crying woman peek out from behind his broad shoulders. Her lips slowly curled up into a triumphant, mocking smirk.
The agonizing pain in my back suddenly faded into absolute, freezing numbness. For three years, I had hidden my true identity to play the gentle, loving wife, only to realize my marriage was a pathetic joke.
I pulled off my heavy diamond wedding ring and threw it directly at his feet.
"I want a divorce."
I walked straight out into the freezing rain, where a massive black Maybach was already waiting. It was time to stop playing house and return to my throne as the billionaire heir of the Stephenson family.
Too Late For Regret: The Surgeon Heiress Chapter 1
Areli sat perfectly still on the center cushion of the dark green velvet sofa.
Her spine was straight, her shoulders pulled back. She kept her eyes locked on the antique wooden grandfather clock standing against the far wall of the penthouse.
The heavy brass pendulum swung back and forth behind the glass case. Tick. Tock. Each mechanical sound echoed loudly in the massive, empty living room.
It was their third wedding anniversary. The hands on the clock showed it was exactly twenty minutes past midnight.
She reached out and lifted the crystal wine glass from the polished glass coffee table. The red wine inside had been poured three hours ago. It was completely cold now.
She brought the thin rim of the glass to her lips and took a small, slow sip. The liquid tasted bitter and flat on her tongue. She swallowed, feeling a cold trail slide down her throat and settle heavily in her stomach.
Then, a soft chime broke the silence.
The private elevator at the end of the hallway had arrived.
Areli set the crystal glass back down on the table. She pulled her hand away immediately.
She stood up from the sofa. Her bare feet moved across the cold hardwood floor as she walked straight toward the grand entryway. Her heart picked up its pace, thumping a steady rhythm against her ribs.
The heavy steel doors of the private elevator slid open with a smooth mechanical hum.
Courtland Roman stepped out of the elevator car first. He was already reaching up, pulling at the knot of his dark silk tie, loosening it around his neck with a tired, aggressive pull.
A second later, Holli Delgado stepped out from the elevator, following right behind him.
Areli stopped walking. Her feet froze to the floorboards.
Her eyes immediately dropped to Holli. Holli was wearing Courtland's oversized black suit jacket. The broad shoulders of the jacket swallowed Holli's small frame. The sleeves hung down past her fingertips.
The polite, welcoming smile that Areli had prepared vanished from her face. The muscles in her cheeks went completely slack.
Courtland walked past the entryway table. He tossed his heavy metal car keys onto the solid marble surface. The keys hit the stone with a sharp, loud clatter that made Areli flinch.
"Why did you bring an outsider here on our anniversary?" Areli asked. Her voice was flat, devoid of any warmth.
Courtland stopped pulling his tie. He frowned, his dark eyebrows pulling together. He stared at Areli, clearly annoyed by her tone.
"Holli's apartment door lock is broken," Courtland said. His voice was cold and dismissive. "She needs to stay here for the night."
Holli took a small step forward, then quickly shrank back, hiding her body slightly behind Courtland's broad shoulder.
"I am so sorry, Areli," Holli said. Her voice shook, thick with fake tears. "I really didn't mean to intrude on your special night."
Areli stared at the younger woman. "The building you live in has twenty-four-hour armed security in the lobby," Areli said, her words sharp and precise. "You are in absolutely no danger."
Holli gasped loudly. She suddenly brought her hand up, clutching the fabric of the jacket tight against her chest. She sucked in a harsh, ragged breath.
Holli's knees buckled. She collapsed straight down onto the hardwood floor, her legs folding under her.
Courtland's face went pale. He immediately dropped to his knees, squatting down beside Holli to check her breathing.
Areli's body reacted before her mind did. Years of intense surgical training kicked in. She took a quick step forward, reaching out to check Holli's pupil dilation to confirm if the panic attack was real.
Holli saw the hand approaching. Her eyes widened in exaggerated terror, and she let out a piercing, hysterical scream. "Don't touch me! Please, keep her away!" The panicked shriek echoed off the high ceilings, instantly igniting Courtland's protective instincts. Hearing her cry out in fear, Courtland's mind bypassed all logic. He completely misunderstood Areli's clinical movement as a physical attack. He threw his arm out, his muscles bunching under his suit jacket. He shoved Areli's shoulder with all his body weight, driven entirely by a blind urge to protect the crying woman. The massive force caught Areli completely off guard.
She stumbled backward, her feet slipping on the smooth floor.
Her lower back crashed hard into the sharp edge of the kitchen's solid marble island.
A blinding, white-hot pain exploded at the base of her spine. The impact knocked the breath completely out of her lungs. She gasped, her mouth opening, but no air came in. The pain shot down her legs, making her fingers go numb.
Courtland stood up. He glared down at Areli. "You are vicious," he yelled, his voice echoing in the kitchen. "You have absolutely zero sympathy for anyone but yourself!"
Areli pressed her hands flat against the cold marble behind her to keep from falling. She looked up, fighting through the physical agony in her back, and met Courtland's furious, cold eyes.
Then, her gaze shifted slightly.
Behind Courtland's back, Holli was looking right at her. Holli's lips curled up into a slow, hidden smirk.
Areli saw the smile. The sharp pain in her back suddenly faded into a freezing, absolute numbness. She saw the entire three years of her marriage for what it truly was. A ridiculous, pathetic joke.
Areli pushed herself up. She straightened her spine, ignoring the throbbing ache. Her eyes turned completely cold. She made the final decision to end this right now.
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Too Late For Regret: The Surgeon Heiress of Contents
Chapter 1 Ch. 1Chapter 2 Ch. 2Chapter 3 Ch. 3Chapter 4 Ch. 4Chapter 5 Ch. 5Chapter 6 Ch. 6
Chapter 7 Ch. 7
Chapter 8 Ch. 8
Chapter 9 Ch. 9
Chapter 10 Ch. 10
Chapter 11 Ch. 11
All Chapters all
New Release Novels
8.3
I was the long-lost Donovan heiress, finally brought home after a childhood in foster care. My parents adored me, my husband cherished me, and the woman who tried to ruin my life, Kiera Reese, was locked away in a mental facility. I was safe. I was loved.
On my birthday, I decided to surprise my husband, Ivan, at his office. But he wasn't there.
I found him at a private art gallery across town. He was with Kiera.
She wasn't in a facility. She was radiant, laughing as she stood beside my husband and their five-year-old son. I watched through the glass as Ivan kissed her, a familiar, loving gesture he’d used with me just that morning.
I crept closer and overheard them. My birthday wish to go to the amusement park had been denied because he’d already promised the entire park to their son—whose birthday was the same day as mine.
"She’s so grateful to have a family, she’d believe anything we tell her," Ivan said, his voice laced with a cruelty that stole my breath. "It's almost sad."
My entire reality—my loving parents who funded this secret life, my devoted husband—was a five-year lie. I was just the fool they kept on stage.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Ivan, sent while he stood with his real family.
"Just got out of the meeting. So exhausting. I miss you."
The casual lie was the final blow. They thought I was a pathetic, grateful orphan they could control.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were.
7.2
Elara Vex had everything-a flawless ice core, the title of prodigy, and a place at the pinnacle of the High Tower. But in one brutal night, it was all ripped away. Her mentor tore the core from her chest. Her fiancé drove a sword through her back. Her own sister smiled as she bled out on the cold marble floor.
When Elara wakes, she's years in the past, mere hours before her core is scheduled to be stolen. This time, she won't be anyone's sacrificial lamb. She shatters her own core with forbidden blood magic and forges something far more terrifying in its place-a bottomless, ravenous Chaos Core that devours magic itself.
Now, branded a worthless cripple and cast into the deadly Abyss, Elara is pulled from the darkness by the outcasts of Elysium Academy-a school for heretics, psychopaths, and everything the Tower despises. Under the tutelage of a reclusive principal who knew her murdered mother, Elara will master her forbidden power and uncover the Tower's darkest secrets.
When the Five Academies Ranking Tournament arrives, Seraphina Vex stands in the arena, draped in white saintess robes, ready to claim ultimate glory. She doesn't know that a ghost from her past has clawed her way back from hell. She doesn't know that Elara is coming-and this time, the prodigal sister isn't asking for mercy. She's bringing chaos.
7.6
I was the fiancée of the Chicago Outfit’s heir, a bond sealed by blood and eighteen years of history.
But when his mistress pushed me into the freezing pool at our engagement gala, Jax didn’t swim toward me.
He swam past me.
He scooped up the girl who pushed me, cradling her like fragile glass, while I struggled against the weight of my gown in the murky water.
When I finally dragged myself out, shivering and humiliated before the entire underworld, Jax didn’t offer a hand. He offered a scowl.
"You’re making a scene, Eliana. Go home."
Later, when that same mistress shoved me down the stairs, shattering my knee and my dance career, Jax stepped over my broken body to comfort her.
I overheard him telling his friends, "I’m just breaking her spirit. She needs to learn she’s property, not a partner. Once she’s desperate enough, she’ll be the perfect obedient wife."
He thought I was a dog that would always return to its master. He thought he could starve me of affection until I begged for scraps.
He was wrong.
While he was busy playing protector to his mistress, I wasn't crying in my room.
I was packing his ring into a cardboard box.
I cancelled my transfer to UCLA and enrolled at NYU instead.
By the time Jax realized his "property" was missing, I was already in New York, standing next to a man who looked at me like a queen, not a possession.
7.6
To pay for her father's life support, Haleigh sold herself into a marriage with Fabian Blackburn, a ruthless billionaire in a deep coma.
But on her wedding day, she caught her boyfriend cheating with her stepsister, laughing about how they would steal the inheritance the second Fabian stopped breathing. Cornered and desperate, Haleigh secretly underwent IVF using her comatose husband's frozen sperm to secure the family trust.
Weeks later, a miracle happened. Fabian woke up.
But instead of gratitude, he treated her like trash. He threw annulment papers at her face, completely disgusted by the arranged marriage.
"If you try any dirty tricks to get pregnant, I will personally drag you to a clinic and have that bastard scraped out of you."
Terrified, Haleigh hid her positive pregnancy test and desperately tried to hack her way to enough cash to escape. But while using his computer, she accidentally opened a highly classified folder.
Inside was a medical file and a photo of a severely disabled girl who looked exactly like Fabian.
Before she could process it, Fabian walked in. Seeing the screen, his cold mask shattered into pure, unhinged madness. He lunged across the room, lifting her off the floor by her throat, completely ignoring her desperate gasps for air.
"Lock her in the basement," he roared to his guards. "No food. No water."
Curled on the freezing concrete, clutching her newly pregnant belly, Haleigh didn't understand what she had just seen that turned him into a murderous monster.
But she knew one thing: if she didn't escape this terrifying estate, both she and his unborn heir would die in the dark.
8.2
When our family empire crumbled, my sister and I were sold off as collateral to the Chicago Outfit.
My fierce sister Frankie was forced to marry Damien Moretti, the terrifying Don. I was shackled to his brother Leo, a notorious, degenerate playboy.
I thought my life was over, but the real nightmare began on our wedding night. A terrified maid handed me the wrong room key. Exhausted and numb, I crawled into a dark honeymoon suite, praying my new husband would be too drunk to find me.
Instead, the heavy door opened, and a man fueled by a drug-laced drink stepped in. He was ruthless, punishing, and entirely stripped away my dignity in the pitch black.
When the morning light finally broke, I turned my head, expecting to see Leo's boyish face. Instead, I saw a profile carved from ice.
Damien Moretti. The Don. My sister's husband.
The very man who had previously called me a "liability" and ruined my life. When he realized who I was, his eyes filled with absolute, chilling disgust. He dragged me out of the ruined sheets, threw me onto the floor of a freezing shower, and demanded to know why I had sneaked into his suite.
"You ruined me. How am I supposed to look at Frankie? You should have just killed me. Kill me now, Damien. It would be a mercy compared to this."
I sobbed, the freezing water mingling with my tears. He just stared down at me with cold, unreadable intent. I was now trapped in a house of monsters, carrying the Don's darkest secret, and I had to figure out how to survive without destroying my sister.
9.8
Erica Murphy had spent three years rotting in a freezing prison cell.
She thought she was serving time for a tragic accident, but the truth was much darker. Her husband, Colten, had framed her for his mistress's drunk hit-and-run, stolen her fortune, and left her to take the fall.
The day Erica was finally released, a speeding car intentionally slammed into her, shattering her spine. As she lay dying on the emergency room table, flatlining on the monitor, Colten and his pregnant mistress didn't come to save her. Instead, they tossed a stack of divorce papers onto her bloody hospital blanket. They wanted her to sign away her last remaining shares and take on thirty million dollars of toxic corporate debt.
"Sign it," Colten demanded coldly, looking at her crushed body with utter disgust. "Consider this the last bit of dignity I'm giving you."
The original Erica died right there, suffocating in despair and betrayal, unable to understand how the man she loved could be so monstrous.
But when the flatline on the monitor suddenly spiked and her eyes snapped open, the traumatized victim was gone.
Replaced by the cold, calculating consciousness of a future special ops commander. With microscopic nanobots rapidly fusing her shattered bones together, Erica picked up the pen, preparing to burn Colten's entire empire to ashes.
