Too Late, Mr. Mills: Watch Me Leave
Adriana Guzman spent two agonizing days tearing through the freezing fog of the woods, searching for her missing five-year-old daughter.
She finally found little Pippa curled up under a massive oak tree, her tiny body frozen solid and lifeless. Trembling, Adriana called her husband, Everette. Instead of panic, she heard the soft voice of his mistress in the background.
"You think telling me my daughter is dead will make me book a flight home?"
He laughed, accusing her of faking the tragedy for attention. When Adriana woke up in the hospital, Everette finally arrived, bringing his mistress with him. He shielded the other woman from Adriana's grief, threw a checkbook at her, and demanded she name her price to sign the divorce papers. He only believed the truth when the midday news broadcasted the discovery of Pippa's body. Exhausted and utterly broken by his cruelty, Adriana swallowed a hidden bottle of sleeping pills.
As the darkness pulled her under, she felt a suffocating sense of injustice. Why had she wasted her life begging for a cold man's affection? Why did her innocent daughter have to die alone in the freezing mud while he drank champagne?
But the end never came. Adriana opened her eyes to find herself twenty-one again, standing in a luxury hotel room as a younger Everette walked out of the shower to propose. This time, she smashed a crystal vase, pressed a jagged shard to her own bleeding throat, and looked him dead in the eye.
"I would rather die right here than ever marry you."
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Chapter 2
The smell hit her first. That sharp, sterile sting of alcohol and industrial cleaner that crawled into your nose and stayed there. Adriana blinked, the harsh fluorescent lights burning her retinas. A white ceiling tiles stared back down at her.
She tried to move, but a sharp, pulling sensation stopped her. She looked down. An IV needle was taped to the back of her hand, clear fluid dripping down the tube and into her veins.
Hospital. She was in a hospital.
And then the memory hit her like a freight train. The woods. The cold. Pippa.
Adriana gasped, her back arching off the mattress as she tried to sit up. She had to get out. She had to-
"Guzman Ms. Guzman, please!" A nurse rushed to the bed, pressing a firm hand against her shoulder. "You need to stay calm. You've been unconscious for two days."
Two days. The words echoed in her skull. Two days since her world ended.
"Where is she?" Adriana rasped, her throat feeling like sandpaper. "Where is my daughter?"
The nurse's face softened into that practiced look of pity. "Please, just rest. Your friend is here."
The door banged open, and Janna Glenn flew into the room. Her red hair was a mess, her eyes swollen and rimmed in red, but she was alive. She was solid and real.
"Adriana!" Janna grabbed her hand, squeezing so hard her knuckles turned white. "Oh my god, you're awake."
The touch broke something inside her. The tears came silently, sliding down her cheeks, hot and fast. She squeezed Janna's hand back, anchoring herself to the only person left who cared.
"I found her," Adriana whispered, her voice hollow. "I held her, Janna. She was so cold."
Janna climbed onto the edge of the bed, wrapping her arms around Adriana's shoulders, holding her tight. "I know. I know, sweetie. I'm so sorry."
They stayed like that for a long time, until the door swung open again.
This time, the entrance wasn't frantic. It was deliberate. A tall silhouette stepped into the room, blocking the light from the hallway. Everette Mills.
He looked like a man who had been pulled through time against his will. His expensive suit was deeply creased, his tie loosened as if he'd been fighting it for air. His eyes were shot with red, a stark contrast to the forced composure of his posture. He looked tired, but it was an annoyed kind of tired, like a CEO delayed by traffic.
Adriana's chest seized up. Her lungs refused to work. The sight of him standing there, whole and perfect, while Pippa was in a morgue drawer, was an obscenity.
But it wasn't just him.
A head peeked out from behind his broad shoulder. Becky Clay. She was wearing a simple white sundress, her blonde hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. She looked the picture of innocence, her blue eyes wide with concern.
"Adriana," Becky said softly, her voice trembling slightly. "Are you okay? Everette flew back as soon as he heard. We were so worried."
We. The word was a serrated knife twisting in her gut.
Adriana stared at the woman who had been whispering in her husband's ear, the woman who had been the shadow destroying her marriage. And now she was standing at his side, playing the saint.
A laugh bubbled up in Adriana's throat. It was a harsh, grating sound, completely devoid of humor. It scraped against the quiet room.
Everette frowned, his lip curling in distaste. "What is this now? Another performance?"
Adriana stopped laughing. The humor vanished, leaving only a void. She looked at him, her eyes dead. "My daughter is dead. And you brought your mistress to her funeral?"
Becky gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Tears instantly welled in her eyes. She shrank back, stepping behind Everette, using him as a shield. "I'm not... I would never... I was just worried about you."
Everette's face hardened. He shifted his body, physically shielding Becky from Adriana's gaze. "Don't project your paranoia onto her. She's here because I asked her to be. Stop dragging innocent people into your delusions."
It was the final nail. He wasn't just indifferent; he was actively protecting the other woman. He thought she was crazy. He thought her grief was an act.
Adriana looked down at her hand. The IV needle was still there, pumping fluids into her body, keeping her alive. A body that didn't want to live.
She grabbed the needle and yanked.
"Hey!" the nurse shouted.
Blood spurted from the vein, a bright, vivid red against her pale skin. It dripped onto the white sheets, blooming like a flower. But Adriana didn't feel the sting. She felt nothing at all.
She threw her legs over the side of the bed. The room spun, black spots dancing in her vision, but she forced herself to stand. Her knees buckled instantly.
Everette moved. He stepped forward, his hand shooting out to grab her arm. But his grip wasn't gentle. It was hard, controlling, forcing her to stay still.
"Don't touch me!" Adriana shrieked, trying to wrench her arm away.
Janna was on her feet in a second, stepping between them. She shoved Everette's shoulder, her face contorted with rage. "Get your hands off her! Haven't you done enough? What, did you come here to finish the job?"
Everette glared at Janna, his jaw clenched. "This is between me and my wife."
"She's not your wife!" Janna yelled back. "She's a person! A person who just lost her child!"
Adriana stood there, swaying slightly, watching the two people fight over her. Janna, fierce and protective. Everette, cold and domineering. And Becky, peeking out from behind him, her face a carefully constructed mask of concern that didn't quite reach her eyes.
It was all a nightmare. And she couldn't wake up.
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9.1
With only fifteen days of cash flow left to save her tech startup, Aida had no choice but to seek a five-million-dollar bridge loan from Brendan Walls, a ruthless billionaire predator.
He agreed to sign the check, but on one sickening condition. He demanded Aida act as bait to get close to his corporate rival, Grayson Lott, treating her like a high-end call girl for a business transaction.
Forced to comply to save her employees, Aida let Grayson take her to a windowless underground club, where he secretly spiked her whiskey.
As the drugs paralyzed her body, triggering horrific flashbacks of a brutal assault from six years ago, Aida locked herself in the bathroom. She had to shatter a mirror and slice her own thigh open with a jagged shard of glass just to stay conscious enough to call Brendan for help.
Brendan's armored SUV immediately smashed through the club's wall to save her, and Grayson was arrested. But lying in the hospital, the horrifying truth finally clicked in Aida's mind.
The rescue was too fast. Brendan’s men hadn't rushed from Midtown; they had been parked outside the entire time. He had watched Grayson drug her and waited for the felony to happen just so he could legally seize Grayson's company. He had gambled her life and trauma for a hostile takeover.
When Brendan casually tossed a signed contract and luxury car keys onto her hospital bed as hush money, the last thread of Aida's sanity snapped.
"The deal is dead. NovaTech is mine. If you ever come near me again, I will kill you."
Bleeding and shaking with icy rage, Aida threw the keys at his chest, formally declaring war on the monster who thought he could buy her soul.
8.4
Cari Butler woke up in a damp, smelly dorm room, realizing she had transmigrated into the body of a disgraced fake daughter who had just been kicked out of a wealthy family.
Before she could even process her reality, the real daughter's friends kicked her door open to mock her, flaunting a custom Tiffany necklace that supposedly cost a mere eighty cents.
Cari thought they were crazy, until she saw the news: a top Manhattan mansion had just sold for a record-breaking $3,500.
The entire world's currency value had shrunk by ten thousand times!
This meant the original owner's bank balance of $854,000 gave Cari the purchasing power of eight and a half billion dollars.
But a mysterious system froze her funds, forcing her to work demeaning gig jobs to unlock the money bit by bit.
While working as a hotel server for twenty cents a day, she caught her ex-boyfriend kissing up to the real daughter, mocking Cari for being a desperate beggar.
Even her snobby roommates laughed at her, claiming she couldn't afford a ten-cent iPhone.
What truly angered Cari wasn't the humiliation, but receiving a five-cent transfer from her poor biological brother, who was starving himself just to keep her fed.
Yet, the system strictly forbade her from giving her unlocked billions directly to her family.
Looking at the restrictive system and the arrogant elites who thought they owned the city, Cari's eyes turned icy cold.
"If I can't just hand them the cash,"
Cari sneered, pulling out her phone to outright buy the luxury hotel and fire everyone who wronged her.
"Then I will just buy the entire world and place it at their feet."
7.8
Andrea was trapped in a suffocating marriage with billionaire Gregory Morse, forced to live as the pathetic substitute for his dead fiancée.
When armed intruders broke into their estate in the dead of night, she called her husband in pure terror.
"Stop playing these cheap, attention-seeking games," Gregory sneered with disgust, and hung up the phone.
She barely escaped with her life, but the cruelty only escalated. At the family mansion, his dead fiancée's sister deliberately scalded Andrea's hand with boiling tea. Instead of defending his wife, Gregory publicly humiliated her, ordering her to clean up the mess while calling her a stray dog.
That night, hiding in the dark wine cellar, Andrea overheard a chilling confession.
Gregory admitted to his brother that he knew Andrea was completely innocent of the car crash that killed his fiancée. He knew she had been framed.
Why did he marry her? Just to use her as a psychological punching bag to vent his twisted grief. He watched her suffer every single day, treating her like disposable trash, while violently threatening anyone who showed her an ounce of kindness.
He thought she was just a useless, helpless shadow who would quietly endure his torment forever.
He had no idea that behind her submissive facade, she was secretly Madame Lan, the apex predator of the global fashion world. And now, she was ready to burn his empire to the ground.
7.5
Plot.
Synopsis.
Liora could never belong. The daughter of an extramarital affair, she had lived in the shadows, cut off from the rest of the family, and learned to fend for herself while surviving. Stripping gave her life now, but everything changed one wild night.
Two days before his wedding, Darius entered her club, craving for the last taste of bachelorhood, he pays Liora for a special dance which led to a one-night stand. Neither of them expected to see each other again or that Liora's long lost sister, Selene, was the bride waiting at the altar.
The one-night stand becomes a dangerous truth that must be hidden. Lies never remain hidden, however, and when Liora learns she is pregnant with Darius's child, silence may be not be an option for her.
Exposition.
Liora, a daughter born as a result of her father's infidelity with a maid, which resulted in the divorce that separates her from her big sister. Due to the family's financial difficulties faced while growing up and the consequent death of her father, Liora eventually becomes a stripper to put food on her table. Unknown to her at the time, she carried the hidden omega bloodline from her father's alpha lineage, suppressed by years away from the pack.
Inciting incident.
One night, she is hired by a man who is getting married in just two days and wants to enjoy his last moments of bachelorhood. She ends up having a one-night stand with him. The moment they touched, an undeniable mate spark ignited between them-raw, electric, and impossible to ignore-but neither understood its full power yet.
When Liora returns home that same night, she encounters an old man who introduces himself as the butler of the Blackwood family, tells her she has been invited to the wedding of her sister. This comes as a shock-Liora grew up knowing she had a sister, but Harlan never allowed them to meet. He carried that secret to his grave, and after his death, Liora stopped thinking about it. Despite her hesitation and doubts as to if they got the wrong person, she agrees to attend.
Rising action.
She arrives the night before the wedding , finds out she has been a daughter of the well known Blackwood family all along and learns the truth: it was her stepmother, not Harlan, who had always been against their meeting. The stepmother is currently serving time in jail for a minor business-related crime and her elder sister, Selene had her research done to find her because she wanted to reconcile with her younger sister and what better opportunity than a wedding. Liora also discovers that Selene is a sweetheart who had longed to meet her, but had been forced to stay away because of Ravenna's influence.
But then, another huge blow hits-Liora finds out that the man she was with last night, the one she slept with, is the man Selene is set to marry, Darius. She holds this secret to herself, haunted by the mate pull that now torments her every thought.
The marriage happens, and it all goes well. After that, Selene gives Liora a new path, far from her old job. She brings her into her home and starts to look after her. But soon, Liora finds out she is going to have a baby. With fear and shame, she hides this news.
Climax.
When Ravenna is released from prison, she is furious to find Liora living with her family. She makes it clear that she does not accept her, resenting her existence as a reminder of Harlan's infidelity. A few days later, Selene announces that she is pregnant too. Ravenna immediately becomes protective of her "real" daughter, which only deepens Liora's insecurities. She considers leaving before her secret is exposed.
But fate intervenes. An accident happens, and they find out Liora was pregnant. Since she was once a stripper, no one talks about the dad. But Darius, who knows they share risky secret, sets up a secret meeting for them to talk. He wants to know if he is the dad, and Liora says yes-but she will keep it quiet and plans to leave soon. In their tense exchange, the mate bond flares again, confirming what they both sensed that first night.
Ravenna,who happens to be at the wrong side at the right time ,overheard part of their talk. With doubts in her mind, she quietly does a DNA test between Darius and Liora's unborn baby.
The results confirm he is the father. Seeing her chance to drive a wedge between the sisters, she keeps the secret until the gender reveal party for both daughters. There, in front of everyone, she exposes the truth. The revelation makes headlines.
Selene feels utterly betrayed-by both her husband and her sister. She leaves Darius's house with Ravenna and sends divorce papers days later. Liora feels destroyed, her betrayal now public, and her pain is doubled when she learns Selene has lost her baby and is battling ovarian cancer, which requires an urgent bone marrow transplant.
Through her best friend, Dr. Thorne, Liora learns this. She gets tested and finds out she is a match , but her unborn baby stops her. Darius knows she got test
9.5
Janet woke up gasping, the phantom fire of a deadly explosion still scorching her lungs. She had been reborn three years in the past, on the exact day her mother forced her into a marriage contract with Gaylord Bradford, a paralyzed and severely disfigured billionaire.
Before she could even process her second chance, her cousin Kandy kicked the bedroom door open, flaunting a massive diamond ring. Kandy, who had also been reborn, smugly announced she had stolen Janet's Wall Street golden boy fiancé, Jax Adler.
"You're going to marry that paralyzed monster," Kandy spat, gloating that she would build a billionaire dynasty with Jax while Janet wiped drool off a rotting corpse. Kandy expected Janet to have a complete mental collapse, completely unaware that Gaylord's own medical team was secretly injecting him with lethal neurotoxins to finish him off.
But Janet only felt a cold, clinical pity. Kandy's "prophetic" memories were a polluted lie. Jax was actually sterile and dying of irreversible kidney failure, while Gaylord wasn't a dying freak—he was a dormant god whose body was merely in a high-dimensional hibernation. Why would Janet mourn losing a doomed fraud?
Leaving her delusional cousin behind, Janet packed her bags and headed straight to Gaylord's maximum-security military cell. She physically tackled his corrupt doctor, drove three bio-electric silver needles into the crippled king's spine to awaken his deadened nerves, and looked him dead in his glacial blue eye.
"Sign the marriage contract," Janet whispered. "I will make you walk again, and we will take back everything."
8.1
I lived my entire life in a beautiful, naive bubble, completely trusting my husband and my best friend.
That was until they tied me to a chair, slit my vocal cords, and set my family's estate on fire.
As the flames crept closer, my husband Demarco calmly crushed my diamond wedding ring under his leather heel.
My best friend Cristin walked in, leaning against his shoulder and pouring her champagne onto the floorboards to fuel the fire.
"Your grandfather didn't just have a stroke. The medication swap was incredibly easy to arrange."
Looking down at my bleeding body, they casually confessed to murdering the only person who had ever truly protected me, all to swallow the Bridges empire.
I couldn't even scream. I could only suffocate in the thick black smoke as they turned their backs and locked the heavy oak door behind them.
Why was I so blind? How could the two people I loved most treat me like disposable garbage?
In my final moments of agonizing pain and pure, concentrated fury, I pulled out the detonator my grandfather had secretly left me.
I pressed the button, blowing the estate and all of us to hell.
But the burning stopped.
When I opened my eyes, I was staring up at a pristine crystal chandelier.
I was fifteen years old again, lying in my childhood bedroom, right before my treacherous uncle and those parasites started tearing my family apart.
And I didn't come back empty-handed.
This time, I am not the naive heiress.