Too Late For Regret, Mr. Morrison

Chloe Beaumont thought she had a perfect life, until she woke up tied to a metal chair in a freezing warehouse. A hitman forced her to watch a live stream of a lavish wedding, where the groom was her fiancé, Braden, and the bride was her beloved stepsister, June. Through the screen, Braden coldly revealed their master plan. He had never loved Chloe; he only wanted her wealth and connections, while June was always his true prize. They had framed Chloe for insider trading to destroy her reputation and steal her company for pennies on the dollar. To add to the ultimate betrayal, June was already pregnant with Braden's child. "Finish her, and make sure it's clean." Braden ordered over the phone, claiming her worthless life was their final wedding gift. As the hitman plunged a knife into her heart, Chloe's despair morphed into pure, all-consuming hatred. How could the two people she trusted most build a perfect life entirely on top of her grave? Why had she been so blindly foolish to dismiss all their lies and coincidences as paranoia? Opening her eyes again, the agonizing pain and the grimy warehouse were completely gone. She was sitting in a luxurious hotel suite, dressed in expensive silk pajamas. It was exactly six years in the past, on the morning of her arranged wedding to the feared billionaire Damian Montgomery. This was the exact day June had tricked her into jilting Damian at the altar to run away with Braden. This time, Chloe smiled coldly, ready to walk down the aisle and drag her betrayers into an ocean of despair.

Breanne was secretly married to Gabriel Baldwin, the icy and ruthless CEO of Aura Design. To the rest of the company, they were nothing more than bitter professional enemies. But during the most important executive board meeting of her career, Gabriel completely crossed the line. He ruthlessly tore apart her eco-friendly resort design, publicly rejecting weeks of her sleepless nights as financially unviable and forcing her to start from scratch. The public humiliation instantly made her a target. Vicious office rumors spread like wildfire, claiming Breanne had plagiarized her designs and was sleeping with partners to climb the corporate ladder. While she fought off toxic colleagues, Gabriel's private behavior grew dangerously possessive. When a wealthy client sent her roses, Gabriel cornered her in a stalled elevator, leaving a bruised bite mark on her neck. "You belong to me, Breanne. I don't share." Breanne was pushed to her absolute breaking point. She couldn't understand why the man who shared her bed was intentionally destroying her professional reputation, only to act like a jealous, suffocating dictator in private. Why was he torturing her like this? Just as she was ready to snap and walk away from it all, Gabriel summoned her to his top-floor office. Instead of another reprimand, he slid a highly classified, red-stamped file across his mahogany desk. He hadn't rejected her project to humiliate her-he had brutally killed the pitch to protect her from a career-ending corporate spy.

On the night of our engagement party, I thought I had finally escaped the dark shadow of my mother's scandalous past. But my fiancé, Ashton, shattered my world with a single, cruel demand. He coldly announced he was marrying a wealthy executive for a business alliance, and I was to remain his secret lover in the shadows. He weaponized my mother's tragic suicide, claiming my ruined reputation made me unfit to be his official wife. When I firmly refused and threw the ring back, his new fiancée shoved me, shattered her own emerald brooch, and framed me in front of the arriving elite guests. "Look at her! A scandalous woman just like her mother!" Ashton didn't defend me. He pulled her close and watched impassively as the crowd poured wine over my head and kicked me to the marble floor. I curled up in the cold rain, unable to comprehend how the savior who once protected me from bullies had become my absolute worst tormentor. Why did he pull me out of the darkness only to bury me in it himself? But I refused to let history repeat itself and end up dead like my mother. Bleeding and drenched, I dragged myself up and climbed onto a private helicopter waiting on the roof. I left him and that cruel city behind forever. Eighteen years later, when I stood at the pinnacle of my industry with a loving husband by my side, a ruined, emaciated Ashton finally found me, begging for a single glance.

Isabella thought she had the perfect life as the wealthy Conrad family heiress, complete with a loving childhood sweetheart. Until she woke up drugged in a hotel bed, blinded by paparazzi flashes, as her fiancé pointed a shaking finger at her, screaming that she had drugged and seduced him. "She threatened to ruin Kaylie if I didn't sleep with her!" he yelled to the cameras. Kaylie, the newly discovered biological daughter, stood in the doorway weeping perfectly. Within hours, Isabella's adoptive father publicly severed all ties, froze her assets, and kicked her out into a violent thunderstorm. Fleeing the city, her car's brakes suddenly failed. As Isabella lay dying in the crushed metal of her Porsche, Kaylie strolled up with a pristine umbrella and a genuine smile. "The mechanic was quite expensive, but cutting the brake lines was worth every penny," Kaylie laughed. Isabella coughed up blood, her heart turning to ice. Her twenty years of family, love, and loyalty had been nothing but a cruel joke, destroyed by a calculated frame-up. She died suffocating on absolute betrayal and unadulterated hatred. Then, she gasped for air. She wasn't dead. She was sitting in the driver's seat of her car, staring at her flawless reflection in the rearview mirror. It was exactly four years ago—the day the real heiress first arrived. A chilling smirk curled the corner of Isabella's mouth. This time, she was going to rip their lives apart from the inside out.

For five years, I was locked away in the freezing royal dungeon, starved and used as a bloody plaything by the kingdom's sadistic Cabinet Minister, Brandt Fischer. He tortured me daily for one twisted reason: I simply looked like someone else. When he visited my cell to casually announce my father's execution and drag a silver dagger across my neck, he expected me to beg. Instead, I laughed, sank my teeth directly into his carotid artery, and was violently thrown against a jagged stone wall to my death. As my skull cracked and my blood stained the moss, I thought about my so-called family. The moment Brandt had demanded me, my father, the Duke, handed me over without a single hesitation to save his own political career. I was nothing but a disposable pawn, left to rot in the dark while the monsters who ruined my life thrived. I died suffocating on my own blood and absolute, destructive vengeance. Then, I opened my eyes. I was lying in my silk-sheeted bed, reborn as my fifteen-year-old self. Today was the exact day Lord Daryl Langley, the God of War, would be ambushed and crippled—the event that allowed Brandt to seize ultimate power. I immediately stole a horse, rode to the palace gates, and threw myself directly in front of Daryl's moving carriage. "I just didn't want to see a hero die like a slaughtered pig." I didn't care if I had to shatter my own ankle to hijack his convoy. This time, I was going to save the general, and he would become the blade I use to slaughter them all.

For three years, I hid my identity as the sole heiress of a multi-billion dollar tech empire to live in a cramped apartment and support my boyfriend, Ben. But the day before our engagement, I stood outside a meeting room and overheard him talking to his wealthy boss, Haylie. "She's just a stepping stone," Ben laughed, his voice full of contempt. "A poor, ambitionless distraction while I work my way up to where I really belong." He mocked the cheap silver ring he gave me, calling it a necessary prop to keep a naive fool happy. He bragged about the multi-million dollar merger proposal he was presenting, planning to use it to secure his promotion and build a future with her. He had no idea that I had secretly negotiated that entire deal using my real connections just to give him his big break. I had sacrificed my family's comfort, my true identity, and my own career just to watch him rise. I poured my heart and soul into our humble beginnings, only to realize he saw my love as a pathetic joke and me as disposable trash. I calmly picked up a pen and voided the merger agreement, tearing my hard work into tiny pieces. I went home, slid the cheap ring off my finger, and dropped it into his mug of cold coffee. "Soon, you'll find out exactly who is nothing." Walking out the door, I pulled out my phone and texted my billionaire father. "I'm in. Announce the merger."