Too Late For Regret, Mr. CEO
Arden woke up hoping last night's intimacy meant her crumbling four-year marriage was finally healing.
Instead, Federico tossed a thick divorce agreement onto the bed.
He coldly accused her of thinking about his brother and announced his perfect ex-girlfriend, Brooklyn, was returning.
To force her signature, the trust fund keeping Arden's mother alive on life support was suddenly frozen.
Federico then kicked Arden out of the master suite, banishing her to a windowless, musty maid's room.
When Brooklyn later faked a car crash to play the victim, Federico didn't hesitate to blame Arden.
He kicked down her door, hauled her up by the collar while she was burning with a severe fever, and threw photos at her face.
The sharp edges sliced her cheek, leaving a trail of blood.
"If you ever touch a single hair on Brooklyn's head again, I will personally bankrupt your family."
Arden stared at the man she had loved since she was fourteen.
He actually believed she was a jealous, calculating murderer.
The sheer, bottomless malice in his eyes shattered the last pathetic ember of hope she had left.
Wiping the blood from her cheek, Arden swallowed a handful of fever pills dry.
Love was dead, and she was done begging.
She put on her sharpest black suit, painted her lips a bold red, and marched straight into his company's executive boardroom to take back her life.
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Chapter 7
The heavy oak doors of the master suite swung open.
Arden and Federico walked into the massive, dimly lit room.
Augusta, the matriarch of the Monroe family, was propped up against a mountain of pillows. Her skin looked fragile and pale, but her dark eyes were as sharp and predatory as an eagle's.
Augusta waved her hand, dismissing the private doctor and the butler. The heavy doors clicked shut, leaving the three of them alone.
She completely ignored her grandson.
She reached a shaking hand out toward Arden, gesturing for her to sit on the edge of the mattress. Augusta gently cupped Arden's pale cheek, her thumb brushing away a stray hair.
Suddenly, Augusta reached under her blanket.
She pulled out a thick manila envelope and threw it violently at Federico's chest. It hit him with a loud smack.
It was the divorce agreement Arden had signed.
Federico caught the envelope as it fell. He looked at the seal, his jaw clenching tight.
"How did you get your hands on this? Did you illegally access my private lawyer's files, Grandma?" he demanded, his voice tight with controlled anger.
Augusta slammed her wooden cane against the hardwood floor.
"My legal team was automatically copied on the trust dispute filing, you arrogant fool!" she barked. "You are letting a manipulative, calculating snake cloud your judgment."
She pointed a crooked finger at him. "As long as I have breath in my lungs, Brooklyn Garcia will never set foot in a Monroe house."
Federico stood his ground, his posture rigid.
"Brooklyn is the one who suffered back then. Arden doesn't even want me. Her heart is somewhere else."
"Nonsense!" Augusta snapped, cutting him off. "My eyes work better than yours ever will. Arden is the only woman fit to run this family."
Augusta leaned forward, pulling her ultimate weapon.
"The foundational bylaws of the family trust dictate that the primary heir must maintain a stable marriage. If you push this divorce through, I will use my veto power on the board. I will freeze your thirty percent stake in the Monroe Group."
Federico stared at his grandmother in absolute shock.
He could not believe she was willing to use the highest level of family power to blackmail him over a divorce.
He slowly turned his head to look at Arden.
His eyes were filled with pure, burning betrayal. He was entirely convinced Arden had run to Augusta and manipulated the old woman into doing this.
Arden felt the heat of his glare.
She quickly shook her head, looking at Augusta. "Grandma, no. I agreed to the divorce. You don't have to do this for me."
Augusta patted Arden's hand firmly. "Hush, child. I am handling this."
Federico ground his teeth together. He was a businessman first; he could not afford to lose control of his shares right now.
"Fine," he said, his voice like cracking ice. "The legal proceedings are paused. But my mind is not changing."
He turned around and stormed out of the bedroom, the air vibrating with his suppressed rage.
Once the door closed, Augusta let out a long, tired sigh. Her face softened.
She looked at Arden with deep, knowing eyes. "He is just trapped in the past, Arden. He cares for you more than he realizes."
Arden offered a sad, hollow smile. She didn't argue, but in her heart, she thought the old woman was simply delusional.
Augusta picked up the landline phone next to her bed. She dialed the head of the family's PR team.
Her voice turned back to iron. "Leak a story to the press immediately. I want photos of Federico and Arden. Emphasize that the Monroe marriage is rock solid."
She paused. "And send a private, formal warning letter to Brooklyn Garcia. Tell her to stay in her lane."
Listening to Augusta ruthlessly protect her, a strange warmth spread through Arden's chest. This fierce old woman was her only shield in this cold family.
After making sure Augusta was resting comfortably, Arden left the room.
The hallway was empty. Federico was nowhere to be seen.
She walked down the long corridor toward the outdoor balcony, needing the cold ocean breeze to settle her rolling stomach.
As she stepped near the open French doors, she heard loud, angry voices coming from the gardens below.
She peeked over the stone railing.
Federico was standing on the grass, arguing fiercely with his father, Cornelius.
The wind carried Cornelius's vicious words up to the balcony.
"That woman is a parasite!" Cornelius yelled. "Are you really going to repeat Jude's mistakes and let her destroy you too?"
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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.
8.4
Everly spent four years playing the perfect, accommodating wife to Carson Moss, swallowing every grievance just to secure medical treatments for their sick daughter.
But at a high-society banquet she exhausted herself organizing, Carson's pregnant mistress crashed the party.
The woman shoved an ultrasound of Carson's "real heir" directly into Everly's frail grandfather's face.
The shock triggered a massive heart attack.
Carson refused to use his private helicopter to save the dying old man, choosing to protect his mistress and his company's IPO instead. Her grandfather died on the hospital table.
Instead of remorse, her mother-in-law demanded Everly publicly cover up the murder.
"You will do exactly as I say, or I will freeze every single cent of the medical trust fund paying for your crippled daughter's treatments."
When a battered Everly returned to the estate, she discovered her three-year-old daughter covered in dark bruises and pinch marks. Her in-laws were deliberately torturing her disabled child.
Everly couldn't comprehend how a family could be so utterly heartless. Her only family was murdered, her child was abused, and her husband threw a five-million-dollar check at her face as hush money.
They thought she would just break and quietly disappear.
But when a terrifyingly powerful billionaire unexpectedly blocked Carson's security team from locking her up, Everly finally saw her window.
She grabbed her sleeping daughter and ran out into the freezing storm, making a blood-bound vow to make the entire Moss family bleed.
7.2
Five years ago, I, Claire Parker, ran away for love with Daniel Carter, the broke boy everyone looked down on. But on the very day we were supposed to leave together, he abandoned me.
Overnight, I became the laughingstock of the entire city and was forced into a marriage alliance with a terminally ill man, Ryan Cooper.
Five years later, my husband died, the marriage arrangement fell apart, and the Cooper family threw me out without a shred of mercy.
Meanwhile, Daniel, the man everyone once sneered at, returned home in glory and became the hottest rising name in the business world.
And somehow, he ended up becoming my boss.
I wanted nothing to do with him, yet he kept closing in on me, cornering me with sarcasm sharp enough to draw blood.
Then one day, Daniel caught me on a date with another man.
His eyes reddened instantly as he pinned me against the wall. "Claire... are you abandoning me again?"
7.9
On my wedding day, my fiancé Connor received an urgent phone call.
He told me a D-list actress had broken her leg on set, then abandoned me right at the altar.
In my past life, I cried until my throat bled, begging him not to leave.
But my tears only brought endless humiliation. My mother and adopted sister mocked me, framed me, and forged my signature to steal my multi-million dollar trust fund.
They kicked me out of the family estate without a single dime.
I ended up freezing to death in the minus-twenty-degree New York blizzard, listening to my mother's voicemail telling me to die in the street as long as I didn't bleed on her carpets.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why my own blood relatives hated me so much, yet treated an adopted daughter like a precious princess.
The only person who showed me any mercy—draping his wool coat over my frozen corpse and giving me a proper burial—was Connor's ruthless, untouchable uncle, Harding Snow.
Opening my eyes again, I was back in the bridal suite, right as Connor was rushing out the door.
This time, I didn't shed a single tear.
I let him run to his actress, then walked straight into the VIP room to face the most feared billionaire on Wall Street.
"The wedding proceeds as planned, but the groom's name changes to yours."
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.
9.4
Aria Mcgee was the unwanted second daughter of a decaying Long Island family.
To save their bankrupt corporation, her father and older sister drugged her. They shoved her into a town car and delivered her to a ruthless Wall Street billionaire's bed like a piece of meat.
They expected her to be the perfect sacrifice. The original Aria had no access to her own trust fund and was forced to live in a windowless broom closet. Even worse, a cold, synthetic System voice echoed in her skull, demanding she play the tragic, helpless female lead. It ordered her to endure her family's abuse and suffer the billionaire's humiliation to force a pathetic romance plotline.
"Host must follow the tragic trajectory and achieve the ultimate painful romance."
But the soul that woke up in that bed wasn't a weak, frightened girl. She was a dead Hollywood Oscar-winning actress. Why would a top-tier professional ever agree to play the weeping victim in such a garbage, B-list script?
Instead of trembling in fear as the System commanded, Aria looked at the billionaire and smiled. Using her flawless acting skills, she shattered his ego, extracted a hundred thousand dollars, and walked right out the door. Now, she was heading back to the Mcgee estate, ready to rip her money from her father's greedy hands and burn her sister's life to the ground.