Too Late For Regret: My Hidden Billionaire
For five years, Daryl suppressed his terrifying Draconian bloodline to be a devoted, stay-at-home husband to his ambitious wife, Blaire.
But on his mother's birthday, Blaire stormed in with a billionaire heir by her side, slamming a divorce agreement directly into the birthday cake.
"This marriage is a liability to my entry into high society," she declared coldly.
Her new partner mocked Daryl's mother with eviction threats, triggering a severe heart attack that sent the frail woman collapsing to the floor.
At the hospital, Blaire refused to pay the life-saving medical deposit unless Daryl gave up full custody of their five-year-old daughter.
Through the ICU intercom, she ruthlessly told his dying mother that Daryl was a worthless failure, causing the heart monitor to violently flatline.
Daryl's sanity finally snapped.
He had protected Blaire from the shadows, hiding his god-like power just to give her a normal life. How could she treat human lives like disposable assets on a balance sheet?
The dormant volcano in his chest erupted. He signed the divorce papers and shredded her five-million-dollar pity check right into her face.
"Within one year, your empire will crumble, and you will be on your knees begging," Daryl vowed.
Then, he dialed a heavily encrypted number, summoning a fleet of black-ops helicopters and the city's most dangerous underground queen to bow at his feet, leaving his ex-wife trembling in the dust.
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Chapter 1
"Blow them out, Grandma."
Cassie clapped her small hands together, her bright voice echoing off the mahogany walls of the private dining room in the Ritz-Carlton.
Daryl Bush smiled, holding the long lighter away from the cake. He looked at his mother. Marlene sat in her wheelchair, her hands rough and calloused from decades of hard labor, resting on her lap. She stared at the flickering candles on her sixtieth birthday cake, but her eyes kept darting toward the heavy double doors.
"Make a wish, Mom," Daryl said softly.
He reached out and covered her rough hand with his own. He knew what she was looking for. He squeezed her fingers, his voice steady.
"Blaire said she would come after finishing her board meeting. She is on her way."
Cassie tugged at the hem of Daryl's cheap, off-the-rack suit jacket. Her lower lip trembled.
"Did Mommy forget Grandma's birthday?"
Daryl crouched down. He pushed the dark thoughts to the back of his mind and forced a warm smile, ruffling his daughter's soft hair.
"Mommy is very busy, but she promised she would try. We just have to wait a little longer."
A sudden flurry of rushed, arrogant footsteps echoed from the hallway outside, accompanied by the hotel manager's overly eager, fawning voice.
The heavy mahogany doors were pulled open from the outside by two waiters who bowed their heads.
Blaire Doyle stepped into the room. She wore a razor-sharp Chanel haute couture suit. Her face was a mask of frost, her posture rigid and perfect.
Daryl stood up. The breath of relief he was about to exhale died in his throat. His muscles locked.
Right behind Blaire walked a man in a bespoke Savile Row suit. Estevan Montgomery. His mixed-heritage features were striking, his chin tilted up in a display of pure arrogance.
Estevan placed his hand on the small of Blaire's back. It was a light touch, but it screamed of territorial claim.
The smile on Marlene's face vanished. Her fingers gripped the armrests of her wheelchair so hard her knuckles turned white.
"Mommy!" Cassie cheered, running toward Blaire.
Blaire looked down. Her eyes were so cold and empty that Cassie stopped dead in her tracks, shrinking back.
Daryl closed the distance in three long strides. He positioned his body firmly between his daughter and his wife. He kept his voice low, his chest tight.
"Why is he here?"
Blaire did not look at Daryl. She stepped around him, walking straight to the dining table. She stared down at the simple fresh cream cake with utter disdain.
She opened her Hermes Birkin bag, pulled out a thick stack of documents, and dropped them onto the porcelain plate next to the cake. The heavy thud rattled the silverware.
The bold black letters on the cover burned into Daryl's retinas. Marriage Dissolution and Asset Division Agreement.
Marlene let out a choked gasp. She pressed her hand hard against her chest, her breathing turning shallow.
Daryl snapped his head toward Blaire. The blood rushed to his ears, a deafening roar. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw clamped so tight his teeth ground together.
"This marriage is a negative asset," Blaire said. Her voice sounded like she was reading a quarterly earnings report. "It is a liability to my entry into high society. We are done."
Estevan let out a dry, mocking chuckle. He lifted his wrist, casually twisting the sapphire cufflink on his sleeve.
"The Doyle family is merging with the Montgomery financial group," Estevan said, his tone dripping with fake pity. "Bottom-feeders like you need to be cleaned out, Daryl. You are a stain."
Daryl's hands dropped to his sides. His fingers curled inward, digging into his palms. The Draconic blood deep within his veins began to boil, sending waves of scorching heat against his skin. His chest expanded as he fought for air.
Cassie burst into tears. The heavy, suffocating tension in the room terrified her. She wrapped her small arms around Daryl's leg and buried her face in his trousers.
Daryl took a ragged breath. He forced the burning heat back down into his core. He could not lose control here. Not in front of his daughter. Not in front of his mother.
He looked at Blaire. The warmth that had lived in his eyes for five years was gone, replaced by a dead, hollow chill.
"Did you have to do this today?" Daryl asked, his voice scraping like sandpaper. "Right now?"
"It is a timely commercial stop-loss," Blaire said, adjusting the cuffs of her Chanel jacket. "Sign it now."
Daryl closed his eyes. The image of the woman he loved shattered into a million pieces. He opened his eyes.
"I will sign," Daryl said. "On one condition."
He took a step forward, his shadow falling over the documents.
"I get absolute custody of Cassie. The Doyle family will never touch her."
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7.9
I woke up in a sterile hospital room, my head split open from a horrific car crash.
But the pain in my skull was nothing compared to the memory burned into my retinas just before the impact: my billionaire husband, Dawson, walking into a luxury hotel with a woman who looked exactly like his dead first love.
When Dawson finally arrived at the ward, there was no panic or relief in his eyes. He just coldly looked at my bloody bandages.
"Your reckless driving just forced me to postpone the quarterly board meeting."
Even our seven-year-old son, who I almost died giving birth to, didn't spare me a single glance. He kicked my hospital bed in annoyance.
"The Wi-Fi here is garbage. You're a bad mom! Dad said Aunt Angelita should be the one living with us!"
My blood turned to ice. For five years, I had bent over backward, wearing the hideous pale dresses he picked, starving myself to maintain a fragile figure, all to be a perfect, obedient substitute for a ghost.
And this was what I got. An unfaithful husband who would rather bury me in debt than grant me a divorce, and a son who wished I was dead.
The weak, subservient Charlene died on that wet asphalt.
When the doctor pointed to Dawson and asked for his name, I looked at my husband with a hollow, defensive stare.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
Using retrograde amnesia as my shield, I was going to tear their perfect world apart.
9.0
On their seventh wedding anniversary, Kiley's billionaire husband, Aden, slid a thick stack of papers across the restaurant table.
It was a petition for divorce.
He was leaving her for his college sweetheart. Thanks to a ruthless prenup, Kiley was being thrown out with absolutely nothing.
That very night, their young son Jules was rushed to the ER, bleeding profusely. The doctor's diagnosis was a death sentence: acute leukemia.
When Kiley frantically called Aden for help, he dismissed the emergency as a simple nosebleed.
"I'm not paying for this. Deal with it," Aden sneered, the sound of his mistress giggling in the background.
To force Kiley to sign the divorce papers, Aden froze all her credit cards and canceled their son's health insurance. He refused to pay a single cent for the chemotherapy.
Even Kiley's adoptive parents sided with the wealthy Aden, calling her a burden and telling her to stop fighting him.
Driven to the brink of despair, with a dying child and no money, Kiley didn't understand how a father could be so monstrous to his own flesh and blood.
Until a news article on a friend's phone caught her eye.
It featured a fallen 9/11 firefighter hero from the ultra-wealthy Whitfield family. The man in the photo looked exactly like Jules, down to the very bone structure.
Kiley's mind raced back to the fertility clinic and the anonymous sperm donor.
Could this dead billionaire hero be her son's biological father?
Looking at her sleeping, fragile boy, Kiley wiped her tears and crushed the divorce papers in her hand.
She was going to find the Whitfield family, save her son, and make Aden lose everything he held dear.
9.4
Six years ago, Breanna was shoved into a pitch-black hotel suite by her own uncle.
She was forced to endure a brutal night with a drugged stranger just to keep her grandmother's ventilator running.
Nine months later, she gave birth in a cold underground clinic.
But her uncle immediately snatched the crying newborn from her trembling hands, coldly announcing the baby had died.
For six years, Breanna lived in agonizing grief, working as a lowly hotel cleaner just to survive.
But a cruel setup threw her directly into the path of Elliot Finch, the arrogant billionaire from that dark night.
He did not recognize the woman whose life he had completely ruined.
Instead, he looked at her like she was rotting garbage, had his guards drag her into a wet alley, and mercilessly got her fired.
"If I ever see your face again, I will make sure you cannot get a job cleaning toilets."
Breanna was suffocating from the injustice, stripped of her dignity and her family's only lifeline.
Yet, when she instinctively protected a traumatized little boy from bullies, she discovered he was Elliot's son.
The boy clung to her neck, crying and desperately begging his father to let her stay.
But Elliot just threw a massive check at her chest, violently accusing her of brainwashing a sick child for a meal ticket.
Looking at the toxic disgust in his eyes, something inside Breanna finally broke.
She picked up the check, ripped the millions into tiny shreds, and let them rain down on his expensive shoes.
"Keep your dirty money."
She turned her back on the crying boy and the stunned billionaire, deciding she would no longer be their victim.
8.0
Finley's stepfather gave her a sickening ultimatum: marry her predatory stepbrother Shane tonight, or he would throw her fragile mother out on the street.
To escape this hell, she used a matchmaking agency and hastily married a complete stranger. Garrison Strickland claimed to be an ordinary data analyst making $95,000 a year, driving a beat-up Honda Civic, and needing a wife in name only. They got their marriage license at City Hall that very afternoon.
But when Finley returned home to pack her bags and threw the certificate on the table, her family just laughed. Dozier ordered Shane to drag her into the bedroom to "teach her a lesson" and trap her forever.
"Come on, little sister," Shane crooned, lunging at her. "Don't fight it."
Finley's own mother just stared at the floor, blaming Finley for ruining the family, watching blindly as Shane cornered her.
Terrified and desperate, Finley smashed an ashtray over Shane's head and frantically dialed her new husband's number. Shane snatched the phone, mocking the "imaginary husband" before the line went dead. Finley felt a bottomless despair. Garrison was just a normal guy; he would never risk his life against her violent family. She was completely on her own, waiting for the end.
Suddenly, deafening bangs echoed through the house, and Garrison stepped into the living room radiating a cold, terrifying fury. This supposedly "frugal data analyst" effortlessly snapped Shane's wrist, leveled a ruthless death threat that made Dozier tremble, and whisked Finley away in a waiting Bentley. Looking at the powerful man beside her, Finley's heart raced: just who exactly had she married today?
9.7
I secured the lifeline investment for my fiancé's company and went to his office to surprise him.
Instead, I caught Preston sleeping with his top actress—the woman he publicly claimed as his stepsister.
Through the cracked door, I heard him call me his "scarred, ugly bitch shield" to hide their sickening affair.
I didn't cry. I hacked the live broadcast of the Star Awards and played their sex tape to two thousand people.
But that night, drunk and reeling from the agonizing nerve pain in my facial scar, I stumbled into the wrong hotel penthouse.
I was pinned down by a drugged billionaire, Josephus Hodges.
The next morning, he left me a million-dollar check and a Plan B pill.
When he later tracked me down to offer a cold, calculated fake marriage just to absorb Preston's ruined empire, I threw the contract at his chest and told him to go to hell.
But when I got home and looked in the mirror, the chronic, burning torture in my scar was completely gone.
His touch during that terrifying night had somehow cured the agony that had ruined my life.
I had just declared war on the only man on earth who could heal me.
Just then, my ruined ex-fiancé called, begging me to save him with a PR press conference.
"I'll do it, but I control the venue."
I booked it at Josephus's heavily guarded hotel. I was going to slaughter my ex on live television, and force the apex predator to look at me again.
9.0
For years, I exhausted myself trying to be the perfect, obedient heiress of the ultra-wealthy Carlisle family.
But my reward wasn't their love. Instead, I was abruptly branded a fake, thrown out of the estate, and sent to a brutal black-site prison to take the fall for someone else's crimes.
My cold CEO brother, Julian, didn't lift a finger to save me. My carefully selected boyfriend, Connor, sold me out without a second thought.
In that maximum-security cell, I was stripped of my dignity. I ate moldy, insect-infested bread, and my soft hands were covered in thick, ugly scars from fighting off murderers.
I watched inmates get beaten half to death over a single cracker, while my so-called family continued their pristine, luxurious lives on the outside.
"She's just a parasite, let her rot."
I died in that dark cell, completely abandoned. The sheer exhaustion of trying to please them, of trying to be flawless, washed over my final moments like a physical sickness.
I didn't understand why my absolute loyalty was repaid with such ruthless cruelty.
Then, water rushed out of my lungs in a violent, burning surge.
I opened my eyes to the pristine blue pool of the Carlisle estate, my body completely unscarred. I had reverted to being fifteen again.
This time, I was done playing the perfect daughter. If my fate was a prison cell, I was going to spend my remaining freedom tearing their perfect world apart.