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 3
The red light above the emergency room doors burned like a warning sign.
Daryl sat slumped on the hard plastic chair in the hallway of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. His hands rested on his knees, stained with the dried blood from his mother's cracked lips during the compressions.
Cassie huddled against his chest. She was sobbing quietly, her tiny fists gripping the fabric of his cheap shirt so tightly her knuckles were white.
A chaotic, aggressive march of footsteps echoed from the far end of the corridor.
Beatrice Doyle, Blaire's mother, led the charge. She wore an expensive mink shawl draped over her shoulders. Her husband, Preston, and her son, Jaxon, flanked her like bodyguards.
The moment Beatrice saw Daryl, her face twisted in disgust. She pulled a silk handkerchief from her purse and pressed it against her nose, as if the very air around him was contaminated.
Jaxon walked straight up to Daryl and kicked the metal trash can next to the plastic chairs. The loud crash echoed down the hall. Several nurses poked their heads out of nearby rooms, glaring at the noise.
"Nice trick," Jaxon sneered, looking down at Daryl. "Having the old lady fake a heart attack to stall the divorce. Real classy."
Daryl snapped his head up. The pure, unfiltered violence in his eyes hit Jaxon like a physical blow. Jaxon swallowed hard and instinctively took a step back, his shoulders hitting the wall.
Preston stepped forward, puffing out his chest. He adopted the tone of a corporate dictator.
"Do not try to intimidate the heir of the Doyle family with your thuggish behavior," Preston warned sternly. "The Doyle Group rings the bell at the New York Stock Exchange next month. We will not tolerate any negative PR involving a spouse."
Blaire walked down the hallway from the opposite direction. She held a fresh cup of black coffee in her hand. Her face was perfectly composed, the mask of absolute rationality firmly back in place.
Cassie saw her mother. She wriggled out of Daryl's arms and ran toward Blaire, wrapping her arms around Blaire's legs.
"Mommy, please don't let them send Grandma away," Cassie begged, tears streaming down her face.
Blaire looked down at her daughter's wet, pleading face. Her hand trembled. A single drop of hot black coffee spilled over the rim of the cup and landed on the toe of her designer heel.
For a fraction of a second, the Aethelred Method cracked. A sliver of human hesitation showed in her eyes.
Beatrice saw it instantly. She lunged forward, grabbed Cassie by the arm, and roughly shoved the child back toward Daryl.
"Think about the Montgomery family, Blaire," Beatrice hissed sharply. "Think about the billions Estevan brings to the table."
The words acted like a switch. The crack in Blaire's mind sealed shut. Her eyes turned back to stone.
She handed the coffee to her assistant and walked over to Daryl, looking down at him from her high heels.
"The resuscitation fees here are astronomical," Blaire stated, her voice flat. "Without my signature and my insurance, you cannot even afford the deposit for tonight."
Daryl let out a low, dry laugh. He looked at her, his chest rising and falling slowly.
"Are you holding my mother's life hostage to make me sign?"
Preston chimed in from the side. "It is called commercial leverage. Something a bottom-feeder like you will never understand."
The heavy doors of the emergency room pushed open. The attending physician walked out, his face grim, scanning the hallway for family.
"Marlene Bush is stabilized, but she suffered a severe panic-induced cardiac event," the doctor announced. "She needs to be moved to the ICU immediately."
The doctor handed Daryl a long, printed estimate. The total at the bottom was hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Daryl glanced at the numbers, his expression unchanging. He had a supplementary credit card from Blaire in his wallet, but using it meant accepting her twisted charity. More importantly, he possessed his own hidden resources that could buy this entire hospital in a heartbeat. He refused to bend his spine for her manipulative games.
Jaxon whistled loudly. He crossed his arms, a sickening grin on his face, waiting for Daryl to break down and beg.
Daryl did not even look at the paper again. He kept his eyes locked on Blaire. The look he gave her was completely devoid of anger. It was just an endless, freezing void of absolute disappointment.
Daryl stood up. He gently pushed Cassie toward a passing nurse. "Watch her for one minute, please."
He walked right up to Blaire. He stopped so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body.
Daryl leaned in. His voice was a deadly whisper, meant only for her ears.
"Your commercial empire," Daryl said, the words vibrating in his chest, "is nothing but a pile of trash I can crush whenever I want."
Blaire felt a sharp prick of unease at the absolute dominance in his tone. She quickly pushed the feeling down, convincing herself it was just the pathetic bluff of a desperate man.
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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.