Too Late For Regret: The Ruthless Wife

My sister stripped me of my entire life in a single night. She bought out my company, froze my bank accounts, and left me with absolutely nothing. As a final twisted psychological test, she forced me into a hyper-realistic VR simulation. When I opened my eyes, I was trapped in the body of "Heloise Vance"—a miserable, bullied wife in the elite Mercer family. My new reality was an absolute nightmare. My alcoholic husband lunged at me with his fists. "You think you run this house? You're my wife. You do what I say." My tyrannical mother-in-law raised her hand to slap me, treating me worse than a stray dog while demanding I serve them. Even my parasitic biological parents showed up at the estate, demanding a million dollars to cover up my brother's crimes, threatening to ruin me if I didn't pay. They all looked at me with pure contempt, expecting me to cower, cry, and beg for mercy just like the real Heloise always did. They thought I was just a weak, helpless punching bag they could abuse without consequence. But they didn't know the soul inside this body had changed. I wasn't the pathetic Heloise; I was Cora Sawyer, the ruthless heir to a corporate empire. If my sister wanted me to play this sick survival game to escape, I would gladly burn the entire Mercer family to the ground first.

Chapters

Chapter 6

The morning sun streamed through the massive windows of the Vance estate living room.

Cora sat on the white leather sofa, her legs crossed. She held a porcelain cup of black coffee in one hand and a financial magazine in the other. She looked completely relaxed.

The heavy front doors swung open.

Leland walked in. He reeked of cheap cologne and stale alcohol. Clinging to his arm was a young woman in a skin-tight pink dress. Her blonde hair was teased high, and her makeup was heavy.

This was Brandi. Leland's mistress.

Leland had brought her to the main house to reassert his dominance after the humiliation at the wedding. He wanted to see Cora break.

Several maids were dusting the room. They froze, lowering their heads, pretending not to see the scandalous scene.

Brandi swayed her hips as she walked over to the sofa. She sat down right on the armrest next to Leland, crossing her legs to show off her thighs. She looked at Cora with a smug, challenging smirk.

Cora didn't look up. She slowly turned a page of her magazine.

Brandi's smile faltered. She hated being ignored. She dramatically raised her right hand and fluttered her fingers near her face.

"Oh, Leland, honey," Brandi cooed in a high-pitched, grating voice. "This bracelet is just so heavy. It's exhausting wearing it."

She thrust her wrist forward, right into Cora's line of sight. A thick, gold bracelet covered in diamonds glittered in the sunlight. It was shaped like a panther.

"Cartier," Brandi announced loudly, making sure the maids heard. "Limited edition. One hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Leland says I'm the only woman who deserves it." She looked at Cora's bare wrists and laughed. "I guess some wives just aren't worth the investment."

Leland puffed his chest out. He pulled a cigar from his pocket and bit the end off, waiting for Cora to burst into tears.

Cora finally lowered her magazine.

She looked at the bracelet. Her eyes locked onto the stones for exactly two seconds. With her advanced degree in gemology, it took her less than a heartbeat to spot the flaws.

Cora let out a soft, breathy laugh. She set her coffee cup down on the glass table.

She stood up and walked over to Brandi. She looked down at the mistress.

Suddenly, Cora's hand shot out. She grabbed Brandi's wrist in an iron grip.

Brandi yelped in pain. "Hey! Let go of me!"

Leland frowned and took a step forward. "Heloise, back off-"

Cora ignored him. She used her free hand to tap a manicured fingernail against the largest "diamond" on the panther's head.

"Notice the fire," Cora said. Her voice was loud and clear, carrying across the entire living room. "See how the light refracts blue and yellow? A natural South African diamond reflects white and gray. This is Moissanite. Cheap, synthetic Moissanite."

Brandi's face paled. She tried to yank her arm away, but Cora held it tight.

"It's the lighting in here!" Brandi stammered.

Cora twisted Brandi's wrist over, exposing the inside of the band. She pointed her finger at the engraved logo.

"Look closely," Cora commanded. "An authentic Cartier piece has a hidden security mark inside the 'C'. This one is blank." Cora traced the letters. "And the engraving of the logo is wrong. The tail of the letter 'r' should have a nearly imperceptible, elegant curve. This one is completely straight. It's a detail only the highest-end forgeries miss."

A maid standing near the fireplace let out a loud snort, quickly covering her mouth to stifle her laughter.

Cora delivered the final blow. She hefted the bracelet slightly. "And the weight is completely wrong. This isn't eighteen-karat gold. It's gold-plated brass. The plating is already rubbing off on the clasp."

She let go of Brandi's arm and took a step back. Reaching over to the glass coffee table, she pulled a tissue from a dispenser and meticulously wiped every single finger, looking at Brandi like she was carrying a disease.

Brandi clutched her wrist against her chest. Her face was stark white. She looked up at Leland, her eyes wide with panic. "Leland? You said..."

Leland's face went from pale to a deep, ugly crimson. The cigar fell from his lips and bounced on the rug.

He had bought the fake on the black market for five hundred dollars. He thought his stupid, uneducated wife would never know the difference. Now, he was exposed as a cheap fraud in front of his staff.

His fragile ego shattered.

"Shut up!" Leland roared at Brandi.

He lunged forward and slapped Brandi hard across the face. The sound cracked through the room.

Brandi screamed and fell onto the floor.

"Get out of my house, you stupid cow!" Leland screamed, his veins popping.

Brandi scrambled to her feet, sobbing hysterically. She ran for the front door, her heels clicking wildly. She tripped, losing one shoe, but didn't stop. The heavy door slammed shut behind her.

Leland stood in the middle of the room, breathing heavily. His fists were clenched.

Cora picked up her coffee cup. She took a slow sip.

"Your taste in women," Cora said softly, "is exactly like your bank account. Cheap and fake."

She turned and walked up the grand staircase, leaving Leland standing in the ruins of his pride.

Continue to next part

Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part. The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys. Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero. Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold. I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth. But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me." Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again. Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.

Action Mafia Sci-Fi

8.4

No Escape From His Dangerous Love

8.4

Arlene was the illegitimate daughter of the wealthy Boone family, treated worse than a stray dog. To keep her meager scholarship, she had to swallow her pride and apologize to the frat boy who tormented her. But he didn't just want an apology. He forced her to drink twenty shots of liquor laced with pure capsaicin extract. "Drink us under the table, or take off your clothes and crawl out." Arlene drank until her stomach tore, vomiting blood and collapsing on the filthy club floor. When she dragged her half-dead body back to the Boone estate, her biological father and half-sister didn't care. Instead, her sister ground Arlene's SAT admission ticket into the dirt with her stiletto. "Throw her out. Dad doesn't want to look at her before Hardie's engagement." The guards threw her onto the gravel, leaving her bleeding and barefoot in the freezing night. Arlene sat shivering at a dark bus stop, her dignity completely stripped away. She never wanted a dime from the Boones, so why did they insist on crushing her only way out? And why did Dr. Hardie Boone, the untouchable head of the family, look at her with such a twisted, terrifying obsession? When Hardie's black Aston Martin pulled out of the shadows, he scooped her up, took her away, and locked her inside his penthouse. "You carry the Boone name. Whether you live or die is my decision." Trapped by the dangerous man who demanded total control over her life, Arlene finally realized that simply running away was no longer an option.

Action Modern Romance

9.5

Sewn Lips: Her Silent Cry For Justice

9.5

My husband told me I was a contractual obligation, an irritant he was forced to endure after a car crash stole his memory of our love five years ago. He replaced me with a social media influencer, a woman whose lies were as polished as her feed. But when her baby was found with a small cut on her lip, she tearfully accused me of being a jealous monster who attacked an innocent child. My husband, the man I had stood by through everything, didn't hesitate. In a blind rage, he ordered a guard to take a needle and thread and sew my lips shut. "She needs to see nothing. Hear nothing. Say nothing," he commanded, his voice devoid of mercy. He then had me hung upside down in the lobby of my own wellness retreat, a public spectacle for the world to condemn. As I dangled there, bleeding and broken, I finally understood. My blind love and foolish hope had been my downfall. I had loved the wrong man, and he had utterly destroyed me. But they made one fatal mistake. They didn't know about the hidden camera I' d planted in the baby's room. And they had no idea that my family could crush his entire empire with a single phone call.

Action Modern Romance

7.1

The Devil's Favourite Obsession

7.1

"I didn't ask for any of this." "Neither did I... but you walked into my world anyway." Melissa Grant believed in love the way fairy tales promised it, gentle, loyal, and safe. Until the night everything shattered. Betrayed by the boy she trusted and the friend she defended, she walks away from the life she knew straight into darkness she was never meant to survive, then she meets him. Adriano Rossi. Feared across the city as The Devil, a mafia king who built his empire on blood, power, and silence. Cold, untouchable, and dangerously precise, he was never supposed to notice someone like her, let alone want her, but one night changes everything, and a truth that refuses to stay buried. Because Melissa isn't just an innocent girl caught in the wrong place... she is the key to secrets powerful enough to burn empires to the ground. Her past is tied to a hidden crime legacy, her future entangled in a war she never chose, and her heart trapped between the life she lost and the man who could destroy her or save her completely. In a world where love is a weapon and trust is a weakness, one question remains: When the Devil wants you... do you run, or do you fall?

Action Mafia Romance

7.7

The Disguised Girl: Captivating The Billionaire King

7.7

Dasia's twin brother, Gerald, was an e-sports prodigy, the rising star of the Glory team. But during a crucial moment, he was framed by his own teammates. They orchestrated a trap that completely destroyed his reputation and left his right hand brutally crushed. Instead of getting him medical help, the club threw him out into the freezing rain, bleeding and disgraced. The manager labeled him useless trash and slapped him with a five-million-dollar termination fee to bleed him dry. Stripped of his pro status, the wealthy bullies at his prep school relentlessly targeted him, mocking his crippled hand and beating him down. Dasia watched her twin brother cry in his room, his life and dreams shattered by the people he trusted. A violent, suffocating rage boiled in her chest. How could they smile while crushing his hand? Why should the victim be treated like a rotting piece of garbage while the perpetrators get rich and celebrated? She didn't shed a single tear. She stood in front of the mirror, took a pair of scissors, and ruthlessly hacked off her waist-length hair. She wrapped her chest in coarse medical bandages until her ribs screamed, and pulled on his oversized black hoodie. "Everything you took from him, I am going to take back with interest." The girl in the mirror was gone. She was Gerald now. She secretly passed the brutal online tryouts for Glory's biggest rival, the elite Blackflame team, and signed their official contract. The revenge had officially begun.

Action Billionaire Modern

7.2

The Jilted Bride's Billion Dollar Revenge

7.2

On our wedding night, celebrating a billion-dollar family merger, my new husband Coleton stepped out of the shower. Suddenly, his phone rang. It was his dead brother's widow, Hana, crying that her five-year-old had a fever. Without hesitation, Coleton shoved me hard into the wall to get out the door. "Are you seriously jealous of a sick five-year-old kid?" he spat. He abandoned me in the bridal suite. I immediately filed for divorce and leaked it to the press. To save the merger and their stock prices, both our families rushed in to force me to back down. My own father raised his hand to slap me for my "petty female jealousy." Coleton's grandfather brutally beat him with a heavy wooden cane right in front of me, trying to use a twisted debt of honor to guilt-trip me into staying. Through a hidden dumbwaiter shaft, I overheard their secret meeting. They were plotting to use Coleton's bloody photos to paint me as a cold-hearted villain to the media, trapping me in the marriage through public shame. My own brother nodded along to this plot just to secure his CEO bonus. Coleton only begged for my forgiveness because he was terrified of losing his trust fund to an illegitimate heir. In their eyes, my dignity was just a cheap commodity with a price tag. But I am a Pennington, raised in a world where trust is a liability. I calmly saved the audio recording of their plot, packed my Hermes suitcase, and emailed the most ruthless divorce litigator in Manhattan.

Action Modern Romance

Too Late For Regret: The Ruthless Wife

Chapter 6

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