Too Late For Regret, Mr. Mafia Boss

Chloe Sinclair woke up to the relentless smell of antiseptic and the furious voice of her fiancé, Harrison. She had just crashed his quarter-million-dollar car on the highway. But brutal memory slammed into her—the crash wasn't an accident. Brianna, Harrison's supposed best friend, had handed her the keys knowing perfectly well the brake lines were cut. In her previous life, Chloe had cried and apologized pathetically from this very hospital bed. She had begged Harrison to believe she didn't do it on purpose. Instead, he looked at her with utter disgust, tightening his suffocating control while openly flaunting his affair with Brianna. Chloe had endured a decade of humiliation, watching her powerful family wither away under Harrison's machinations. She was drained of her wealth, locked in a miserable marriage, and eventually died a broken, forgotten woman. Until her last breath, she hadn't understood. She had sacrificed her dignity and dedicated her entire life to loving him. Why did her desperate devotion only earn his casual cruelty? Why did the people she trusted most want her dead so badly? Opening her eyes again, she stared at the digital clock on the wall. It was October 12th, ten years ago. The exact day her nightmare began. A core of steel formed in the wreckage of her past self. When Harrison grabbed her wrist to lecture her, Chloe wrenched her arm free and slapped him hard across the face. "We're done, Harrison."

With twelve dollars in my bank account and a freezing apartment, my friend forced me into a velvet dress to attend an exclusive underground party for free food. But the night quickly turned into a nightmare when a drunk thug attacked me, nearly strangling me to death in a dark hallway. Just as my lungs burned for air, a terrifying man stepped out of the shadows and shattered my attacker's bones. He was Axel Carrillo, the billionaire owner of the club. But instead of feeling safe, my blood ran cold. His dark, dead eyes perfectly mirrored the wealthy monster who had abused and locked me in a basement years ago. He trapped me in his VIP room, surrounding me with the elite crowd that openly mocked my poverty. I didn't understand why this ruthless billionaire was looking at me like a predator watching its prey. I had barely escaped the nightmare of the rich once; I wasn't going to let another powerful man own my life. Faking a twisted ankle, I stumbled forward, falling directly into his chest. In less than a second, I expertly slipped the thick money clip and custom leather wallet from his pocket, grabbed my broken stilettos, and ran blindly into the freezing night. I used his crisp hundred-dollar bills to pay my overdue rent, locking his silver-crested wallet in my desk drawer. What I didn't know was that Axel had let me steal it, smiling in the dark as he whispered to his security. "Let her keep the bait."

I gave my boyfriend, Blake, eight years of my life. I was his loyal paralegal and devoted partner, sacrificing a promotion and even a child for the future he promised us. Then I overheard the truth from outside his office. He called me "damaged goods," laughing with the woman he gave my job to. His cruelty escalated. He publicly humiliated me, then banished me to the firm's basement archives. When intruders attacked me there, I called him, bleeding and begging for help. "You're being dramatic," he said, and hung up. He left me to die. The trauma caused me to miscarry the baby I never knew I was carrying. Lying in a hospital bed, I saw his social media post: a smiling selfie with her, captioned #Blessed. That was the moment I decided to disappear. He thought he had broken me. He was wrong. He had just set me free.

I was Grayson Deleon' s secret weapon and his lover. I took a bullet for him, saved him from a cartel, and in return, he promised me a secret marriage, a life where it would always be us. But on the night of my secret Juilliard graduation, I watched from the wings as he got down on one knee for my best friend, Camilla. He called her "pure," a word he used to contrast with my "taint" from the cartel rescue. A leaked video later proved this wasn't just a betrayal; it was a conspiracy. I heard them laughing about their "perfectly executed plan" to get rid of me, the "distraction." The man whose life I had saved had orchestrated my public humiliation, discarding me because of the very scars I earned for him. My world was ashes, but from them, something cold and hard formed. I made a single call to a heritage network I'd been using to find my lost family. It was time to disappear and never be his secret again.

Three years of marriage, three years of silent fury with Blake Harrison. Then, a nightmare: kidnapped, tortured, and brutally murdered by thugs. But instead of the afterlife, I woke up to my own funeral party, where my loving husband was celebrating his freedom with my sister, Amelia, accusing me of faking my own death. My family, the Millers, the very people who had once claimed to love me, stood by, silent witnesses to my humiliation, only to later join Blake in discrediting me, sending me to a mental institution. It broke me, but in that shattering, a new strength forged; I embraced my "death," watching my essence vanish in a golden glow, ready to finally be free. Three years later, I returned, a princess with no memory, only to be dragged back into his twisted obsession, discovering he had preserved my supposed corpse and turned my suffering into a perverse play. He confessed his sick love, his manipulations, even admitting he' d let me be tortured to "test" my affection. I tried to fight, to turn his own dagger against him, but he only reveled in the pain, until General Alex Vance, a man connected to my forgotten past, burst in and rescued me. Now, between Blake's renewed tyranny and Alex's baffling devotion, I'm finding pieces of a life I never knew, a history of longing and betrayal that demands to be explored and avenged.

The smell of gasoline and burning flesh clung to my last breath, a horrific perfume of my own end. My wife, Olivia, and her grandmother, the woman I' d sacrificed everything to save, celebrated my agonizing death. "You staged the kidnapping, you killed my lover and my son, how dare you still be alive!" Olivia shrieked, as flames licked at the cage they' d locked me in. Her grandmother, my supposed savior, added, "You couldn' t give me a child, so you targeted my grandson, I' ll teach you a lesson you\'ll never forget!" I died watching them smile, consumed by fire, bewildered by their monstrous accusations. I had given my family' s entire fortune to rescue her grandmother, even taken multiple stab wounds in the process. The media had hailed me as a hero, "the ultimate proof of our love," but it meant nothing to them. Olivia' s lover, Ethan Hayes, jealous of the attention, had tragically drowned with their son, Lucas, and they blamed me. They smiled as I burned alive, a fool who gave everything and received only contempt. Then, a frantic, insistent ringing pierced the fiery memory. My eyes snapped open. I wasn't in a burning cage; I was in my bed, the one I shared with Olivia. The calendar on my phone screamed a terrifying truth: it was the fifth anniversary of my marriage, the very day her grandmother was kidnapped. I was back, forced to relive the nightmare. But this time, I wouldn't be the fuel for their fire. I silenced the phone, the urgent ringing of the kidnappers cut short. This time, their fate was their own.