Too Late For Regret, Mr. Montgomery

On my eighteenth birthday, my parents suddenly brought a strange girl into the house. "Haven, you are not our biological daughter," my mother announced coldly. "Claire is." My father threw a $1.2 million invoice for my upbringing in my face. "This is the cost of everything you've enjoyed in this house. You will pay it back down to the exact cent." My fiancé, Cooper Holland, looked at me with deep disgust and threw our engagement ring at my feet. "You stole Claire's life for eighteen years," Cooper sneered, his eyes filled with contempt. "Our engagement is over. This is what you owe her, and you will pay it back even if you have to sell your blood." I didn't scream or beg. To pay off the debt, I tore up my Ivy League acceptance letter with my own hands. For three full years, I worked twelve-hour shifts delivering food in freezing blizzards, and spent my nights scrubbing grease traps in a filthy dive bar until my knuckles cracked and bled. I bit my tongue and paid them back. The night the final payment was transferred, my hands were trembling so hard I could barely hold a pen. The moment the balance dropped to zero, I felt completely detached from this world. With my last few coins, I bought a cheap bottle of sweet peach soda and a bottle of lethal agricultural herbicide, thinking the sweetness could take away the bitterness. The moment I swallowed it, my phone screen lit up. It was a text from my mother. "Haven, the test is over. You actually are our biological daughter, too. It's just that Claire was lost as a child and suffered a lot. We did this to teach you humility, afraid that you might bully her." "We will refund all the money tomorrow. Come home, and put your sister first from now on." Cooper called right after, his tone full of arrogant charity. "Have you thrown enough tantrums? Come to the banquet tonight, kneel down and publicly apologize to Claire. Then, I might consider taking you back." I stared at the glowing screen, dark blood welling up in my throat. It turned out that everything I had done was nothing but a sick prank in their eyes, yet I had paid a devastating price for it. At this moment, I suddenly realized that no one cared about my life anymore.

From eighteen on, I worked three jobs. Overnight shifts at a burger place, standing until one in the morning. Trays in the school cafeteria all day, until my wrist swelled too much to hold a pen. The reservation desk at the library, ten dollars an hour, seven weekends of it. The money went home one paycheck at a time: Colton's cleats, the family broadband bill, the four tires on my father's car. I held on year after year because I believed one thing: if I held this family up, there would be a place in it for me. The day my father put the down payment on that house, I had forty-two dollars left in my bank account — everything that remained after I paid for Colton's season gear. Four bedrooms, given to themselves and my two brothers. My father finished counting the doors and slapped his forehead. "Oh — how did we forget you." The fourth room was left over, south-facing bay window, the best light in the house. He said this one was for the two boys to do their homework in — quiet, good light. My mother set up the green folding bed in the laundry room, right next to the water heater. "You're the oldest, Alexa. Be sensible. Your brother needs the space." For thirteen years, what I did in that house was the work of an unpaid maid who got room and board. "You're an adult now. Stop expecting the whole family to revolve around your schedule." I washed my brothers' jerseys. I carried their equipment bags. I slept on concrete. The family desktop was unplugged and hauled away to make room for Blake's shoe rack. The day I graduated first in my class, my father threw my certificate into the trash — that thing wouldn't get you an athletic scholarship. Back then I thought that if I scrubbed enough grease and kept my mouth shut, they would love me someday. In their eyes I was an appliance. So when the email came from Switzerland — a full research scholarship — I didn't say a word. Tuition and housing covered. I hadn't been able to bear leaving home, so I hadn't replied. Over three days I found myself three reasons I couldn't go. I thought each one through carefully. None of them held. On the fourth day I opened the cracked laptop on the laundry-room floor and clicked Accept.

For five years, Lydia Haley buried her identity as a genius Hollywood screenwriter to be the perfect wife to billionaire Blake Spencer. But her sacrifice was rewarded with a nightmare. At a family dinner, her mother-in-law coldly ordered her to leave the family, while her seven-year-old son deliberately shattered her precious anniversary gift. "I hate you! Aunt Danica said I can do whatever I want!" Blake didn't even look at Lydia's tears. He stepped over the broken glass to comfort their son, indulging the boy's demands. The final blow came when Danica proudly revealed a devastating secret. Three years ago, a hidden car accident had left Blake inexplicably indebted to Danica. Since then, he had been systematically compensating her, giving Danica the affection, the family vacations, and the children's love that rightfully belonged to Lydia. Lydia's world crumbled. Her failing marriage wasn't about fading love; it was a carefully orchestrated replacement built on a secret everyone knew but her. Why was she the only one kept in the dark to suffer this humiliation? Instead of begging, Lydia signed the divorce papers, giving up all assets and custody. She walked out of the mansion, unlocked a dusty hard drive, and resurrected her true name: Lark. With a three-million-dollar movie deal secured, she was ready for her rebirth—until she saw her missing mother's heirloom bracelet suddenly surface at an anonymous high-stakes auction.

I was ambushed in a Brooklyn alley, bleeding and running for my life. I called my husband, Attilio Shepard—the one man who had promised to protect me. He never picked up. I later found out that while I was being hunted, his private jet was landing in New York. He was flying home from Paris with Candace, the woman he’d always truly loved. The police arrested the man who attacked me, but my husband’s lawyers had him out by morning. It turned out my attacker was Candace’s brother, and Attilio was protecting her from the scandal. I even overheard him on the phone. "Find out who the victim is," he told his assistant. "Offer them whatever it takes. Cash. An NDA. Just make it go away." He never bothered to ask who the victim was. He was ordering my silence, my forgiveness, my complete erasure—paid for with the power I gave him when I took his name. I was just a problem to be solved with money. So when his lawyers brought me a check for five million dollars, I took it. This wasn't surrender. It was funding. That night, I walked into my attacker's penthouse party, ready to burn their world to the ground.