Regret

For six years, Mara gave Elias her time, her labor, and her love. After a miscarriage, a broken heirloom, and one betrayal too many, she stopped asking him to see her pain. When he came begging for another chance, all he found was the woman she had become without him.

Corbin, Davis, Seth, and I grew up in the same neighborhood. We'd been inseparable since childhood, promising to go to college together and never leave anyone behind.

Everything changed when Mira moved into Corbin's house during high school.

Since then, every major decision had become a guessing game. They always told me to guess their choices, and I was always the one left out.

Three days bef...

Born seven minutes apart, my twin sister Fiorella and I were supposed to share everything.

But in the Vescari family, there was never enough love for both daughters.

I was the healthy, capable twin who never needed help. Fiorella was the fragile one who needed protecting.

So our father, New York's most feared Don, gave her everything—his attention, his protection, and eventually, the future I ...

At Silvercrest Pack's Full Moon Festival, a firework exploded, sending burning debris into the crowd.

My boyfriend of three years, Alpha Adrian, rushed to protect Clara, the orphaned Omega I'd personally brought into our pack.

A metal fragment sliced open my arm, but Adrian didn't even ask if I was hurt.

Later that night, my car broke down near the Rogue-infested border during a thunderstorm. B...

My wife, Vanessa, believed her lover when he said I had hidden his daughter.
So she dragged my parents into a basement, tied them to a support column, and pointed a fake bomb at them over video call.
She wanted me to confess.
But I had nothing to confess.
When the explosion tore through the building, she still thought I was the one who had ruined everything. She came home the next day, blamed me f...

They said we were perfect for each other.
I believed them until I clicked on a video that shattered everything.
My husband and his adopted sister was sleeping on our bed.
Eight years later.
My ex came to me.
He wants to prove he's changed.
I don't need his redemption.
The manuscript between us reveals the truth he tried to bury.
Every lie, every cancellation, and every moment I diminished myself ...

I had a fever when my sister poured my hot soup down the sink. My mother watched, then told me to draw another blind-box card if I wanted dinner.

At our engagement dinner, my sister drew the name of the man I'd loved for years. I drew Luca—the driver everyone laughed at. Adrian promised to help me draw again. That night, I caught him removing every card with his own name from the box. So when the...

To buy my freedom, I made a deal with my father. I would play Lorenzo Hale’s fiancée, his shield, until he took the throne as Don. Then I’d swallow a black-market drug, fake my death.
For five years, I took bullets for Lorenzo. I tasted poison meant for him. I bled for him more times than I can count. The whole underworld said Corinne Moretti loved Lorenzo Hale so much it made her crazy.
The day h...

I've always been a little slower than everyone else.

Ethan Walker used to promise he'd wait for me. We'd been best friends since we were four.

Then Madison Reed came along, and he stopped keeping that promise.

At dinner, they'd leave before I finished eating. At the beach, they disappeared while I was still struggling to swim back to shore.

I kept making excuses for him.

Until the night I arr...

Three days after I lost our baby, my husband finally remembered to call.

I was packing when Adrian Whitmore's name appeared on my screen.

"Vanessa told me you caused another scene over the medical bills," he said, sounding irritated. "I've authorized the payment. Can we please move on?"

I stared at the tiny knitted sweater lying in my suitcase.

I'd bought it the day I learned I was pregnant.

...

Three years into being Nathan Cole’s kept woman, I learned I was the missing daughter of one of the wealthiest families in the city.

I was about to go to them when I saw the news. Nathan had already taken his childhood friend to the party welcoming their daughter home.

When I got there, I found Vanessa Reed crying against his chest.

“What if Claire finds out?”

Nathan wiped her tears away.

“Sh...

Every anniversary, my boyfriend pretends to propose to me—just because his adopted sister thinks it’s hilarious.
One year, the ring box held nothing but a "Dream on" note. Another, he dropped to one knee—just to tie his shoe. Last year, he finally slid a real ring onto my finger. The band was lined with silver. While I screamed, he and Myrtle laughed themselves breathless. In the ER that night, he...

After three years together, my artist boyfriend feverishly sketched his female junior during a trip—yet left the exact spot where I had stood for half an hour completely blank.

"You're too rigid. You just blend into the background. There's no need to put you in the painting."

I used to be his muse. But now, he claimed I lacked inspiration and was only fit to be a backdrop.

On our third anniver...

One drunken night. One baby. One Don who married me out of duty.

I was the family doctor, a nobody, when I got pregnant with Don Rafael Salvatore’s child. I thought if I stayed quiet, stayed good, and made myself useful, he would eventually love me and our daughter.

Seven years later, I’m still waiting.

Rafael never let Nina call him “Daddy.” When she was two, she said it by accident in public,...

My boyfriend's stepsister was assaulted. She didn't survive it.

I knew the truth, but I refused to name the man who did it.

His parents got down on their knees and begged me. I didn't budge.

When the reporters showed up at my door, I chased them off with a kitchen knife.

He didn't leave me. He turned his back on his family and married me.

And then he made me pay. Every day, he brought people ...

The five of us had an unwritten rule: we never discussed plans. We guessed.

What to eat, where to go, who was paying—everything was a guessing game.

They called it the kind of connection you developed after ten years together.

Somehow, I was always the only one who got it wrong.

Two weeks before our fall vacation, I asked the group chat, “Where are we going?”

All four of them gave the same an...

After her boyfriend cheated on her seven years into their relationship, my best friend, Vanessa Reed, stopped trusting men.

When I introduced her to Ethan Cole, she folded her arms.

“He'll cheat on you, too. Give him time.”

Ethan took my hand.

“Then watch me, Ms. Reed.”

She slapped the table.

“I will.”

For seven years, she sent me updates whenever I wasn't with him.

Every year, she found n...

Lena was once the child everyone protected. Then one accident turned her into the villain of her own family. When her sister’s celebration leaves her alone, poisoned, and accused again, Lena makes a quiet decision: ten days, ten marks, and she will disappear before they ever realize what they lost.

On the morning of the entrance exams, my parents locked me inside the family freezer to keep me from outshining Ethan.
They thought they were saving him from a prophecy.
By the time they realized the prophecy was a lie, I had already frozen to death with my hand still raised against the door.

On the night Adrian Vale proposed, he said another woman’s name. When the room mistook Selene for the bride, he chose the Vale family’s reputation over the woman who had loved him for three years. Mara ElliOn the night Adrian Vale got down on one knee, he looked at me and said another woman’s name. In front of his family, his guests, and every camera in the room, he chose to protect his reputation...