I came home exhausted from an eighteen-hour hospital shift, just wanting to rest in the bed my husband of three years rarely shared with me.
Instead, I found his mistress sprawled on our bedroom floor in a pool of stage blood, holding a knife and screaming that I had pushed her and killed her baby.
My husband, Kian, rushed in. He didn’t care that I was still in my wrinkled scrubs, nor did he look at the blatantly fake ultrasound she threw on the floor.
“Shut up, you vicious bitch.”
He shoved me out of the way so hard that my head cracked open against the sharp marble fireplace. As real blood gushed down my face and blinded me, he simply scooped her up and walked out, leaving me bleeding on the floor while the house staff watched in disgust.
As I lay there gasping, my medical training cut through the haze. The chronic weakness and dizzy spells I’d suffered for months weren’t from overwork. Kian had been slowly poisoning me. I had played the meek, invisible wife for three years, enduring his coldness and his cheating. I didn’t understand how the man I married could not only frame me, but actively try to murder me just to clear the way for his secret lover.
I dragged myself up, stitched my own torn scalp without a single tear, and pulled out my hidden military-grade laptop. I signed the divorce papers to claim my guaranteed half of his ten-billion-dollar trust fund, and logged back into my old hacker alias. The meek wife was dead.
Too Late For Regret, Mr. Morrison Chapter 1
The heavy oak door of the Morrison estate felt like it weighed a ton. Carmen Blair pushed it open, her shoulders burning from the eighteen-hour shift at the charity hospital. She still smelled like antiseptic and stale coffee. Her scrubs were wrinkled, her feet aching in her cheap sneakers. All she wanted was a hot shower and to crawl into the bed that her husband rarely shared with her anymore.
She dropped her keys on the foyer table. The house was too quiet. The staff was usually buzzing around at this hour.
She climbed the grand staircase, her hand trailing up the cold mahogany banister. She walked down the long hallway toward the master bedroom. The door was slightly ajar.
A smell hit her before she even pushed the door open. Copper. Raw, metallic, and thick. Mixed with the heavy, cloying scent of Seraphina’s signature perfume-Frédéric Malle’s Portrait of a Lady.
Carmen’s hand froze on the door handle. Her brain instantly shifted from exhausted wife to clinical observer. She pushed the door open.
The white Persian rug was ruined. A dark, sticky pool of red spread across the expensive fibers. Seraphina Astor-Vance lay sprawled on the floor, her white silk slip dress hiked up, stained crimson from the waist down. A silver fruit knife glinted in her right hand, the blade smeared with blood.
Carmen’s eyes dropped to the wound. Her pulse steadied. The blood was too bright. The cut on Seraphina’s forearm was superficial-barely a scratch, angled upward, typical of self-infliction. The blood pooling under her skirt was too voluminous for the tiny arm wound.
Seraphina’s eyes snapped open. The calculated malice in them was fleeting, quickly replaced by a trembling, terrified performance.
“Carmen…” Seraphina’s voice shook, a perfect tremor of fear and accusation. “Why… why would you do this?”
Carmen didn’t answer. Her feet moved forward on their own. Surgeon mode. She needed to check the actual depth of the abdominal wound, if there even was one. She had to stop the bleeding.
She took one step onto the rug.
“Don’t come near me!” Seraphina shrieked, scrambling backward, the knife raised defensively. “You already killed my baby! Are you going to kill me too to shut me up?”
Carmen stopped. The words registered, but the logic refused to form. “What are you talking about? I just walked in.”
Heavy, rapid footsteps thundered up the stairs. The door slammed against the wall.
Kian Morrison stood in the doorway, his chest heaving, his dark hair disheveled. His gray eyes swept the room. They skipped right past Carmen and locked onto the bleeding woman on the floor.
“Kian!” Seraphina sobbed, reaching out her bloody hand toward him. With her other hand, she slid a crumpled piece of paper across the floor. “Our baby… it’s gone… she pushed me…”
Kian’s face drained of color, then flooded with a dark, violent red. He strode past Carmen without a glance.
Carmen grabbed his arm as he moved by. Her fingers dug into the expensive wool of his suit jacket. “Kian, wait. Look at her arm. That blood isn’t hers. I was at the hospital. I just got home.”
Kian stopped. He looked down at her hand on his sleeve, then slowly raised his eyes to hers. There was no confusion in his gaze. No question. Just pure, freezing contempt.
“Shut up, you vicious bitch.” His voice was low, dead calm, and cut deeper than the knife on the floor.
He shook off her hand and knelt down, pulling Seraphina into his arms. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Carmen stood frozen. Three years of marriage. Three years of silence, cold shoulders, and empty beds. And he didn’t even ask. He didn’t even blink.
“Kian, look at the ultrasound,” Carmen said, her voice harder now. She pointed at the paper on the floor. “It’s dated last week. She wasn’t even showing. That blood is fake. It’s a setup.”
Kian lifted his head. The rage in his eyes was terrifying. He stood up, holding Seraphina against his chest.
“Get out of my way.” He stepped toward the door.
Carmen moved to block the doorway. She had to make him see. “You are not taking her out of here without calling an ambulance. That is a crime scene, and she is lying.”
Kian’s patience snapped. “I said, move!”
He didn’t shove her, not directly. Instead, he took a large, aggressive step forward, his shoulder clipping hers hard as he stormed past. It wasn’t a direct assault, but it was just as dismissive and twice as contemptuous.
Carmen’s exhaustion, her weakened state from the long shift, betrayed her. She couldn’t catch her balance. The unexpected impact sent her stumbling sideways. Her feet tangled in the ruined rug. She fell backward, the momentum throwing her weight against the sharp, carved corner of the Italian marble fireplace.
A sickening crack echoed in the room.
Pain exploded through her skull. White-hot, blinding. Her vision went black for a second, then filled with flashing spots. Warm liquid, thick and sticky, gushed down the side of her face, dripping onto her collarbone.
She lay on the floor, gasping, trying to force air back into her lungs. The room spun sickeningly.
Through the haze of pain, she saw Kian. He had paused for a fraction of a second when he heard the impact, his back stiffening, but he hadn’t turned around. He just adjusted his grip on Seraphina and walked out the door.
“Call the house doctor!” Kian’s voice echoed down the hallway, frantic and urgent. “Now! Hurry!”
That urgency. That panic. He had never once used that tone for her.
Carmen turned her head slightly. The blood from her head wound mingled with the fake stage blood on the rug. It was the same color. But hers was real.
Footsteps shuffled at the door. The housekeeper and two maids stood there, staring down at her. Their eyes were wide, but not with pity. It was disgust. It was fear. They looked at her like she was a rabid animal.
None of them moved to help her. None of them offered a towel or a phone.
Carmen pressed her hand against the wound on her head. The blood pulsed against her palm, hot and sticky. The physical pain was agonizing. But the cold, hollow space expanding in her chest hurt worse.
She stared at the ceiling. The ornate plaster medallion looked like a cage.
She was done.
Too Late For Regret, Mr. Morrison Chapter 2
Carmen lay on the floor for exactly ten minutes. The blood continued to seep between her fingers, pooling on the cold marble.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Vance, finally took a tentative step forward, her face pale. “Ma’am… do you need-“
“Don’t touch me.” Carmen’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. She rolled onto her side, ignoring the wave of nausea that hit her. She planted her hands on the floor and pushed herself up. Her knees shook, but she locked them.
She walked past the staff, leaving a trail of bloody footprints on the hardwood. She walked down the hall to her small study-the room she had claimed as her own because the master bedroom never felt like hers.
She shut the door and locked it. She turned the deadbolt, then shoved a heavy chair under the handle.
She walked to the small bathroom attached to the study. She looked in the mirror. The gash on her forehead was deep, right at the hairline. The skin was split wide open, revealing the yellowish fat layer underneath. It needed at least six stitches.
She opened the medicine cabinet. Behind the bottles of aspirin and melatonin sat a disguised medical kit. She pulled it out. It was a top-grade surgical kit, the kind not available to civilians.
She cleaned the wound with iodine. The sting made her jaw clench, but she didn’t make a sound. She threaded a curved needle with absorbable suture. She looked in the mirror, her hands perfectly steady. She pierced the skin, driving the needle through the dermis, and pulled it taut. One stitch. Two stitches. Six stitches. She tied off the last one and cut the thread with surgical scissors.
She smeared medical glue over the closure and pressed the edges together. She stuck a sterile bandage over it.
She stared at her reflection. The woman in the mirror looked like a ghost. Pale, bloody, exhausted. But her eyes were clear. The weakness was gone. The hope was gone.
She walked back into the study. She went to the bookshelf and pulled out a worn copy of War and Peace. The pages had been hollowed out. Inside sat a thin, matte-black laptop. Military-grade encryption. Custom-built.
She opened it and pressed the power button. A logo flickered on the screen: four stylized flames arranged in a square. The signature of “Four Fires,” the most wanted hacker in the world.
Her fingers flew across the keys. She bypassed the Morrison estate’s multi-million dollar security system in under thirty seconds. She accessed the local server and pulled up the hallway camera feeds.
The files from the last hour were missing. Deleted.
Carmen let out a short, humorless laugh. Amateurs.
She initiated a deep-scan recovery protocol. A custom algorithm she had written herself began to piece together the fragmented data. A progress bar appeared on the screen. 10%… 25%…
While the recovery ran, her fingers danced across the keyboard, slipping past firewalls into Kian’s private server. His emails, his travel logs to a clinic in Switzerland, his calendar alerts for a ‘F.W. Return’-it was all there in plain text. Information was power, and she was about to be all-powerful.
Her phone buzzed on the desk. The screen lit up with a text from Marcus Holloway, Kian’s assistant.
Mr. Morrison requests that you remain in the guest quarters tonight. Do not disturb Ms. Astor-Vance.
Carmen picked up the phone. She didn’t reply. She threw it into the trash can.
The laptop chimed. Recovery complete.
She clicked on the video file. The footage from the master bedroom hallway played. The timestamp showed fifteen minutes before she arrived.
Seraphina walked down the hall, a smug smile on her face. She was carrying a plastic bag. She entered the bedroom.
The camera inside the bedroom was disabled, but the hallway audio picked up the sound of tearing plastic and liquid splashing.
Five minutes later, a figure appeared at the end of the hall. Kian. He stood perfectly still, his hands in his pockets, watching the bedroom door. He wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t rushing to help.
He pulled out his phone. Typed a message. A second later, Seraphina’s muffled phone chimed inside the room.
Kian turned and walked back toward the stairs.
Carmen stopped the video. She opened a secondary log. She traced the text message Kian had sent.
Doing great. Make it look real.
The words stared back at her from the screen.
He wasn’t just blinded by prejudice. He wasn’t just making a mistake. He was the director of this little play. He had stood there and watched Seraphina set her up. He had encouraged it.
Carmen stared at the screen until the pixels blurred. She didn’t cry. The tears had dried up years ago. There was only a vast, echoing emptiness where her heart used to be.
She highlighted the video file and the text log. She didn’t delete them. Instead, she compressed them into a single, heavily encrypted archive. With a few keystrokes, she uploaded the file to a ghost server in the deep web, a digital vault that not even she could easily find again unless she knew exactly what she was looking for. She didn’t need to prove her innocence to him. But she would absolutely keep the receipt.
She closed the laptop and slid it back into the hollowed book. She walked to her desk and opened the bottom drawer. Inside was a thick manila envelope. She pulled out the document inside.
It was a divorce agreement. Her lawyer had drafted it months ago, but she had never been able to sign it. She had kept making excuses. She had kept hoping.
She picked up a pen. She didn’t hesitate. She filled in the date and signed her name in sharp, angry strokes.
She was done waiting for a marriage that was already dead.
Too Late For Regret, Mr. Morrison Chapter 3
The next morning, Carmen walked into the lobby of Morrison Building. She hadn’t slept all night. She was wearing a plain white shirt and jeans. The white medical tape on her forehead stood out starkly against her pale skin.
The lobby was bustling. Employees stopped mid-conversation to stare. Whispers rippled through the crowd like a virus.
“Did you see the bruise?”
“I heard she attacked Seraphina…”
“Gold digger.”
Carmen ignored them. She walked straight to the private elevator and pressed the button for the top floor.
The elevator doors opened onto the executive suite. Marcus Holloway sat at his desk, looking harassed. He stood up quickly when he saw her.
“Mrs. Morrison, Mr. Morrison is in a video conference-“
Carmen walked right past him. “I can wait.”
“Ma’am, you can’t go in there!”
Carmen pushed open the heavy mahogany doors of the CEO office.
Kian sat at his massive desk, facing a wall of monitors displaying the faces of several board members. He looked up, his eyes narrowing when he saw her.
“Get out,” he ordered, his voice cold.
Carmen walked up to the desk. She reached into her bag and pulled out the divorce agreement. She threw it down on the polished wood, right on top of his notes.
The words DIVORCE AGREEMENT were printed in bold black letters at the top.
Kian glanced at it. He leaned back in his chair, a slow, mocking smile spreading across his face. He muted his microphone.
“You think you have the leverage to ask for a divorce?” he scoffed. “After what you did last night?”
Carmen didn’t flinch. “Sign it, Kian.”
“Or what?” He tapped his finger on the desk. “You’ll get nothing. The prenup is ironclad. You’ll walk out of my house with exactly what you brought into it. Nothing.”
“You might want to read the private addendum your father insisted on, the one attached to paragraph four,” Carmen said, her voice steady. “The trust clause. As a failsafe, if the marriage lasts three years, I am entitled to fifty percent of your personal ten-billion-dollar trust fund. We hit the three-year mark two weeks ago.”
Kian’s smile vanished. His jaw tightened. “You are out of your mind if you think I’m giving you a cent of my family’s money.”
“Then we go to court,” Carmen said simply. “And we do it very publicly.”
“You won’t win.”
“I don’t need to win,” Carmen said. She leaned forward, planting her hands on his desk. “I just need to make a mess. And I know how much you hate messes, Kian.”
Kian stood up, his hands balled into fists. “I will destroy you. I will make sure you never work in this city again.”
Carmen looked at him, her gaze flat. “Farrah Watts.”
The name hit the room like a physical blow. The color drained from Kian’s face. His rigid posture suddenly looked fragile.
“What did you say?” he whispered.
“Farrah Watts,” Carmen repeated, enunciating every syllable. “I hear her treatment in Switzerland went well. She’s coming back to New York next week.”
Kian’s breathing became shallow. “Leave her out of this.”
“I’m not the one who brought her into it,” Carmen said. “You did. You keep her hidden away like a dirty secret, but we both know she’s the only thing you actually care about.”
“Shut up.” Kian’s voice trembled.
“Imagine the headlines, Kian,” Carmen continued, her voice soft but merciless. “‘Morrison Heir’s Mistress Hospitalized by Wife.’ ‘Trust Fund Battle Exposes Secret Love Nest.’ ‘Farrah Watts Returns to a Scandal.’ How long do you think she’ll stay with you when the paparazzi are camped outside her door?”
Kian slammed his fist on the desk. “I will kill you before I let you touch her.”
“You already tried that last night,” Carmen shot back, pointing to the bandage on her head. “Or did you forget that part already?”
Kian stared at her, his chest heaving. He looked like a cornered animal.
“Sign the paper,” Carmen said. “Give me my half of the trust. I will disappear. You will never hear my name again. Farrah will never be bothered. Your precious company stock won’t tank.”
She pushed the pen toward him.
Kian looked at the document. He looked at the pen. His face twisted with a mixture of rage and defeat.
He grabbed the pen. He ripped the cap off. He scrawled his signature across the bottom of the page, the pen scratching deeply into the wood beneath the paper.
“Get out,” he snarled, throwing the pen across the room. “Get out of my building.”
Carmen picked up her copy of the agreement. She folded it neatly and placed it in her bag.
She didn’t say goodbye. She turned and walked out the door.
Behind her, she heard the crash of the monitor being swept off the desk, followed by the shatter of glass. Kian was screaming, a raw, animalistic sound of pure fury.
Carmen closed the office door behind her, muting the chaos. She walked past Marcus, who was staring at her with his mouth open.
She stepped into the elevator. As the doors slid shut, she finally let herself breathe. She had won. It was over.