His Regret, Her Vengeance

Quinn Miller ruled Sutherton as its most infamous bad girl. At eighteen, she had her father thrown in prison. The next year, she had her stepmother arrested right behind him. By twenty, she had cut ties with her father's family and taken her mother's maiden name. Brash, reckless, and proud of it, whispers claimed she had slept with every A-list male model in the city. Her reputation was so toxic that men steered clear of her like the plague, terrified that even being seen with her would spell their ruin. Yet Ethan Bennett laughed in the face of her reputation. He pursued her with a relentless, almost obsessive determination. When no one remembered her birthday, he lit up the night with fireworks and hired hundreds to film birthday messages, blanketing every screen in the busiest parts of the city. When rivals spread vile rumors about her, he dug up every dirty secret they had, tanked their stocks, and left them gasping on the brink of bankruptcy. The moment she glanced at a limited edition sports car, he had it delivered to her doorstep before she could even blink. But no matter what he did, Quinn remained frozen solid, like a glacier that refused to melt. Then, three years ago, the Carter family stole her mother's keepsakes. That night, Ethan crashed the Carter family's gates with a dozen men, hell bent on revenge, and reclaimed what was hers. Blood dripped from his knuckles, yet he stood there grinning like a madman. And in that moment, the ice around her heart finally cracked. For the first time, she reached for him. Her arms wrapped around his neck, clumsy but real. It was a first embrace, a first spark of something terrifyingly unfamiliar. Bit by bit, she shed her vicious socialite act. No more drowning in neon-lit clubs. Instead, she found herself longing for home, for the one light he kept glowing just for her. She had believed, at long last, that one of those countless glowing windows truly belonged to her—until the moment she accidentally stumbled into Ethan's hidden room. Her heart lurched as she discovered a woman lying motionless on the bed. The woman's face was ghostly pale, her body wasted away to skin and bones. Quinn's legs buckled, sending her collapsing to the floor as overwhelming shock swallowed her whole. Who was she? Why was she here? What was her connection to Ethan? Questions stormed through her mind when suddenly, hurried footsteps pounded outside the door. Quinn flinched violently, instinctively scrambling beneath the bed and clamping a hand over her mouth. The man flicked a switch. The room, once pitch black, blazed to life, revealing that the wall opposite the bed had transformed into a clear window, framing the very bedroom she shared with Ethan. Quinn's mind went blank, her veins turning to ice. Before she could process the horror, his voice—hoarse and broken, unlike anything she had ever heard—cut through the silence. "Vivian, the doctors said you need stimulation to wake up. For three years, I've lost myself in passion with Quinn every night, and still, you show no sign of coming back to me." His voice cracked. The unbreakable man she knew now sounded shattered. "Do you really not care? How can you lie there unmoving while another woman cries out beneath me? Vivian, what else can I do?" The Ethan in her memory was the merciless tycoon of Sutherton, a man who clawed his way through every obstacle, both revered and feared. But the man before her now, with his eyes bloodshot and voice trembling, looked like a lost child, abandoned and helpless, utterly alone in the world. Quinn suddenly remembered how he had pinned her against the wall, taking her relentlessly. He had stripped her bare, left her naked and writhing, moaning shamelessly before another woman's lifeless body. Every gasp, every rough thrust, had been a calculated performance, not a single moment meant for her. He had only been using her—a tool to rouse another woman from her slumber. Shame and despair coiled around her like a noose. 'I'm suffocating.' Her nails dug into her palms, drawing blood. To silence the scream rising inside her, she bit down on her arm until blood welled up. The heart he had spent three years warming froze over in a heartbeat. The room plunged into silence thick as a grave. Half an hour later, he left. As his figure disappeared, Quinn clenched her teeth until blood drowned her sob. She staggered up, snatching her coat to cover herself. Her gaze swept over every trace of him, every memory like shards of glass behind her eyelids, each more nauseating than the last. Her fingers sticky with her own blood, she let out a broken chuckle. Wrenching open a drawer, she grabbed a lighter and set a sheet of paper ablaze. With deadly aim, she hurled it onto the bed that had borne three years of lies, watching as the flames consumed every last shred of her shame in a single gulp.