The Billionaire’s Biggest Regret

Chapter 1

Hazel’s POV

The day I came back to Los Angeles, I got into a car accident.

It wasn't serious—a fender, a bruised knee, nothing that would leave a scar—but the paperwork was a nightmare, and by the time I limped out of the hospital I had nothing left in me. My hands were still shaking from the impact when I dialed Bryce Ellington. Three times. He didn't answer once.

On the fourth try, a little girl picked up.

"Uncle Bryce is celebrating my birthday! He got me and Mommy lots of pretty presents, so he's too busy to talk to you."

I froze. I didn't understand until Spencer, Bryce's secretary, came on the line instead, his voice carefully flat.

"Hazel, Mr. Ellington is at Gray's celebrating Layla's birthday. Would you like to come?"

Layla. Madison Burke's daughter. Bryce's late best friend's widow, freshly moved back to the city, and tonight he was throwing her welcome-home party.

I caught my reflection in the car mirror—disheveled, pathetic—and after a long pause I asked which room.

Gray's was an upscale steakhouse in Beverly Hills, and it was already raining early this year, dampening my hair before I'd even reached the door.

My leg screamed with every step across the lobby, but I gritted my teeth and made it to the private room just as a child's voice rose in a wish, sweet enough to break something in my chest before I could even understand why. "I wish that me and Mommy and Uncle Bryce could be together forever! I hope Mommy can marry Uncle Bryce!"

Through the frosted glass I saw them: Bryce and Madison on either side of Layla, the candlelight softening a face I'd never once seen look soft for me. They looked like a family. They were supposed to be one. Bryce and Madison had been the golden couple since high school, torn apart only when the Burkes lost their fortune and Madison married Eric Walker instead, Bryce's own childhood friend, to save them.

And I had simply lucked into being Mrs. Ellington.

"Don't say that, sweetheart," Madison told her daughter. "Uncle Bryce is married."

"But he doesn't like his wife," Layla said. "She's mean and she took him away from us."

Someone inside laughed. "Layla's not wrong. If Hazel hadn't used that life-saving favor to trap him, his mother never would have pushed him into it. He's never even touched her, only told her he believes in a platonic marriage, and she actually believed it. What kind of wife falls for that?"

The words landed like blows, one after another, and I stood frozen in the doorway, forgetting even the pain in my leg. Six years, and he'd never touched me. Six years of a completely platonic marriage, and I'd swallowed it whole, grateful while everyone around him knew the truth. That I was a joke of a wife with a wedding ring my husband hadn’t wanted me to have.

Bryce's eyes finally found me in the doorway. "What are you doing here?"

Everyone in the room turned toward me. I was still a mess from the accident, and their disgust was immediately visible. Someone muttered that I shouldn't have come. But I was Bryce’s wife. His actual wife.

Madison smiled first, looking gracious as ever. "Ms. Westbrook, please join us. Layla, cut her a piece of cake."

I managed a quiet "Happy birthday" and let the girl bring me a slice, until she pulled a small silver cross from her pocket instead, blessed at St. Patrick's, and offered a trade. "You can have this if you give Uncle Bryce back to my mommy."

I knew that cross. Bryce had a bad knee, under strict doctor's orders to stay off it, and he'd stood in that cathedral line for hours anyway, for Madison and her daughter. I was the one who'd iced his knee for a week afterward, filled his prescriptions, and walked him through the exercises.

None of it meant anything to him. I'd spent nights kneeling by his bed with an ice pack, telling myself it counted for something, but clearly, it hadn't counted for anything at all.

I set the cake down without taking the cross, feeling nothing but bitterness settle over me.

"Fine," I said. "I'll give him back to you."

The room went silent. Bryce's brow furrowed. "What’s that supposed to mean?"

"Let's get a divorce."

"Because I'm celebrating Layla's birthday?"

If only it were that simple. It was the unanswered calls. The years of being married to a stranger. A husband who played monk with his own wife and family man with someone else's.

"I don't need a husband who plays house with another woman and her daughter. You'll be hearing from my lawyer.

I turned and walked out before anyone could answer, my heels sharp against the marble, rain droplets from my wet hair dropping on the smooth floor the moment I reached the door.

Behind me, I heard Madison's voice sound low and worried as she mentioned a name I hadn't heard in years—the Sterlings—and asked whether Bryce ought to go after me.

He didn't come.

By morning I understood why. When I came downstairs at the villa, planning to head back to the hospital, I found Layla and Madison already moved in, their numerous suitcases in the hall, as if they never planned on leaving.

Bryce's voice was gentler than I'd heard it in years—for them, never for me. "Layla’s having trouble adjusting. They’ll stay a few days. You're fine with that."

I was fine with whatever he wanted, because I wasn't staying to find out what came next.

Then Layla found my room, and my old bear on the bed—the one Bryce's grandmother Mara had given me—and yanked it up by the ear. "I want this too."

"Put it down,” I said immediately.

Her lip trembled on command, tears summoned like a magic trick, and Bryce frowned at me like I was the unreasonable one. "It's just a bear."

"Until the divorce is final, I'm still Mrs. Ellington," I said, taking it back from her small, furious hands. "And half this house is mine. Your girlfriend and her daughter are only staying because I allow it."

Layla's face went scarlet. "Uncle Bryce said he's going to be our family now! You're the one who doesn't belong here—"

Madison hurried her off with an apology so smooth it barely sounded like one, and I looked at Bryce and named my price before he could soften again. "Give me the Sunnyvale Villa. I'm moving out in a few days. I imagine you don't want the four of us under one roof any more than I do."

His mouth curved in satisfaction like I'd finally proven something to him. That I still needed him and a few days of sulking would end exactly the way it always had. He would sign off on it without a second thought, already certain I'd come crawling back within the month.

He really had no idea what was coming.