REGINA MCBRIDE
11 Published Stories
REGINA MCBRIDE's Books and Stories
The Scars She Hid From The World
Modern The heavy iron gates of the Wilderness Correction Camp groaned as they released me after three years of state-sponsored hell. I stood on the dirt road, clutching a plastic bag that held my entire life, waiting for the family that claimed they sent me there for "rehab."
My brother, Brady, picked me up in a luxury SUV only to throw me out onto a deserted highway in the middle of a brewing storm. He told me I was a "public relations nightmare" and that the rain might finally wash the "stink" of the camp off me. He drove away, leaving me to limp miles through the mud on a snapped ankle.
When I finally dragged myself to our family estate, my mother didn't offer a hug; she gasped in horror because my muddy clothes were ruining her Italian marble. They didn't give me my old room back. Instead, they banished me to a moldy gardener's shack and hired a "babysitter" to make sure I didn't embarrass them further. My sister, Kaleigh, stood there in white cashmere, pretending to cry while clinging to her fiancé, Ambrose-the man who had once been mine.
They all treated me like a volatile junkie, refusing to acknowledge that Kaleigh was the one who planted the drugs in my bag three years ago. They wanted to believe I was broken so they wouldn't have to feel guilty about the "wellness retreat" that was actually a torture chamber.
I sat in the dark of that shed, feeling the cooling gel on the cigarette burns that covered my arms, and realized they had made a fatal mistake. They thought they had erased me, but I had returned with a roadmap of scars and a hidden satellite phone.
At dinner, I didn't beg for their love. I simply rolled up my sleeves and showed them the price of their silence. As the wine spilled and the lies crumbled, I sent a single text to the only person I trusted: "I'm in. Let them simmer." The hunt was finally on. Ruthless Tycoon: Protecting My Contract Wife
Romance Amira worked grueling shifts to pay for her NYU tuition, only to return home and hear her parents plotting her ruin.
Her mother decided to force her to drop out and marry a creepy, fifty-year-old man for a $50,000 dowry, just to secure her brother's future.
When Amira refused and fled into the freezing rain for help, her wealthy best friend maliciously framed her for having underground gambling debts.
Her boyfriend Angelo believed the lies, looked at her dripping wet figure with pure disgust, and dumped her on the spot.
Cornered, Amira returned to pack her bags, only for her mother to lock her inside a sweltering, windowless bedroom for three days without food or water.
Her mother intended to starve her into submission before handing her over to the old man.
As her fever spiked and her throat bled, Amira felt the crushing weight of utter despair.
She couldn't understand why her own blood treated her like disposable livestock, while the people she loved threw her to the wolves.
But what her greedy family didn't know was that the night before, a desperate Amira had gone to her reclusive, billionaire boss and signed a marriage contract.
Just as she was about to die on that floor, the heavy padlock was smashed open by men in expensive suits.
"If you ever come near Mrs. Shaw again, I will make you beg for death."
Amira was done crying, and it was time to make them all pay. Woke Up Engaged To My Rival
Romance I spent seven years as the secret benefactor of the man I loved, waiting for the day he would finally acknowledge our relationship. I traded my sharp business suits for a soft silk dress, ready to tell the world that the brilliant artist Andre Wilcox was finally mine.
But at our anniversary dinner, the truth hit harder than any corporate betrayal. I sat inches away, hidden by a partition, as Andre laughed with his ex-girlfriend. He called me a "suffocating burden" and a "checkbook with legs" that he only tolerated until he became famous.
Devastated and drowning in vodka, I stumbled into a nightclub and ran straight into Charls Wiley, my most hated business rival. In a haze of pain and alcohol, I clung to his expensive suit while paparazzi cameras flashed, sobbing that I loved him and begging him not to leave me. He swept me into his arms to escape the scandal, but our getaway ended in a horrific car crash that left us both buried in shattered glass.
When I woke up in a hospital suite, the trauma had wiped my memory clean. My brain, unable to process Andre’s cruelty, filled the gaps with the only man who was there when the world went dark.
"Charls, darling, you're hurt," I whispered, looking at my sworn enemy with pure, unfiltered adoration.
I truly believe the man who tried to destroy my company is my devoted fiancé. My mother and Charls quickly realized that a fake engagement could save our stock prices and seal a fifty-million-dollar merger, so they decided to let the lie live.
Now, I’m recovering in the arms of a shark, calling my nemesis "Hubby" while he waits for my memory to return so he can finish the war he started. Wedding Day Humiliation: A Love Lost
Romance The wedding music had been looping for over an hour.
Everyone was looking at me, standing alone on the stage under the ridiculously expensive floral arch.
My fiancée, Sophia Reed, was absent on our wedding day.
My phone buzzed. It was a video call from Sophia.
A wave of relief washed over me. Her face would pop up, she' d apologize, and the party could continue.
But it wasn' t her face that filled the giant screen.
It was a scandalous scene, broadcast in high definition for hundreds of our closest friends and business associates.
A smug man' s voice asked, "Am I better than Ethan Miller?"
Then Sophia' s voice, breathless, replied, "Liam, you' re so much better."
A collective gasp sucked the air out of the room. My smile froze.
My brain kicked into overdrive. I calmly activated the screen recording function.
The crowd erupted, phones out, filming the spectacle. Sophia' s family stormed towards me.
Her father yelled, "Ethan Miller, turn off your phone!"
"Mr. Reed, what' s the point?" I asked, gesturing to the sea of phones. "Everyone' s already seen what they shouldn' t. My reputation is ruined. The wedding is a joke. So let them see it all. Let them see I' m the victim. That' s the best way to salvage my image now."
Despite everything, I found myself handing him his emergency heart medication.
I, Ethan Miller, the self-made man, who had endured so much for their family, including agreeing to marry Sophia despite knowing her secrets, was now publicly humiliated.
But then, the unbelievable happened.
"It' s fake!" she blurted out, her voice trembling. "It' s all fake! It's makeup! Even the video… it was pre-made AI footage. It wasn' t me…!"
My mind, usually so quick and decisive, short-circuited.
Why would she do this? Why orchestrate such an elaborate, humiliating lie?
I knew then that I had to find out. Betrayed By Love, Rebuilt By Fate
Modern The award felt heavy in my hands, a testament to my genius as Ava Monroe, the best structural architect in the business.
But the triumph was short-lived.
Overnight, the newly completed Olympia Skyscraper collapsed, and suddenly my stepsister, Chloe Vance, was on every news channel, her face a mask of tragic sorrow.
"I had a vision. A premonition of the collapse," she declared, looking directly into the camera, her eyes seeming to find mine. "I tried to warn Ava Monroe. But she did nothing. She said she needed to wait. To let the problem get worse so her firm could charge a higher fee to fix it. It was about the money."
The world stopped.
My firm fired me, Liam, my fiancé, abandoned me, and my father, Mr. Monroe, disowned me, siding with Chloe.
My mother' s memorial garden was vandalized; the cornerstone, a piece of my heart, ripped out and thrown into the river.
I dove in, desperate to get it back, but the current dragged me under, the cold despair a crushing weight.
Then I gasped, sucking in clean, dry air.
I was in my bed, sunlight streaming through the window.
It was the morning of the collapse, before the accusations, before my world ended.
This time, it would be different. A Second Chance, Fall In Love Again
Romance The sharp pain in my head was nothing compared to my stepsister Sarah' s screams.
My fiancé, Liam, already by her side, shot me a look of pure accusation: "Chloe, what the hell did you do?"
Sarah clutched her ankle, twisting her face in agony, then whispered, "She was just… upset that you were holding my hand."
A gentle poison. Liam' s suspicion solidified into certainty, his eyes hardening with disgust as he scooped Sarah into his arms.
"Her ankle looks broken. We can' t carry her and help you walk. You' ll have to wait here."
He abandoned me in the middle of nowhere, my own leg throbbing, my head pounding, leaving me utterly alone with a profound, bottomless despair.
In the hospital, Sarah and her doctor brother, Dr. Evans, casually manipulated Liam, fabricating a diagnosis of a mere bruise for my fractured leg, and suggesting I was "not well."
Liam, blinded by guilt and Sarah' s lies, agreed. The man I loved was gone, replaced by an angry stranger who punished me for a pain he refused to see.
He pushed my wheelchair, demanding an apology, completely ignoring the new, blinding agony ripping through my leg as it jolted.
A dark discoloration rapidly spread from my knee, yet Dr. Evans dismissed it as "just the bruising settling."
They were going to send me to a mental institution. I looked at Liam, then at the ring he tossed to the floor-our future, discarded.
Something within me broke, a cool, clear voice whispering: Let go of this life. I can give you a new one.
I shed my old self, my art, my love for Liam. I was Chloe no more. As I finally walked onto the hospital rooftop, Liam' s scream cut through the air.
He lunged, a desperate, impossible attempt to save me, only to fall with me. The Price of Disownment
Billionaires My father, Rufus Scott, paraded Ethan Lester around our grand ranch, praising him as the "son he always wanted" instead of me, Wesley, his actual son.
I watched from the sidelines as Ethan, my father' s new favorite, subtly poisoned the minds of Scott Oil & Gas board members against me.
Then, in front of our entire wealthy Texas social circle, my own father coldly declared me a disgrace, disowned me, and ordered me thrown off my family' s property.
The humiliation was a physical ache, a public execution of my inheritance, leaving me with nothing but the bitter taste of betrayal.
But just as the security guards moved in, the rhythmic thudding of a helicopter echoed overhead, and a suit-clad man stepped out, changing everything with two words: "MIT admissions." The Billionaire's Divorce Threat
Billionaires I was the CEO of a multi-billion dollar tech corporation, but my wife, Chloe, knew me only as Ethan Miller, a modest app developer.
I cherished the idea that her love for me was pure, untainted by wealth or status, so my true identity remained my closest secret.
That carefully constructed life crashed down when I arrived at Austin' s most exclusive club for a crucial business meeting.
Instead of an empty suite, I found Chloe, encircled by her snobbish friends, her waist possessed by Blake Harrison, a rival who clearly relished my perceived "lowly" status.
Before I could process the scene, her friend Tiffany sneered, "Chloe, darling, is this your… little app developer?"
Then, Chloe herself, face flushed with embarrassment, whispered urgently, "You can't be here. This isn't your world, Ethan. You're embarrassing me." And, louder for the room, "Are you stalking me?"
The accusation hit me like a physical blow.
Me? Stalking her? After all I' d built, all I' d sacrificed for us, she saw me as an embarrassment, someone who couldn't even belong in a fancy club without her.
A cold, hard certainty settled in my gut: She's ashamed of me. Was our entire relationship built on a lie of my own making, or hers?
The pain was sharp, but beneath it, a decisive edge hardened. "Chloe," I stated, my voice flat, cutting through the smug chatter, "I want a divorce."
The room fell silent. Little did they know, this was just the prologue to a truth that would shake their world to its foundations. You might like
The Unwanted Wife's Genius Comeback
Gertrude I flew cross-country for my birthday, hoping for just one night of warmth with my husband and five-year-old daughter.
But when I opened the door, I found my famous hockey star husband and my daughter acting like the perfect family with Dayna, a glamorous sports commentator.
My daughter shrank away from my open arms.
"Mama's boring. She never plays with me. Don't go, Auntie Dayna!"
My husband didn't even look up from his phone to wish me a happy birthday.
He coldly canceled our dinner plans, claiming he had an urgent, last-minute strategy meeting for his team.
Hours later, a TMZ article popped up on my phone, featuring a brutal photo of the three of them sharing a steak at an upscale Manhattan restaurant.
The headline praised Blake's "family dinner with rumored flame Dayna Nixon" and openly wondered where the current Mrs. Carlisle was.
My daughter lied for this, and my husband publicly humiliated me, treating my five years of silent sacrifice like a pathetic, disposable joke.
I didn't cry, and I didn't throw a desperate fit.
Instead, I calmly walked into his study, signed the pre-nuptial divorce agreement he had prepared years ago, and booked a one-way ticket back to Boston.
From now on, I am no longer Mrs. Carlisle. I am Corinne Sargent, and I am taking my life back. Flash Marriage to the Tycoon, I'm Spoiled Rotten
Hollow Echo Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town.
They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done."
Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me."
As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world.
When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?" The Unwanted Wife Is A Zillionaire
Reilly Mcardle For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse.
Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée.
She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm.
"Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital."
As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire.
I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit.
"I'm done with you."
The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies. Married To My Ex-Fiancé's Silent Uncle
Ming Yue Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire.
I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper.
I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he'd dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family's land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock.
I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim.
"If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned.
So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell-the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months.
Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I've suspended Hugh's executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I'm just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout.
But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back. Secretly Extraordinary: I'm The Crown Jewel You Failed To Treasure
Anemic Sun For three years, Allison poured herself into marriage, caring for Henry and their home while he gave her nothing but silence.
When his first love returned, he handed her divorce papers and cast her aside.
Heartbroken, Allison walked away and reclaimed the brilliant life she had buried-becoming a famed jewelry designer, restoration master, and mysterious healer.
Only then did everyone learn Henry's unwanted wife was a hidden genius.
Late one night, he called, begging for another chance.
Before she could answer, a male voice spoke. "Allison, who's that?"
Allison answered aloofly, "Just a scammer." Shattered Vows, My Ex-Wife's Hidden Life Blooms
Blaise Rookwood Ten years as childhood sweethearts, three as his wife - it ended with her husband's affair with her own half-sister, her brothers' cold indifference, and a stage II adenocarcinoma diagnosis. Roselyn finally saw the truth: she had been invisible in a house that was never her home.
She stopped pleading. She hid the divorce agreement inside a stack of business contracts her arrogant husband signed without reading, then extorted the settlement she deserved from her mother-in-law using evidence of offshore fraud. While they assumed she was crumbling, she returned to the AI diagnostics company she had co-founded, stunning the entire engineering team by single-handedly solving a problem that had stalled them for weeks - reclaiming the brilliance she had sacrificed for a man who never valued it.
When they met again, her ex-husband tore up the divorce decree, eyes bloodshot. "I was wrong. Take me back. I'd give you my own stomach if I could." Her brothers, once so dismissive, begged for forgiveness - and for her money. But love that arrives too late is worthless, and she felt nothing. As they pleaded, another man stepped forward, pulled her close, and lifted his shirt with a smirk. "Why waste your time on trash? Look at me instead." 
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