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. One Star Review For My Billionaire Husband
Modern Ella was the eldest daughter of the wealthy Long family, engaged to a prominent heir and trying to survive her stepmother's toxic games.
But at a high-society gala, her stepsister Chloe smiled and handed her a drugged glass of champagne.
To escape the reporters waiting to catch her in a scandal, Ella stumbled into a dark hotel suite and spent the night with a terrifying stranger.
When she returned home, her nightmare truly began. Her stepmother and sister publicly exposed her "ruined" state.
Her fiancé immediately dumped her, proudly stepping out with Chloe and revealing their secret affair.
When Ella begged her father for justice, he slapped her hard across the face.
"Your engagement was a contract you breached. Now you will marry that old, ugly Sinclair to make amends."
When Ella refused, her father played his cruelest card: he threatened to cut off the life-saving medical funds for her dying little brother.
Stripped of her dignity and blackmailed with her brother's life, Ella felt a suffocating despair. How could her own flesh and blood be so ruthlessly evil, treating her like disposable trash while elevating the mistress's daughter?
But what her family didn't know was that the "dying old man" she was forced to marry was actually the dangerous, powerful billionaire she had accidentally slept with that night.
Looking at the terrified faces of her family as her new husband's power cast a shadow over them, a chilling resolve replaced her tears.
From the moment she became Mrs. Sinclair, she would make them pay for everything they did. 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
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. 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. The Humble Ex-wife Is Now A Brilliant Tycoon
Flory Corkery For three quiet, patient years, Christina kept house, only to be coldly discarded by the man she once trusted.
Instead, he paraded a new lover, making her the punchline of every town joke.
Liberated, she honed her long-ignored gifts, astonishing the town with triumph after gleaming triumph.
Upon discovering she'd been a treasure all along, her ex-husband's regret drove him to pursue her. "Honey, let's get back together!"
With a cold smirk, Christina spat, "Fuck off."
A silken-suited mogul slipped an arm around her waist. "She's married to me now. Guards, get him the hell out of here!" Bound To The Disabled Apocalyptic Tycoon
Star Cruiser Jessie's biological parents brought her back from a Rust Belt wasteland just to force her into marrying a paralyzed heir to save their bankrupt empire.
Three years later, when the global doomsday apocalypse hit, her own family shoved her into a swarm of infected corpses.
As she was being torn apart by mutated hounds, she was stunned by what she saw.
Her fake sister, Harley, was clutching the antique silver necklace she had stolen from Jessie—an heirloom that secretly contained a magical spatial dimension.
When the infected swarmed them, her biological mother didn't even look back.
"Jessie is just white trash, she is perfectly suited to buy us time to run!"
Harley used Jessie's stolen necklace to live in absolute safety and luxury, while Jessie's windpipe was ripped out in the rotting wasteland.
Until she died, Jessie didn't understand. She was their true flesh and blood.
Why did her parents hate her so much? Why was she sacrificed so easily while the fake daughter got everything?
Opening her eyes again, the blinding glare of a crystal chandelier stabbed into her retinas.
She was back in the Manhattan penthouse on the exact day they sold her off.
This time, Jessie calmly signed the marriage contract, demanded a one hundred million dollar buyout, and walked out to prepare for the apocalypse. Untouchable After Goodbye: She Had A Secret Empire
Mira Westfield "Let's get a divorce. She's pregnant and deserves a place in my life."
He once promised to protect Claire forever, yet when his first love returned, he cast her aside. For three years, Claire dimmed her brilliance, living quietly as the obedient wife behind him.
When he handed her divorce papers to give his pregnant mistress a place, Claire no longer hid her talents.
The woman he had overlooked was a legendary healer, racing prodigy, and a genius designer. After the divorce, she reclaimed her glory.
When he pleaded, "Honey, let's remarry," another man pulled her close. "She's my wife now. As for you... Someone, take him out and give him what he deserves!" Jilted Heiress: Marrying The Untouchable Tycoon
Piao Guo Allison Montgomery was waiting at the airport when an audio alert from her parked Range Rover flashed on her phone.
Assuming it was a break-in, she checked the live dashcam feed, only to see her fiancé, Finn, and her younger sister, Cheyanne, passionately making out in the backseat.
"Tell me I'm better than her," Cheyanne whispered. "Tell me I'm better than Allison."
"You are," Finn gasped. "God, you are."
When Allison confronted her family with the video, she expected justice.
Instead, her uncle and mother fiercely defended the cheaters.
They blamed Allison's "cold and frigid" nature for pushing Finn away, victim-blaming her in front of the entire household staff.
To protect their corporate alliance, her uncle ruthlessly announced that the engagement would be transferred to Cheyanne, and threatened to strip Allison of her inheritance.
Stripped of her fiancé, her family, and her dignity, Allison realized her pristine twenty-year life was a complete lie.
The people who were supposed to love her were actively protecting her abusers, leaving her utterly isolated and burning with a cold, protective rage.
Refusing to be their victim, Allison targeted Finn's ruthless, billionaire uncle, Adam Kensington, proposing a fake marriage to secure the capital needed to crush her family.
But when the notoriously untouchable Wall Street phantom not only accepted her proposal, but demanded she immediately move into his penthouse to raise his secret daughter, Allison realized she had just sold her soul to the devil. The Jilted Ex-Wife Is A Zillionaire
Felix Turner Isabel returned to her penthouse after a grueling seventeen-hour flight, only to be greeted by the cloying scent of another woman's perfume.
Her husband of three years, Darius, sat waiting with divorce papers. He wanted to marry his mistress, Dove, and offered Isabel a measly one million dollars, treating her like a greedy charity case from the Rust Belt who should just take the payout and vanish.
But Isabel didn't want his pity. She demanded the four percent equity stake in his family's company that she rightfully owned—a stake worth 1.5 billion dollars. When she revealed this, the wealthy family turned vicious. They refused to acknowledge that she had secretly saved their empire from bankruptcy years ago. Instead, Darius and Dove orchestrated a brutal public execution. They ambushed her at a top law firm, spreading malicious lies that her investment money was stolen from a Ponzi scheme. They even hired a fake victim to scream at her in the lobby, successfully terrifying Isabel's lawyer into dropping her case on the spot.
She had quietly rescued their entire legacy, yet they were willing to frame her as a criminal and destroy her life just to keep her rightful billions.
As Darius and his mistress gloated over her absolute ruin, the most ruthless and feared lawyer in New York suddenly stepped in front of Isabel, his voice cutting through the dead silence.
"Your case, I'll take it." Wild Heiress, Tamed Billionaire
王舒 When I called my husband while trapped in a kidnapper's warehouse, he laughed. "Stop faking," he said, "my delicate mistress needs her sleep." He hung up. I signed the divorce papers drenched in my own blood, giving up everything just to escape the monster I married.
His mother threw a broken umbrella at me in the rain. I had nothing-no money, no identity, no hope.
But the moment I turned away, eight black Escalades encircled the street. A man in a tailored suit stepped out of a Rolls-Royce, shielding me with an umbrella. In his hand was a DNA test-and twenty-three years of relentless search.
"Your last name isn't Smith," he said, wiping blood from my wrist with his handkerchief. "It's Wilder. The Wilder family. And the man who left you to die?" He smiled, icy. "He owes us nine billion dollars." Abandoned Ex-Wife: Now Untouchable
Tao Yaoyao My five-year-old daughter was dying in the ICU, her heartbeat replaced by the continuous, electronic scream of a flatline. I gripped her cold hand, my throat sealed shut by a terror so absolute I couldn't even cry out.
I dialed my husband Grayson's private number, the one reserved only for me and his assistants. He declined the call instantly. A second later, a text buzzed against my palm:
"In a meeting. Do not disturb. Stop calling."
Five miles away, Grayson was at a luxury gala, adjusting his silk tie and laughing with Belle Escobar. He told her I was just being "dramatic" and using our daughter's "fever" as an excuse to avoid the event. He had no idea Effie's heart had already stopped.
When I finally reached our penthouse, soaked from the rain and carrying Effie's small socks in a plastic bag, Grayson didn't even look at me. He snapped at me for ruining the hardwood floors and asked if I'd left Effie with the nanny just to "feel sorry for myself."
Three days later, while I buried our daughter in a small, lonely ceremony, Grayson was at the Hamptons. Belle posted a photo of him golfing with the caption: "A mental health day with the boys." He didn't even attend the funeral, but he returned home demanding I clear out Effie's room to make a study for Belle's son.
The injustice burned through me until there was nothing left. I swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, desperate to join my daughter. But instead of the darkness, I woke up to blinding lights and the scent of Grayson's expensive cologne.
I was standing in a ballroom, wearing a blue silk dress I had already burned. Above me, a banner read: "Happy 5th Birthday Kaiden & Effie."
I was back, exactly one year before the tragedy. This time, I wasn't going to be the grieving wife. I was going to be their worst nightmare.