His Greatest Regret
Tarik Bennett has everything a man could dream of—wealth, power, and a thriving real estate empire. But while he builds skyscrapers, he fails to build a home. Consumed by work and haunted by a past love, he neglects his wife, Sophia, and their three-year-old son, Malik, whose fragile health demands a father’s presence more than money.
When Malik suffers a life-threatening asthma attack and Tarik cannot be reached, Sophia realizes she can no longer wait for the man she married to become the husband and father they deserve. She files for divorce and walks away, unknowingly carrying Tarik’s unborn child.
Years later, Sophia returns as a successful architect and business strategist, no longer the woman who begged for love. Meanwhile, Tarik’s company is on the brink of collapse after a trusted executive secretly orchestrates a corporate conspiracy from within. Forced back into each other’s lives, Sophia and Tarik must work together to save the company and the livelihoods of thousands.
As Tarik fights to expose the betrayal, win back his children’s trust, and prove he has truly changed, Sophia must decide whether some broken foundations can ever be rebuilt—or whether love lost is gone forever.
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Chapter: CHAPTER 6SOPHIA“He’s going to be here, right?” Malik asks for the third time, standing on his tiptoes to see out the front window, his small palms pressed flat against the glass.“He promised, baby,” I say it with more confidence than I feel, sliding the sweet potatoes into the oven. Tarik called this morning, actually called instead of texting, and told me he’d cleared his afternoon. I’ll be there by four. I promise, Sophia. This one I mean.I check the clock. Four-thirty.By five, Malik has stopped standing at the window and started asking me every ten minutes if Daddy’s car is the one pulling up outside. It never is.By six, we sit down to eat without him. My mother says grace, and when she gets to the part about family, I watch Malik glance at the empty chair beside me and then quickly look down at his plate, like he’s embarrassed for noticing it too.“He’s just working,” Malik says quietly, to no one in particular, pushing a piece of turkey around his plate. “He lives at work.”My mother
Last Updated: 2026-08-18
Chapter: Chapter 5SOPHIAThe classroom smells like syrup and construction paper, little chairs arranged in a circle, a table of fathers and grandmothers and one grandfather balancing a mug of coffee too big for the tiny cup holders built into his chair. Malik sits beside me in the dinosaur shirt he picked out himself, and every few minutes he twists around to check the door.“He said he’d try,” Malik tells the boy next to him, matter-of-fact, the way he explains things he’s already decided to believe.Miss Renee starts the story circle at nine-fifteen. Malik keeps his eyes on the door through the whole book, distracted enough that he misses his turn to answer her question about the caterpillar, and when she gently redirects him, he apologizes like it’s his fault for not paying attention.By nine-forty, the other fathers are down on the rug with their kids, building block towers, and Malik has stopped checking the door. He doesn’t say anything about it. He just leans into my side a little more than usua
Last Updated: 2026-08-13
Chapter: Chapter 4TARIKThe conference room on thirty-eight is full by ten, associates and senior partners packed around the table for the Hendricks Tower kickoff, and I’m at the head of it walking the room through phase one of the build. It’s the kind of morning I used to live for — the room hanging on every word, every question landing exactly where I want it to.“You’ve got it all, man,” Greg says afterward, clapping me on the back as the room clears out. Greg’s been at the firm almost as long as I have, VP of client relations, the kind of guy who says exactly what everyone else is thinking. “Biggest deal of the year, beautiful wife, great kid at home. You’re living the dream, Tarik. The perfect life.”I smile. I don’t correct him.It’s easier not to.My phone buzzes against the table — three, then four times in a row. Sophia. I glance at the preview without opening it. Malik loved the gifts. Thank you for remembering, even late. Then, a minute later: He wants to know when you’re coming home tonight
Last Updated: 2026-08-08
Chapter: Chapter 3SOPHIAThe elevator doors close and I let myself breathe out, slow, the way I’ve taught myself to do so I don’t fall apart in public. Two years of this. Two years of walking into rooms hoping something will be different and walking out with the same answer dressed in different clothes.I still remember the night it started—really started, before the diagnosis had a name.Malik had a cold for two days. Nothing unusual, a runny nose, a low fever that Tylenol handled fine. I put him down that night the way I always did, sang the same two lines of the same lullaby until his eyes went heavy, and told myself he’d wake up better by morning.Instead I woke up to the baby monitor.A whistling sound, thin and rattling, like someone trying to breathe through a straw that had been stepped on. I was down the hall and in his room before I fully understood I was moving, and Malik was sitting up in his crib, chest heaving, his small ribs pulling in with every breath like something was reaching inside
Last Updated: 2026-08-08
Chapter: Chapter 2TARIIKThe corner office on the fortieth floor looks out over Manhattan like it belongs to me—because it does now. Floor-to-ceiling windows, a mahogany desk that used to be my father’s, the Bennett & Stone logo etched into the glass door behind me in gold lettering. My father built this firm from nothing. I’ve spent the last six years making sure it doesn’t die with him.I lean back in my chair, tie loosened, sleeves rolled to the forearm, and turn the small silver frame over in my hand. Elena. Twenty-six in the photo, laughing at something off-camera, sunlight catching the gold in her brown hair. I keep it in my desk drawer, not on the desk itself—Sophia doesn’t need another reason to look at me like that. I only take it out when the office empties and the building goes quiet like this, when there’s nothing left to perform for anyone.Elena and I were supposed to build something together. Different plans, different clients, the same late nights at the drafting table, arguing over sig
Last Updated: 2026-08-08
Chapter: Chapter 1TARIKThe ballroom of the Peninsula glitters gold under a dozen chandeliers, and I stand near the bar with a glass of champagne I haven’t touched. Around me, men in tailored suits and women in cocktail dresses cluster in small groups, all of them here because of the deal I closed three hours ago. The Hendricks Tower. Four hundred million dollars, my name on the blueprints, my firm’s name about to be on every real estate blog in the city by morning.“Tarik Bennett.” A hand claps my shoulder. Richard Hale, the lead investor, grins at me like I’ve handed him a winning lottery ticket. “You just made me a very happy man.”“That was the goal.” I shake his hand, easy, confident. This is the part I’m good at.“I’ve been in this business for thirty years. I don’t say this often.” He leans in. “You’re going to run this city one day.”My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket. Sophia’s name lights up the screen. I silence it without looking twice and slide it back into my pocket. Whatever it is, it ca
Last Updated: 2026-08-08
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