All Chapters of THE ALPHA’S REGRET: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

“I can smell it from here!”“How did she not notice?”Leslie’s hand flew to the back of her head. Her fingers touched something wet. Sticky. When she pulled them away, they were brown.No.No no no no no.The cameras flashed brighter. Faster. People were pulling out phones now, recording. She could see the red lights. The sneers. The disgust.“Tony.” Her voice came out as a choke. She turned toward him. “Tony, please.”He was already standing beside her, posing for the photographers. His jaw was tight. His smile was frozen in place.“Tony, please.”“Smile,” he hissed under his breath. His lips barely moved. “Don’t make a scene.”“But I, there’s something.”“I said smile.”A woman in a glittering gold dress stepped closer, her perfume suffocating. “Oh honey,” she cooed, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Did you fall into a toilet before coming here?”The crowd roared with laughter.Leslie felt her face burning. “I don’t, I don’t know what happened.”“Clearly.” The woman wrinkled her n

The voices grew louder downstairs.Her entire body went rigid.Tony was home.And he wasn’t alone.Leslie’s stomach dropped as she recognized the second voice.Catherine. His mother.“Absolutely humiliating,” Catherine was saying. Her voice carried up the stairs like venom. “Do you know how many people saw that?”“I know, Mother.” Tony sounded tired. Annoyed.“Do you? Because right now our family name is attached to a girl who showed up to a charity gala covered in dog shit.”Leslie closed her eyes.“Where is she?” Catherine demanded.“Probably hiding in her room.”“Good. I want to talk to her.”“Mother.”“Now, Tony.”Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy. Purposeful. Angry.Leslie stood up quickly, her heart racing.The footsteps stopped outside her door.A sharp knock. Three times.“Leslie.” Catherine’s voice was ice. “Open this door.”Leslie’s hands were shaking. “I, I’m not dressed.”“I don’t care. Open the door. Now.”Leslie took a breath and unlocked it.The door swung open immediately

The next morning, Leslie woke up to sunlight streaming through her window.For a moment, just a brief, stupid moment, she forgot where she was. Forgot what had happened. Forgot the humiliation and the tears and the crushing weight of everything.Then reality came crashing back.She sat up slowly, her body aching. She hadn’t slept well. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the cameras. The laughter. Victoria’s cruel smile.Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.She picked it up and immediately wished she hadn’t.Social media was exploding. Photos of her from last night, covered in filth, running away, crying, were everywhere. The comments were worse.“Who even is she?”“Tony Blackwell’s wife? More like his charity case lol”“She looks like she crawled out of a dumpster”“I can smell this picture”“Poor girl doesn’t belong in that world”Leslie’s hands shook. She turned off her phone and set it down.She couldn’t look at it anymore.She got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. In the

That night, Leslie lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling.She heard everything.Victoria was not trying to be quiet. That much was clear from the moment Leslie closed her bedroom door. The soft deliberate laughter that drifted through the wall first, low and warm, the kind of laugh shared between two people who have spent years learning exactly what makes the other one smile. Then Tony’s voice, muffled but unmistakably relaxed, the way it never sounded at breakfast or at events or in any room where Leslie was present.Then the silence.Heavy and loaded and full of everything Leslie did not want to imagine.Then Victoria’s moan.Low at first. Slow and unhurried, like she had all the time in the world and wanted everyone within earshot to understand that. Like she was settling into something familiar. Something that belonged to her.Leslie grabbed her phone off the nightstand and shoved her earphones in. She scrolled to a playlist, any playlist, turned the volume up until the music pre

Tony walked in with Catherine’s assistant trailing behind him.“Mother,” Tony said, then noticed Victoria. “Victoria. You’re still here.”“I just got back,” Victoria said quickly. “I was hoping we could have lunch.”“Tony,” Catherine interrupted. “Don’t you have that conference call at two?”Tony looked at his mother. Something passed between them. An understanding that moved without words, the way it always did between them, the private language of two people who had spent years keeping secrets together.“Right,” he said slowly. “The call. I forgot.”Victoria’s smile was strained now. “Maybe later then?”“Maybe,” Tony said. But his tone said no.Victoria stood there for a moment, looking between them. The easy confidence she had walked in with was gone now. She was reading the room the way she always read rooms, scanning for power, for weakness, for any crack she could use. She found none. Catherine’s face was closed. Tony was already looking at his phone.Then she laughed. It was for