Chapter 2 - The Empire of Regret
Julian stood in the center of the penthouse,
the air feeling cold,
and stagnant.
The silence was a physical weight,
pressing against his chest,
as he looked at the empty walls.
Audrey’s things were gone,
every trace of her scent,
every book she had read,
every memory she had planted.
He walked into the kitchen,
seeing the anniversary card,
lying face down on the counter.
To another five years... and all the years after.
The words were a jagged blade,
tearing through his arrogance,
reminding him of what he had traded.
He had called her a thousand times,
leaving messages that grew,
from angry,
to desperate,
to broken.
Madison had tried to come over,
wearing her best perfume,
and her most sympathetic smile.
He had told her to leave,
his voice a low snarl,
realizing that she was just a mirror,
of his own vanity.
She wasn't Audrey,
she didn't know how he liked his coffee,
or how he couldn't sleep,
when the moon was too bright.
He hired private investigators,
men with expensive suits,
and cold eyes.
"Find her,"
he commanded,
throwing a stack of cash on the table.
They searched Chicago,
they searched New York,
they tracked her family,
but found only closed doors.
His mother visited him,
sitting on the designer sofa,
sipping tea as if nothing had happened.
"She was always too sensitive,
Julian,"
she said,
adjusting her pearls.
"A man in your position needs a partner,
not a liability."
He looked at his mother,
seeing the same emptiness in her eyes,
that he now saw in his own.
"She wasn't a liability,"
he whispered,
"she was the only real thing I had."
He threw himself into work,
building hotels in London,
and Dubai,
and Tokyo.
He became richer,
more powerful,
more feared in the boardroom.
But every time he signed a contract,
he looked for her signature,
in the margins of his life.
He stopped drinking,
because the alcohol only brought,
visions of her standing in the office,
whispering those three words.
I saw you.
They haunted his dreams,
a mantra of his failure,
a soundtrack to his loneliness.
He kept her last photograph,
in the top drawer of his desk,
the one where she was laughing,
on a beach in Malibu.
Her hair was messy,
her skin was tan,
and her eyes were full of light.
He realized then,
that he had been a thief,
stealing her time,
and her joy,
giving her only diamonds in return.
He would have given every billion,
just to see her shadow,
crossing the hallway one more time.
But the world was vast,
and she was gone,
hidden in the folds of a life,
he no longer understood.
He began to hate the success,
the Foster Meridian brand,
the empire he had built,
on the ruins of his home.
He was a king of nothing,
sitting on a throne of glass,
May you like
waiting for a woman,
who had asked him not to look.
