A Decade’s Betrayal Chapter 12

A Decade’s Betrayal Chapter 12

Lucian’s POV

It was only at Jessica’s wedding that I suddenly realized I had lost the woman I loved most.

That day, I went to her wedding banquet with the intention of stopping it.

I was so certain that as long as I showed up, Jessica would not marry him.

I stood there at the venue and saw her in her wedding dress.

She was drinking with the elders of her family.

She smiled brightly as she leaned into Christopher’s arms, laughing freely with the women from the village.

In that moment, I understood that I no longer had any chance at all.

Jessica had made her choice. She had embraced a freedom that belonged to her.

In truth, I had always known what she endured.

I even knew about Victoria’s feelings for me.

Yet I allowed everything to happen. I even indulged Victoria from time to time.

I told myself I was testing her.

Testing whether Jessica truly meant it when she said she would never leave me for the rest of her life.

But it was only after Jessica completely walked out of my life that I understood the truth.

I wasn’t testing anything.

I had simply lost my greatest love.

I will never forget the time I ran into Jessica in the elevator.

She was so vivid and alive. Even with dozens of cups of coffee in her hands, she didn’t complain once.

I grew up in a powerful family.

I had seen countless internal battles, brothers turning against each other, even mothers and sons

maintaining affection only through benefits.

I could never understand how someone could live as carefree as Jessica did.

She had no money.

Her father died young.

Even her college tuition came from student loans and financial aid.

Her mother was nothing more than a woman who altered pant legs by the roadside.

Yet she never once complained about life.

Perhaps it was because of that strange fascination that I chose to pursue her.

And just as I expected, under my sweet words and careful advances, she fell for me in less than half a year.

I truly enjoyed living with her.

Her thoughts were simple. She never asked me for anything.

Even while living in my luxury villa at Willow Estate, she insisted on using the most basic, inexpensive daily

necessities.

I thought she simply had never seen fine things, so I had Victoria arrange everything for her.

I know I am dark at heart.

I wanted to destroy all her purity and innocence, to turn her into a puppet driven by money and benefits just

like me.

But Jessica didn’t bend. She held firmly to her own principles.

I have never been the kind of man who gives up once I set a goal.

So I told her that if she became operations manager, I would marry her.

Jessica believed me.

She began working herself to exhaustion, staying late, chasing performance numbers.

Watching her like that made me happy.

See, I’d tell myself, she’s no different.

The manager title, the marriage promise–it was all just a bid for a piece of my gilded world.

The marriage she dreamed of was never on the table.

My union was always meant to be a merger, an alliance.

I kept her close because I hadn’t yet closed a deal that offered sufficient… strategic advantage.

So time and again, I crushed her determination to stand by my side.

And I was confident.

After ten years under my influence, how could Jessica possibly leave me?

Once accustomed to the… privileges I provided, how could she ever settle for less?

But I forgot one thing.

Jessica was still Jessica.

When she loved, she loved like a moth flying into a flame.

But once she no longer loved me, I became nothing more than trash on the ground.

So when I saw her Wedding Invitation, panic surged violently into my chest.

That thin piece of paper shattered all my confidence and destroyed the entire framework of my values.

I finally understood at that moment.

I had never succeeded in reshaping Jessica.

Instead, after ten years of her companionship, I was the one who could no longer live without her.

It was never me choosing Jessica.

It was Jessica who chose me.

After leaving her wedding, I collapsed in the car.

It wasn’t my body that failed.

It was my psyche, crumbling under the weight of its own design.

I was diagnosed with severe depression, already showing physical symptoms.

How ridiculous it was. I had money, looks, and ability.

Yet I lived constantly in pain.

I once had a cure. Jessica Miller.

But now, even that one medicine capable of saving me was something I destroyed with my own hands.

I am left with the perfect, desolate symmetry I engineered–a gilded cage of my own making, and an eternity to contemplate its emptiness.