After Three Losses, I Stopped Looking Back Chapter 06

After Three Losses, I Stopped Looking Back Chapter 06

“Oh my God — those are annulment papers. Julian and Clara? They actually signed them?!”

“What the hell is going on? If the marriage is already annulled, what was tonight supposed to be?”

“Wait — there’s an abortion report too. Look at the date. That’s the day after he walked out on the first wedding.”

“Holy shit.”

The crowd below buzzed with shock. Onstage, Julian stood frozen, his eyes locked on the screen, reddening with every second.

Annulled. When the hell did he sign annulment papers? How did he not know?

And the baby. Clara had been pregnant. She never told him.

Why would she— His vision tunneled. The floor swayed under him.

Before he could steady himself, the screen crackled again. A video this time.

Julian’s breath stopped. Hospital surveillance footage — the ICU — and the woman in the bed was his grandmother. The grandmother who’d died five years ago.

Below the stage, Audrey’s face went white. She lunged forward, shoving through the crowd, scrambling onto the platform.

“Shut it off! Somebody shut it off!”

No one moved. The footage kept rolling.

The timestamp showed it was recorded an hour before the official time of death. Audrey pushed open the ICU door, and her voice filled the banquet hall.

“You miserable old woman — you’re on your deathbed and you still had to use your last breath to try to keep Julian away from me?”

“Fine. Then let me help you along.”

Julian watched — jaw slack, eyes burning — as the woman on the screen reached over and pulled the oxygen mask off his grandmother’s face. She didn’t put it back until the heart monitor flatlined. Then she walked out.

The screen went black. The silence that followed was suffocating — broken only by the sound of someone in the crowd choking back a sob.

Audrey’s mind was unraveling. She’d paid off the hospital security years ago to wipe every second of that footage. It should have been gone. How was it here?

But that wasn’t the worst part. She looked up at Julian, and the expression on his face made her entire body seize. She had never seen him like this.

“Julian, let me explain — that video, it’s not what it—”

His palm cracked across her face before she could finish. The sound echoed through the hall. Audrey hit the ground, screaming, her cheek already swelling.

Tears streaked down her face. “Julian!”

She scrambled to her knees and grabbed at his pant leg. “I didn’t mean to — I was scared, I panicked — you understand that, right? You’ve always understood — You forgave me for what happened to Clara’s father! This isn’t any different!”

Julian went still. She was right.

He’d stood in front of Clara and told her to accept it. To understand. He closed his eyes, and the weight of what he’d done pressed down on him like something physical.

He kicked her away, sending her sprawling.

“Get out.”

Real terror flooded Audrey’s face for the first time. Julian’s love was the only thing she’d ever had. His money, his protection, his blind devotion — all of it gone the second that footage played.

Julian’s chest heaved. His whole body was shaking. “Call the police.”

Every drop of color left Audrey’s face. *Julian — you don’t mean that.”

She scrambled to her feet. “I didn’t mean it! I can’t go to prison — Julian, please!”

She bolted for the exit. Julian stood motionless, watching the bodyguards drag her back.

And standing there, in that ruined hall, it finally hit him — everything he’d done, and everything it had cost.

This grand do-over ended worse than the first attempt.

The guests filed out in silence. Julian walked to the bridal suite. The gown he’d had made for her — hand-stitched, flown in from Italy — had been shredded. Every seam ripped apart.

He knew Clara had orchestrated all of it. And he knew she was already gone.

Julian didn’t remember leaving the estate. He walked into the apartment he hadn’t seen in weeks and stopped in the doorway.

Everything Clara had ever owned was gone. Not a single trace of her remained. The original annulment papers and the abortion report sat on the coffee table, perfectly centered, waiting for him.

He sank onto the couch and stared at them. His face held nothing — just emptiness.

He didn’t move. Hours passed — darkness giving way to gray light through the windows — and still he sat there, eyes bloodshot, unblinking.

He called Clara. Again and again and again. Every time, the same automated voice: “The number you have reached is no longer in service…”

She was gone. And she didn’t want to be found.

A thought hit him. He called HR. “Did Clara Hayes submit a resignation?”

“Yes, sir. Weeks ago. You signed off on it yourself.”

Julian hung up. The contracts from that day — the stack she’d handed him with that calm, steady face — flooded back.

He laughed.

His whole body shook with it, but his eyes were burning. “You were already gone, weren’t you? Right there in front of me, and I didn’t even see it.”

The tears hit the back of his hands before he realized he was crying. His fingers curled inward, and the truth settled into his bones — he’d lost her. The way she’d lost him a long time ago.

The apartment was unbearable. Too quiet. Too empty.

Clara had loved plushies — the apartment used to be full of them, scattered across every surface. She’d insisted on matching everything — towels, toothbrushes, slippers. His and hers.

Julian had never been sentimental. Not once in his life. But he’d never stopped her. If anything, he’d let her do whatever she wanted — and somewhere along the way, he’d started to like it.

His mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

Five years. He’d been in love with her for five years and hadn’t had the guts to admit it — not even to himself. What he’d felt for Audrey was never love. It was pride. Unfinished business. The refusal to accept that someone had walked away from him first.

The apartment went dark around him. Julian sat with his head bowed, hollowed out, with nothing inside him left worth saving.