Future Him Warned Him About My Unhinged Side Chapter 09

Future Him Warned Him About My Unhinged Side Chapter 09

Ever since he left California, Ethan Vance had been entirely haunted by the memory of that phone call from a decade away. He desperately wanted to dial that number just one more time.

If that future truly existed, he needed to ask his older self a single question.

Was it the horror of Sienna being burned alive by Chloe that was supposed to leave him drowning in regret, or was it the sheer agony of losing Chloe that had shattered his soul?

He could no longer find the answer.

When he returned to the Greenwood Estate, the house felt overwhelmingly hollow, stripped of Chloe’s presence and left entirely freezing and stagnant.

Memories bombarded him at every turn—Chloe in the kitchen cooking his favorite ribeye steak and clam chowder, Chloe meticulously preparing his breakfast every single morning, Chloe brewing a fresh cup of hot coffee whenever he logged grueling hours late into the night, and Chloe pouring rare bourbon to toast his success whenever he secured a major corporate acquisition.

The entire estate was heavily saturated with their history. Yet, when she was actually standing right in front of him, he had dismissed her devotion as nothing but an exhausting nuisance.

Now that she had completely vanished, a gaping, irreversible void had been carved straight out of his chest.

He hurled himself into a manic, unhinged work routine, desperately trying to use corporate chaos to numb his mind. But the harder he pushed himself, the more vividly Chloe’s silhouette materialized in his thoughts.

Desperate, he fell into severe alcoholism, regularly drinking himself into a total stupor. He would stumble through the empty, cavernous rooms of the estate, slurring his speech as he whispered Chloe’s name to the dark.

Initially, Sienna had remained at the Willow Creek Sanatorium, waiting for him inside the custom-built sanctuary he had created for her. But as his absences grew longer, she eventually packed her things and moved directly into the Greenwood Estate.

At first, a bitter Ethan had projectively blamed her for Chloe’s departure, subjecting her to an icy, volatile barrage of silent treatments and biting remarks.

But as the alcohol systematically eroded his sanity, his vision blurred. In his drunken delirium, he began to hallucinate, mistaking Sienna for Chloe. He would wrap his arms around her, weeping uncontrollably as he bared his pathetic, suffocating remorse.

Though Sienna secretly seethed with an intense, burning resentment, Ethan’s guilt made him extraordinarily transactional; every time he used her as a proxy for Chloe, he would shower her with astronomical material compensations and lavish gifts the following morning.

For a brief, unsettling second, she actually found herself empathizing with the Chloe of the past. To be looked at with such complete, hollow indifference by the man you love was a torturous, degrading experience.

As the days bled together, Ethan’s moments of genuine sobriety dwindled to almost nothing.

Predictably, Vance Global could no longer sustain the hemorrhage. Following a brutal, high-stakes corporate bidding war, the core infrastructure of the Vance empire was systematically swallowed up by a powerful, titan-class overseas investment firm.

When a completely hollowed-out Ethan finally signed the final equity transfer agreement in the boardroom, he lifted his eyes to face the acquiring firm’s principal representative. In that exact instant, his entire body went entirely rigid.

Standing directly across from him was Chloe.

She was dressed in an immaculately tailored black executive skirt suit. Her dark hair was swept up into an elegant, precise twist, her features framed by a delicate layer of cosmetics.

Her gaze was sharp, piercing, and thoroughly unbothered—exuding the absolute aura of a brilliant, elite corporate shark.

She was no longer that fragile little girl whose heart would skip a beat over a single word from him. Nor was she the unhinged, hysterical woman who would climb onto a rooftop ledge whenever he threatened to walk away.

She was CEO Reynolds, a legendary, formidable titan within the international business community.

For a decade, Ethan had been deeply intoxicated by the feeling of her looking up at him with absolute reverence. But in this boardroom, for the first time in his entire life, he was the one forced to look up at her.

“Mr. Vance, a pleasure doing business with you,” Chloe said, extending her hand. Her tone was entirely flat, and her eyes held not a single ripple of emotion. She spoke to him exactly how she would address any standard, insignificant corporate client.

Ethan stared blankly at her extended hand. That exact hand—the one he had held, caressed, and kissed thousands of times throughout their marriage—now radiated a terrifying, clinical detachment.

With trembling fingers, he reached out, his skin briefly grazing her fingertips before he recoiled sharply, as if he’d been hit by a violent electrical jolt.

“Chloe…” he choked out, his throat so incredibly parched the syllables barely formed.

Chloe delivered a concise, professional nod. Withdrawing her hand smoothly, she turned to murmur a few rapid executive directives to her assistant, preparing to exit the boardroom.

“Chloe!”

Ethan erupted, losing every ounce of his executive composure. He lunged across the floor, throwing his body directly into her path to cut off her exit.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?!”