After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 33

After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 33

“Sloane, after causing all this, do you not feel a single trace of guilt or regret? Is there no God in your heart?” Noah looked at the woman before him, still sharp-tongued and covered in cheap perfume, and asked a question even he found ridiculous.

“Guilt? Regret?” Sloane looked as if she had heard the funniest joke of the century. “Why should I feel guilty? Noah, we both grew up fighting our way through Boston’s old-money circle. Don’t you know what kind of person I am? You believed whatever I said. Did you really not know how much of it was false?”

She crossed her arms, the contempt in her eyes stabbing him like ice.

“My words just happened to cater to that pathetic little pride inside you. I said them, and you got to pretend you were a hero standing up for me. Noah, from beginning to end, weren’t you only satisfying that damned, vain heroism of yours?”

Noah had been stripped bare by her words and couldn’t answer. He staggered away and walked into Boston’s cold rain.

His heart had been completely broken. But he still wanted to see Ava one more time, even if only to say, “I’m sorry.”

Noah tried to find Ava at her studio, but the professional security team arranged by Elias completely blocked him from her life. The invisible barriers that had once protected him from outside trouble now struck him right between the eyes, becoming a chasm he couldn’t cross.

Finally, during a so-called “security lapse,” he found a chance to slip into the underground parking garage. When Ava walked toward her brand-new Aston Martin, he rushed out and stopped in front of her.

Ava looked at the person blocking her and, under the dim light of the garage, took a long time to recognize him as Noah. The man before her was unshaven, wearing a wrinkled, cheap jacket. His eyes were cloudy. There was no trace left of the polished elite in tailored suits. He looked so ruined he could have been homeless.

Not a single ripple rose inside her. She only frowned slightly.

“What are you doing here?”

Seeing that Ava truly felt nothing, Noah felt a familiar pain twist through his heart. Grief instantly drowned him. His eyes reddened, and his voice carried a deep brokenness.

“Ava…”

“Back then… back at Beacon Hill, it was my arrogance and stupidity that made you suffer so much. Every time I lied and said I was going to Silicon Valley on business, I felt guilty, so I had my assistant send you Hermès and Chanel. I thought… I thought material things could fill the cold violence I was subjecting you to.”

“I was a complete fool, chasing after Sloane and never looking back at you. Once, your eyes were full of love when you looked at me. I… I destroyed the life we built together with my own hands.”

“I know it’s too late, but I can’t live without you. Ava, Sloane only… she manipulated me. Are all these years between us really going to end completely because of her? Give me one more chance. Just one. For Lily, all right?”

Ava listened quietly, her face without a trace of expression.

Even now, he was still pushing responsibility onto Sloane. He wasn’t regretting that he had hurt her and Lily. He regretted that he had lost everything and had nowhere else to go. His confession wasn’t born of love, but of desperation. This tearful performance only made her feel sick.

At last, she understood completely. At last, she let go entirely.

“Noah,” she said, her voice as cold as the concrete floor of the parking garage, “you are a complete piece of trash.”

She looked at his shocked face as it instantly went white and pronounced each word.

“Go to hell.”

With that, she walked around him, got into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. The Aston Martin let out a low growl and drove out of the parking garage without the slightest hesitation, leaving Noah with nothing but a decisive retreating back and the smell of exhaust.

At the same time, in Mercer Group’s top-floor office in Manhattan, the security chief’s voice came through a video conference.

“…Sir, he has left. Miss Ava is on her way home. Everything is safe.”

Hearing this, Elias Mercer curved his lips in a gentle smile. He knew that this psychological battle, carefully arranged to let Ava truly let go, had come to an end.

He turned the pen in his hand and looked out at the brilliant city lights beyond the window.

The moment he had been waiting for had arrived.