He Broke Me Quietly, So I Left Quietly Chapter 05

He Broke Me Quietly, So I Left Quietly Chapter 05

Liam’s phone slipped out of his grasp.

The cool head he’d always bragged about fell apart completely in an instant.

“No… This can’t be true!”

He bolted out of his city apartment, slammed the pedal to the floor and raced toward the airport.

The rain came down in buckets. The wipers whipped back and forth wildly, but they could not cut through the wall of water on the windshield.

His mind turned completely blank, and grim phrases looped endlessly in his head: lost communication, severe thunderstorm, minimal odds of survival.

No. Elara could not be dead. She loved him deeply—she would never leave him like this. She must have been upset with him, using this to punish him for abandoning her at the gala.

When he arrived at the airport terminal, chaos reigned. The wails of grieving relatives mixed with airport staff’s soothing words, grating sharply on his frayed nerves.

He rushed to the information desk and grabbed a staff member by the shoulders.

“Where is Elara Carter? The passenger on the Veria flight—where is she?!”

The staff member flinched at his bloodshot eyes and stammered nervously.

“S-Sir, search and rescue teams are already on site. We have no confirmed updates. Please head to the family waiting area to wait.”

Liam shoved him away and fell to the ground.

He stared at the digital flight display board. The red text reading Lost Contact branded itself onto his retinas.

Three days passed. Three endless days. Liam never closed his eyes or ate a thing, remaining huddled in the farthest corner of the family waiting area.

On the early morning of the fourth day, the search and rescue team delivered their final report. The aircraft had crashed into the open ocean, with zero survivors.

Some personal effects of the victims were recovered and placed on long sorting tables for relatives to identify.

Liam walked over on stiff legs.

Among the burned and waterlogged items, he spotted a half-burned journal at once.

A single personal monogram marked its cover. It was a thoughtless little trinket he’d picked up on impulse from an airport duty-free shop during his business trip to Europe the month before.

Liam reached out, his fingertips brushing the blackened pages.

He flipped it open; every page was covered with sketches of him: at work, asleep, cooking, drawn over all their years together.

He coughed violently, and blood gushed from his lips.

When he regained consciousness, he was in a hospital patient room. Mia sat by the bed, her eyes puffy from tears.

“Liam, you’re finally awake! I was terrified. The doctor said you’d suffered severe emotional distress.”

Liam turned his head blankly to stare at Mia, and a sharp wave of revulsion welled up inside him.

If not for her absurd fake wrist injury and frantic message, Elara would never have left the gala alone.

If Mia had not kept playing the helpless victim, Elara would never have grown disheartened and departed for Veria.

“Get out.”

Mia froze.

“Liam… what did you say?”

“I said get out!”

Just then, Liam’s assistant, Noah, hurried into the room holding a tablet.

On the screen was the security footage from Mia’s apartment that night.

The footage clearly showed Mia deliberately slashing her wrist with a paring knife. The cut was extremely shallow, far too minor to require emergency treatment.

She had sent the distress message the very moment Liam knelt to propose, purely to lure him away and leave Elara abandoned and embarrassed before all the guests.

“Liam, let me explain—” Mia panicked. “I only wanted to stop your engagement. I never imagined she would leave the country over this, let alone that the flight would end in disaster.”

Liam stared at her and suddenly burst out laughing.

His laughter grew louder and louder, filled with endless sadness and despair.

Mia’s poor health had led him to dote on her and take her side blindly, and he’d often dismissed Elara as unreasonable.

Yet his love for Elara was genuine. He’d always assumed she’d just grin and bear all the hurt he’d caused her.

In this moment, he realized in utter despair: his love was true, but his arrogant favoritism had turned into a sharp blade. He had destroyed her with his own prejudice.

“Send her to a psychiatric facility.”

Liam stopped laughing. His gaze turned ice cold as he looked at Mia.

“Arrange round-the-clock care for her. No one is to let her leave for the rest of her life, not without my approval.”

Mia shrieked as bodyguards dragged her away. Silence settled over the ward once more. Leaning back against the headboard, Liam clutched the charred journal to his chest.