Her Regret Came Too Late Chapter 05

Her Regret Came Too Late Chapter 05

I set that video to post automatically before I jumped off the cliff.

That was important. The video was my goodbye and my confession to a woman who had never really loved

It was also the only weapon I had left.

By the time the internet exploded with comments and speculation, I was already sitting in a small apartment two thousand kilometers away from that city.

No Clark family. No Victoria. No Dillan. Just a tiny room, a desk by the window, and a second-hand air conditioner that hummed like a tired bee.

I changed my phone number and deleted all my social media accounts.

The day my new life began, I walked to a convenience store and bought a pack of cigarettes.

I didn’t smoke. Never had. But it felt like the kind of thing a new person should do. A small ceremony. A quiet celebration of my rebirth.

I used the savings I had hidden away to rent a small storefront on a quiet street. A little workshop. I made architectural models-wooden castles, bridges, lighthouses. Simple things built from simple materials.

The neighborhood children started coming by after school. They liked me because I never raised my voice. I didn’t get angry when they made mistakes.

I cut my hair short and bought a pair of plain black glasses. When I walked down the street, I believed even Victoria would not recognize me since I was completely different.

I had spent my whole life trying to be seen-trying to make my father proud, trying to build a name that mattered. And now the best part of my new life was that no one knew who I was.

I used to believe that studying architecture was about standing on international stages. About making my parents see the name Lambert Clark in lights.

But now? Now I just wanted to watch children hold carving knives with clumsy fingers and draw crooked lines on pieces of wood.

I stopped drawing architectural blueprints. Stopped thinking about the Clark family. Stopped thinking about Victoria.

My workshop sat next to a flower shop.

The woman who owned it was named Ariel Hall. She was young-maybe late twenties-and quiet. Most days I saw her standing outside her shop door, trimming stems with small scissors.

She had a niece. Callie. Six years old, with pigtails that never matched and shoes that were always untied.

Every afternoon, Callie came to the flower shop after school. She would sit on the little stool by the door and wait for her aunt to finish working. But she didn’t just sit. She watched. And what she watched was my workshop.

I noticed her on the third day.

She was pressed against my window, both hands flat on the glass, her nose almost touching it. Inside, I had just finished a small wooden bridge.

I walked to the door and opened it.

“Want to come in and try?” I asked.

Callie looked up at me. Her eyes were big and unsure. She turned to look at her aunt.

Ariel stood in the doorway of the flower shop.

“Go ahead,” she said softly. “But be careful. Don’t break anything.”

Callie nodded hard, then stepped inside my workshop.

She was clumsy at first. Her fingers were too small for the tools. She glued pieces to the wrong sides and sanded spots that didn’t need sanding. But she smiled the whole time.

After that day, Callie came to the workshop every afternoon. She never missed a single one.

And every time, when Ariel came to pick her up, she brought me a flower. Sometimes a lily. Sometimes a daisy. Sometimes a bunch of tiny white flowers I didn’t know the name of.

The flowers changed the workshop. The white walls didn’t feel so cold anymore. The air didn’t feel so empty.

Then I realized something. This simple life was more real than all three years of Victoria’s soft words and warm milk.

She had given me everything except honesty. Everything she gave me had been beautiful but hollow.

With this thought in mind, I valued my current life more.

Not because it was better than what I had before. In some ways, it was smaller. Poorer. Less exciting.

But because it was true.

a half months passed.

he company that had helped me fake my death contacted me through an encrypted line.

ark,” the voice on the other end said. “Victoria is still looking for you.”

eaned back in my chair. The wood creaked beneath me. “I’ve been dead for almost two months. Why is she still looking for me?”

“She went through your old studio and collected every single one of your old drawings. She hired three private investigators. One of them almost traced things back to us, but we handled it. Also, she visits Dragon’s Peak almost every week. Sometimes she stays there the entire day.”

I looked out the window. The sky above this small town was so blue. So clean. Nothing like the gray haze that had hung over the city where I used to live.

“She can do all she wants,” I said. “It has nothing to do with me anymore.”

“There’s something else,” the man continued. “Your video and your post went viral. Everyone saw them. Victoria’s public image took a huge hit. Brown Group’s stock price dropped nearly fifteen percent. Everyone knows now that your three years of marriage were a lie. That she loved Dillan, not you. That you were deceived.”

I thought I’d feel something when I heard this. Satisfaction, or maybe the bitter taste of revenge.

But I felt nothing.

“What about Dillan?” I asked.

“He’s been cut off by the Clark family. Your parents were very disappointed when they learned he stole your designs. His architecture firm lost several major clients. Eleanor Carter divorced him. From what we heard, his finances are a mess. He’s even listed his downtown apartment for sale.”

I nodded. “Mm.”

No anger. No joy. Just a quiet acknowledgment.

“The relationship between Victoria and Dillan is completely destroyed as well,” the man added. “Dillan has been telling everyone that your suicide had nothing to do with him. But Victoria blames him for everything. There are reports that Dillan asked her to help save his firm. She refused.”

He paused again. I heard papers shuffling on his end.

“One more thing. The police search at Dragon’s Peak stopped one week ago. The currents in that area are strong. They concluded that your chances of survival were almost zero. Victoria refuses to accept that, though. Legally, you are still listed as missing.”

I was quiet for a long time.

Sunlight fell across my desk. Tiny wood shavings sparkled like dust made of gold. The half-finished lighthouse waited for me. Its small windows hadn’t been cut yet.

“Just make sure she never finds me,” I said.

“The thing is,” the man continued, “she seems genuinely sorry. Maybe she really did love you. She just didn’t realize it until you were gone. People are stupid like that. They don’t know what they have until it’s too late.”

I almost laughed. “That doesn’t mean she loved me. That just means she feels guilty.”