Their Cruelest Joke Cost Them Everything Chapter 09

Their Cruelest Joke Cost Them Everything Chapter 09 Too Late to Apologize

Celeste’s POV:

Three months passed in Bellamont.

Once the city stopped feeling foreign, I settled into its rhythm.

Bellori & Finch gave me an office of my own. My first project succeeded, and clients who had initially doubted me began seeking my judgment.

After the engagement party, my parents eventually stopped trying to contact me.

Other leaders absorbed what remained of the family businesses. Father lost all his power, while Mother devoted herself to Bianca’s worsening mental state.

How many people stayed in that house or how many disasters remained there was no concern of mine.

I had cut every tie to my old life.

Every tie except Alessio.

For all three months, messages from him never stopped.

At first, he remained demanding, convinced that I had fled to Bellamont in a fit of anger and would inevitably return.

“Celeste, how long do you intend to keep this up?”

“Answer me. We need to talk.”

I never replied. His familiar name appeared on my screen, and I let it disappear again.

Within days, the tone began to shift.

“I heard you signed a permanent contract with Bellori & Finch.”

“Are you planning to stay in Bellamont for good?”

“You have been gone this long and never once wanted to contact me?”

“Are you truly cutting me out of your life?”

Still, I gave him nothing.

His messages grew longer after that and arrived deeper into the night.

“I investigated what happened at the engagement party.”

“I was wrong. I should never have trusted Bianca, watched while she humiliated you, or assumed you would always stay.”

“I am sorry.”

Those words appeared again and again.

I read the last message without emotion, then blocked his number.

Alessio would probably never understand.

Our ending had been settled long before I left.

The relationship did not die when the recordings played, nor when I landed alone in Bellamont.

It died much earlier.

It died each time he watched Bianca degrade me and chose not to intervene.

Disillusionment does not arrive in a single blow.

It gathers inside every silence, every act of favoritism, and every careless accusation.

By the time those moments had accumulated, they had worn my love down to nothing.

His regret and apologies could no longer mean anything to me.

I assumed that if I kept ignoring him, he would eventually accept the truth.

Then came a rainy evening.

I finished work and stepped outside the firm with a stack of files.

A shower had just passed over Bellamont.

Dusk filled the street, and lights from the buildings shimmered across the wet

pavement.

I was standing on the steps about to call a car when a black sedan stopped at the curb.

Recognition halted me for half a second.

The rear door opened.

Alessio emerged.

In three months, he had grown noticeably thinner. Rain clung to his black coat, and the easy confidence I remembered was gone from his face.

He appeared to have been waiting for hours.

As soon as he saw me, he took two quick steps forward.

My expression stopped him before he came any closer.

We faced one another across the rain-darkened steps.

Neither of us moved.

At last, he spoke in a hoarse voice.

“You would not come back.”

He watched me as though looking away for a second might make me vanish.

“So I had to come to you.”